Now I've got myself here somehow sitting now on this platform. I've cleared my throat, blown my nose. with my friend yeah and straighten my robes and now I'm supposed to say something yeah but maybe I should say nothing or maybe I should say something and you should know I'm saying nothing Or maybe you should hear yourself saying something.

[01:04]

Anyway, I'm not going to speak about the seventh and eighth vijnanas. I guess we will have to leave that to another seminar or another time, I don't know. I mean, no one promised that I could talk about eight vijnanas in five days. So many times teachers don't finish a teaching to see if their students can finish the teaching. And that's what's expected. Not many do, but some do. I mean, we could stay together another few days.

[02:09]

I asked a couple of people, but they had more important things to do or different things to do. But one thing about the first five and sixth visionaries Is part of the fruit of the teaching is it you notice a greater clarity, maybe, or you have a greater clarity of perception? By noticing the separateness of each sense. Just noticing that and feeling that. Sometimes the... Perceptual information that comes to us through the senses has a special clarity.

[03:23]

And that's part of the teaching of the Vijnanas, is to increase our perceptual clarity. and that and that and since perceptual experience occurs within time perceptual clarity our medium of time has more clarity.

[04:25]

We live within a medium of time, and that medium of time is our own body, mind, perception, etc. And if you increase the clarity of perception, you're actually making more clear your experience of time. You're clarifying your experience of time. Your experience of the medium, your medium of time. This is great if you do it. Yeah, and maybe I know some of you have noticed it already.

[05:39]

Okay. Yeah, and, you know, everything we're doing doesn't have meaning. Sometimes it just is. It's easing along. Yeah. I mean, does a Swiss, handmade Swiss watch have any special meaning when you can have just an electronic watch which costs almost nothing? I mean, some people, I remember I was talking to Francisco Varela one day, an old friend of mine. He was a wonderful and creative scientist from Chile. And he was part of the revolution when he had to leave Chile.

[06:53]

Anyway, he was describing to me the complexity of a bird's eye. And I said to him, what survival value does this complexity have? He looked at me and said, you're dumb. He didn't say that, but he said, why does it have to have a reason? It's just the bird having fun with its eyes. And we have lots of redundancy. We have all kinds of... Is everything for survival value? I really get tired of reading scientific things where they say, the survival value of this is, you know, such and such, so you can make more children.

[08:09]

Or insects or whatever you make, I don't know. Does molecular gastronomy of Ferran Adrian have any survival value? Do you know that chef from northern Spain? Absolutely no survival value. What's his last name again? Ferran. Adria. He's an interesting person. What he cooks and all these foams, it's fantastic. Survival value, zero. If you think everything has survival value, do you think there's a master plan?

[09:12]

And if you think there's a master plan, this is pretty much like theology. The old master painter from the faraway hills, he painted the violets and the daffodils. He did. And it's a he. And he put the purple in the twilight haze and then did a rainbow for the rainy days. That's from 1960. You translated it. I was thinking I needed two translators, one to sing for me and one to translate. So, you know, Here we are, ising along.

[10:36]

And studying the Vijnanas helps us is along. Now I wanted to speak about, it was brought up in various ways, pain in Zazen. And the main reason we have pain in Zazen because we're taught don't move. weil uns beigebracht wird, bewege dich nicht. The basic rule of Zazen is don't move within a particular location, spatial location, and within a particular time frame.

[11:42]

Die Grundregel im Zazen lautet, bewege dich nicht innerhalb einer ganz bestimmten... That's because there's a war between mind and body. And mind is determined to be in charge. Mind in a certain sense at least. So the mind who, which is called self, is determined to be in charge. So we draw a line. It's a war. Because the body who is stillness.

[12:43]

Now, using words that Atmar sometimes use, the integrating platform for mind is self. And the integrating platform of the body is stillness. And stillness, and the mind discovers, develops, establishes self through movement, through activity, through doing. And the mind, when it has established its dominance, treats the body like a servant. I don't really need you, but you help.

[13:44]

And I'm going to make you strong. Yeah, and you're going to serve me. And we're really separate. Well, that's the sickness of often in our culture. But in the world, too. But the body sometimes, you know, after it gets a little bit of, you know, strength, it says, hey, listen to me. I don't speak the usual language, but listen. Der Körper, wenn er so ein bisschen Kraft bekommen hat, dann sagt er manchmal sowas wie Hey, jetzt hör mir mal zu. Ich spreche zwar nicht die gewöhnliche Sprache, aber bitte hör mal zu. I speak through stillness. Can you hear me? Ich spreche durch Stille. Kannst du mich hören? So, anyway, there's this war. Also auf jeden Fall gibt es da diesen Krieg.

[15:03]

Yeah, in infancy, the infant's body makes the parents love it. It's just so cute. And then the crying makes the parents do what the baby wants. But the mind and language and all takes charge as soon as possible. And maybe that's proper. But at some point the wisdom of stillness may reach us. Then there's various kinds of stillness. Stillness which excludes, stillness which includes, stillness which is always present. stille die ausschließt, stille die einschließt, stille die immer gegenwärtig ist, selbst in aktivität.

[16:14]

Und diese unterschiedlichen Arten von stille werden auch in unterschiedlichen Schulen des Buddhismus unterschiedlich entwickelt. But the mind really doesn't like it when the body says, when wisdom says, I won't move for 40 minutes and I'm going to stay in this one location. Oh, no, you're not. You have much more interesting things to do. Look at that beautiful person who's waiting for you at the bus stop. Or you can download movies now, or I don't know what you do somehow. Downstream, what do you call them? I don't know, I've never done it. Anyway, there's all these things the mind says, you should do these things. Auf jeden Fall gibt es da all diese Dinge, von denen der Geist sagt, die solltest du jetzt lieber tun.

[17:27]

The development of stillness, mental and physical stillness, is a kind of war between mind and body. But after you really have decided, I will sit still once or twice a day for a certain length of time, eventually the mind gives up. And after a while, the mind is actually, you know, rather happy. It's kind of fun to hang out with the body. I mean, you can, you know, it's wonderful if you get a Christmas present or a birthday present or something like that, but it doesn't compare to bliss.

[18:28]

And bliss is something the body can offer the mind. So there are practical aspects of sitting which will cause throbbing, pain, It's a physical skill. And it takes time to learn it. It took me forever, a year and a half or so. I told you once, she went by me once in the morning and said, It's so hard for you. Why don't you just give up and sit at home? I thought, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Okay. So it takes a while to get your back and legs and all used to it.

[19:40]

And I myself have very stiff joints and they won't Pretzels are not the way my body works. But eventually I got moderately good at it. And then there's the first is the difficulty of getting your body so it can sit still without musculature help.

[20:44]

Muscular. And you get so you can fold your warmth together. And you can mix up left and right. And you can discover how to sit without muscular effort, as I just said, pretty upright. And the ego is something of a bully and will try to, you know, convince you you shouldn't do it. A bully? Yeah, somebody who's like, I don't know a word. There's no bullies in Germany, I guess. Well, we're all bullies, so we don't have a word.

[21:46]

How do you say bully? A boy or a girl, usually a boy, who beats up on the other kids. Okay. It's a very common word in English, I'll tell you. In every classroom there's a few bullies. And sometimes, I mean... The ego will promise you a really good job in a bank. Or will threaten you with its big guns, suicide, craziness, things like that. But if you just say, look, I'm not harming you. I'm just sitting straight. Take it easy. Oh, okay, you win.

[22:56]

And then you can start developing stillness. And I spoke about interior... Attentional space. Maybe why don't each of you close your eyes now? You have a feeling behind your eyelids. And you have a feeling maybe of some kind of space. You know, I don't know what other word to use. It's kind of space inside the body.

[23:59]

Yeah, maybe you can feel your lungs as a kind of, your breathing and lungs are a kind of space. There may even be a kind of light or grayish light or luminous light in this interiority. And although your eyes may be closed, and your attention is primarily closed, on the body from the inside.

[25:05]

You can feel the presence of the people next to you, around you. And in this interiority you can feel the room we're in. And this interior space is looking for stillness. And the more you can settle it in stillness, The more this interior space feels rooted in stillness, it has a kind of overall presence and stability.

[26:11]

You can feel the proprioceptive physical vijnana of the metabolism and movement of the breath. And you can, if you do open your eyes, I'm not suggesting you do, Your experience, the information you have about the people in front of you, behind you and so forth, will be a little different than how you feel inside.

[27:27]

But the way you feel from inside, within inside, Maybe I shouldn't say inside in English because there's no sides here. Maybe I like interiority. So if you did, and I'm not suggesting you do again, if you did open your eyes... There'd be a difference, some difference, between your interior space and the feel of what's around you and what you'd actually see and hear.

[28:39]

Or see and, because you're hearing, see and, yeah, see. But that interior knowing that you have right now, I hope through creating an attentional interiority indem ihr eine Aufmerksamkeitsinwendigkeit erschafft. This is a valid way of knowing. Das ist eine gültige Art des Wissens oder Erkennens. It's a valid way of ising along. Das ist eine gültige Art, einfach so dahin zu sein. And when you do open your eyes, and let's open our eyes...

[29:42]

Can you stay simultaneously with that inner space? Now the yogi, and this is a deeper sense of mindfulness, Fully mindfulness. Doesn't just when they're with other people or with trees or whatever. In the midst of phenomena. Yeah. doesn't just know their breathing, they simultaneously know this interior space. So when I'm sitting here giving a talk, as I'm supposed to do, Yeah, I feel my spatial interiority simultaneously with this exterior spatiality.

[30:55]

spüre ich meine innerlichkeit, meinen inneren Raum gleichzeitig mit dieser räumlichen, mit diesem räumlichen Außen. And through yogic zazen practice and winning the war of developing the stillness as the who of the body. This interior spatiality is anchored in stillness. And this interior spatiality this interior spatiality and stillness is the observing tool of mind, body and emotions and so forth.

[32:23]

And the more fully this, as your practice matures, the more fully this interior spatiality is rooted in stillness. This interior spatiality is rooted in stillness. The more exterior spatiality is rooted through your interior spatiality. desto mehr wurzelt deine äußere Räumlichkeit in der inneren Räumlichkeit. And the more your exterior and interior spatiality is rooted in stillness, and je mehr deine äußere und innere Räumlichkeit in der stille Wurzel, the more you're free in the midst of things. Desto mehr bist du inmitten der Dinge frei.

[33:40]

Mm-hmm. Now in zazen, often there's a, particularly in a sashin, a long sitting, there's often quite a lot of pain. And one of the jobs of the mind, of consciousness, is to dislike discomfort. Even mild discomfort consciousness doesn't like. So this pain of sitting for seven days Yeah, you really get the power to just be still in the middle of pain.

[34:45]

Yeah, and... when you can just sit in the middle of the pain, and recognize, for instance, that it's mostly just in my back, the back, or it's just in the knees, and then you can discover how not to let the pain flood your whole body. It's just in the knees, so it's localized in the knees. When you say to your knees, yeah, you're hurting, I'm sorry, but I'm happy.

[35:48]

Or I'm working on opening up my spine and it's getting a little better. But it does seem that the pain of long sitting develops our ability to be still really in any circumstance. And it does seem to be the case that if you don't have pain in Zazen, you don't learn to really be still. Yeah. So if we were going to study and had time to study all eight Vijñanas, the synchrony of all eight vijnanas together.

[37:18]

Synchrony means at one time together. Kronos is... What I'm just wondering is... So the way that eight vijnanas function together in the world, this is what we could speak about some other time. And you may say, promises, promises. Yeah, but you help me keep, please help me keep the promise. Okay. Sorry, I have to stop. It's so nice to sit here with you, but... Okay. May God bless you.

[38:20]

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