As I said in the last seminar, I have this funny experience of feeling I haven't left. I had a cataract operation two or three weeks ago. And they put you out for three minutes. So they say, I'm going to put you out for three minutes. And I said, fine. And then they're wheeling me into the operation room. There was no experience of time passing. And it's something like being back in Rostenberg.

[01:03]

I close my eyes and open my eyes and I'm back in Rostenberg. Thirteen months have passed since I saw you last time. And Christian, you were here, what, three years ago or something? Yeah. So he asked me today, or last night, I guess, is there a topic? I said, well, Usually there's no topic. And he sort of asked, then how do you decide not to say? Well, I mean, as usual, I speak about what I feel. And much of that is what I feel from you.

[02:21]

And... But also, of course, I try to continue to some extent where we left off last year. But more... more significantly. Somehow during the year I make mental notes. Somehow I'm always sort of thinking about you, each of you in this seminar. And so when I'm teaching or practice, I start using or developing.

[03:29]

Relates to... how we understand others, or more how we experience, can experience others, that I tend to think, oh, gee, I could talk about that. Or if I come to some practice which I find universal, rather, you know, somewhat, kind of universal, if you can be kind of universal.

[04:30]

That applies to everybody, or applies to everything, whether you're Buddhist or practicing or not. And that I keep saying, oh, that I should speak about. And then there's also things I've been emphasizing over this last year. Because I'm always understanding... I'll use the word understanding. I'm always understanding things, yeah, somewhat better. And so... And I suppose, I mean, I'm sure that each of you understands yourself and your own practice better each year.

[05:55]

And perhaps the things that we've been discussing together, some of us for 20 years now, I guess, We understand them better. And And so what happens is during the year I find some way to, just because of the way practice evolves and one's life in practice evolves, I start seeing that I have to speak about something a little more

[07:05]

more instrumentally. And that can make a big difference. And so to develop a conversation that we have over a long time now. I would like to and I need to share with you some of the things I've decided, ways I've decided to speak about. And I'll be very happy if there's things that you also bring into the discussion from your own experience and so forth. So one of the things I've emphasized this year, which isn't new, but really for me, I'm speaking about it as new, which is that

[08:36]

whatever all of this is, is it's one single interdependent continuum. Yeah, and you know, of course we can understand that or do understand that. But the consequences of making that ever present and always present understanding and experience. Bringing it into, actualizing it in your moment-by-moment experience is a huge difference from just understanding. And related to that is the idea I've been emphasizing in recent months. of incubation.

[10:02]

Rather than understanding things, you incubate things. And I noticed that particularly in the seminars in which we were speaking about because the people really have a feeling they ought to understand the koans you know, they want to understand the koans or they feel frustrated when they don't understand the koans And very simply, koans are not meant to be understood.

[11:10]

They're meant to be incubated. In other words, you find some way to stay present with aspects of the koan. Chinese poetry is like that. And even simple statements like Bodhidharma saying, if you want to study the mind, if you want to... What does he say? If you want to see the fish, you have to watch the water. You have to study the water. And what he means, of course, if you want to study the mind, you have to watch the mind. But that means, in this way of thinking, that you want to see the activity of the water.

[12:32]

You want to see that water implies a fish. When you study the water, you're not surprised when you see a fish because it's shaped by the water. Because the shape is formed by the water. And you also want to see the wake of the fish that's gone. So when this statement has been saved, supposedly attributed to Bodhidharma, it also has a sense of seeing what's hidden in the water or implied in the water.

[13:33]

But that also means to see what is hidden in water, what is implicit in water. Now in this last seminar I just did, it just happened partly, mostly because of the title of the seminar. Which was the title was The Minds of Zazen. So I found I had to speak about Zazen instructions. Because Zazen instructions really are, well, when you're practicing, if you bring the idea of the most basic instruction is don't move.

[15:04]

Also die grundlegendste Zazenanweisung, wenn du Zen praktizierst, ist bewege dich nicht. And so if you're sitting and what you're doing is you're bringing the concept, don't move, to the practice, to the experience of sitting. Bring the concept to the sitting. So you're basically adding a mental posture to a physical posture. And that joining of a mental posture, don't sit, don't move, to the practice, to the experience of sitting, is the most basic definition of sasa. And if you don't have the instruction, the concept of not moving, it's not zazen.

[16:15]

So the basic instructions of zazen are actually mudras or mental postures. So I spoke about practice in a way I don't think ever spoken about practice outside of a sasin. One thing I didn't mention, maybe it's fine I didn't, but somehow I... Thinking of mentioning it now. It's when you do sit, of course you first sit down and arrange your posture and so forth. But then you kind of feel through the body.

[17:20]

Feel the condition of the body. And that's not, you can do it more directly, of course, sitting cross-legged. But at any time we can... feel the condition of the body. And what kind of attention we can bring to the body which alters the condition of the mind. And there's a kind of... thickening, thickening, like when you add flour to a sauce or something, a thickening of the mind.

[18:38]

I couldn't, I can't, it's the word that most easily occurs to me to describe the feeling. That is a kind of thickening of the mind. And the thickening of the mind is basically... an increasing embodiment of the mind. And this thickening of the mind The deepening of presence, something like that.

[19:43]

Once you know that feeling of... thickening of the mind through the embodying of the mind. Then that can continue in all circumstances. Okay. Now again, I think it's easy enough to understand my description. But this description doesn't have much meaning. Unless in a way you, sorry all these words, you incubate the thickening. Thicken the incubation iron. Because it's really what happens when you find a way to do that all the time.

[20:49]

You find yourself in a more deeply embodied space with others. You have a more thoroughly embodied space with others. And you can feel when whatever mental posture you take, that thickening decreases or that thickening increases. Now, if... if this is one single interdependent continuum. And nothing has any separate identity that isn't conditioned by other aspects.

[22:22]

And so basically, there are no entities. There's only activities. So again, how do you incubate the noticing that everything's an activity? Right now, this evening, we're just starting. I'm trying to establish the idea of incubation. The idea and the practice of incubation. Because all practice is really incubation. Things evolve, they don't develop. because all practices, all exercises are really exuberant, because things are... So to get beyond the superficial you have to trust the process when you don't really know where the process is going.

[23:51]

Okay, so if, again, this is one single interdependent continuum. Perhaps undulating. Hard to find words he doesn't know. Undulating. Undulate. Undulate? I don't know. Undulate is like the ocean. It's the same word in German, right? Undulate. Yeah. Undulating it. As the waves go up and down and so forth. So in a way, this single interdependent continuum is... you know, going down and up, etc. Depending on the field itself, but also depending on how you bring attention to it. And one way to enter into that experientially and to remind yourself of it sufficiently you don't just try to understand it here's the idea of incubation again you understand that understanding is pretty

[25:33]

thin. Pretty thin. You have to just keep coming back to it until it's just the way you feel all the time. And so I think that it's useful to work with the idea of appearance. Is to see everything as an appearance. Things... And I guess I'm going to have to in the next days we have emphasize what it means to see things as an appearance. The effect of incubating everything as appearance.

[26:52]

So maybe, I mean, I think maybe to cultivate this mind of appearance, we need to have some entry into it. So maybe the feeling is... appearance without continuity. Or you can use receiving and releasing as a kind of verbal phrase to direct attention. So I look at you, for example. It's nice to see you again.

[28:12]

And I have a feeling of receiving your appearance. And then I release it. So maybe I'm receiving and releasing. But I try, this may sound strange to you, to not assume you exist in between my receiving you. Like I can look over at Angela. And I don't assume you still exist. So when I come back to you, you're a new appearance. Somehow I have to take the sense that you're there independent of the appearance.

[29:16]

I have to take away the sense that you're there independent of the appearance. Yeah, I mean, of course somehow I actually know you're sort of there between appearances. But I try to educate myself. Yeah, so... And I'm trying to get away from it as a sensorial understanding. Okay, okay, okay. So, I don't want to think of it as just, oh, you're appearing in my senses and I'm looking somewhere else and then you're reappearing in my senses.

[30:20]

That's of course true. But it's a kind of a deceptive truth. And if I understand it that way, there's not much incubation that happens. The understanding sort of takes away the dynamic of But if I understand that if I try to get myself to feel you're not still there when I look at Angela, then I come back to you because it's more true that you're different.

[31:24]

you're actually different. And if my mind sort of assumes you're still there, it will make it very difficult for me to notice the difference. So I'm trying to fool myself with you, with your help. And to really feeling that there's only appearance until I really incubate that. Yeah, what happens when you do that? It's a pretty accurate description of how the world exists.

[32:33]

It's a way to enter into how things actually exist. So maybe that's enough to get you to try it. because you really don't find out what happens when you incubate the world as appearance until you do it. But I can say something maybe about it. It's somewhat related to the sense of the thickening of embodiment or thickening of mind through embodiment.

[33:34]

And something like, it's also related to what we mean by non-duality. Because non-duality is not something you can think, because thinking creates duality. So, you know, I often use the phrase already connected. and suggest that you try out the phrase in each situation with another person or an object already connected. But to say also only appearance, is another version of already connected.

[34:55]

It enters through another acupuncture point or something. So you can feel the world as non-dual, as connected. But you can only think that the world is non-dual in a non-experiential sense. So all of this is to say that there's this territory of this world, these ingredients.

[35:57]

These ingredients we all share. But you can be present in these ingredients in rather different ways. You can be present in the ingredients so you feel the separation of everything and the individuality of each person. But you can also enter into various levels of flow and connectivity. various levels, one at a time and sometimes simultaneously. And you can practice this and discover this through working with noticing appearance.

[37:13]

And you can notice through receiving and releasing. Or you can notice, at least in English, through only appearance. And again, this doesn't have virtually any meaning except some intellectual meaning. It can refine your worldview.

[38:14]

But that's a bit like designing a garden in your head. Instead of planting a garden. What happens when you plant a garden? And moment after moment you're planting the seed of appearance. And from moment to moment you plant the the seed of appearance. And if you keep planting and replanting the seed of the world as appearance, I think any one of us who does this, will be surprised by the garden you start to live in.

[39:41]

Is that enough to get us started? This first evening. Chilling the soil of the mind. Chilling. [...]

[40:17]

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