Now, when you get involved with your thinking and sort of your anxious, some stress or something, often your breathing changes. You get angry, your breathing changes. So certain thinking and breathing, certain thinking and emotions... whole breathing into them. And may pull the body in with it. So the practice of mindfulness... is to separate breathing from emotions and thinking.

[01:09]

So I had to explain this this way because that was behind my remark yesterday that Gerald picked up on and there was an iceberg under it or a hotberg or something like that. Okay, so let me give you the example again, which I spoke about. I remember when some of you were here earlier in the year. When you practice mindfulness and you're angry, mindfulness practice is to name the anger, not to repress the anger, name it and notice it. So you get angry, you get more angry, you get, now I'm really angry, etc. But the naming creates a mind which is not involved with the anger. So in effect you use anger to generate a mind free of anger.

[02:24]

And the more you get in the habit of doing that, the less you're caught up in your anger. And you can choose to express your anger, but you aren't forced into it. Okay. And what you notice is this mind which isn't involved in the anger. Again we'd say detached yet not separate from. Your breathing also doesn't get involved in the anger. So you begin to find when you have a steady mind that's not caught up in emotions, even though you have emotions.

[03:42]

And from the point of view of yogic understanding, emotions are more fundamental than the basis of thinking. Okay, so you begin to have a mind and the breathing is very steady, doesn't change much, even though you might have some kind of anger or something like that. So that kind of breathing is a kind of tuning of awareness. Does that make sense? More or less?

[04:46]

And you had some reservation about this one or comment about it when I spoke about it before. Yes. You have the same one still? Yeah. No, not yet. All right. Someone else, I have a little short question. I would like to hear something more about BodyMind or about the talks you spoke about on Friday night and you wanted to continue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll do my best. One thing we have to decide It says in the schedule that we stop at 4 o'clock. Yeah. You want to say that out loud in German? I'm sorry. I just was so much with it. I was so much with it.

[05:48]

Okay. Also, natürlich ein Ding müssen wir uns entscheiden. Das ist im Zeitplan, also in der Seminarkündigung steht ja, dass wir um 4 Uhr aufhören. Yeah, we're getting in such a mutual field that when I speak, he thinks he's already spoken. Well, that's not so clear. And I guess since we're all from Berlin, we don't have to end at one o'clock or something like we do in Johanneshof, so you can travel to Berlin. Except that you're not all from Berlin. So what time is the earliest anyone has to leave? Not because you're bored, but because... Five? Oh, okay. Yeah. One o'clock. You're not allowed. Lock the doors. Four.

[06:50]

Okay. Well, then we have to figure out how lunch is and when we stop and blah, blah, blah. Well, we'll put it off for a few minutes. Okay. So let me Since I said I should speak about the five dharmas, many of you know them well, but I would say it's the basic structure of consciousness, basic structures of perception and knowing in Buddhism. So I wanted to talk about the five Dhammas, which some of you already know. And I would say that these are the basic structures of consciousness, of knowledge, of perception.

[08:00]

Thank you. And? Appearance, it's really quite simple. Naming. Wisdom. Or right knowledge. And suchness of lustness. So this describes exactly what I said a minute ago.

[09:07]

Practice is to enter in to the moment of knowing consciousness of the particular. So there's lots of forms of practice, but if you want to actually practice the Dharma as an act, it's this sense of being present at the moment of the arising of content. Parallel teaching, And a parallel of the Dharma would be the four signs of the Dharma.

[10:10]

Birth, duration, dissolution, and disappearance. Okay, now you really only need this. Except that would be passive. Because things in fact appear, last for a moment, and fade away. Yeah, it's not so obvious in stones, but they're slow. If you can look at a microscopic level, the stones are also appearing and dissolving. If you look at the tree, the tree is obviously, every moment the tree is slightly different.

[11:25]

Insects, wind. I find if you practice direct perception, which is one of our practices, with a flower vase, which is often on the table in the morning, if you look and feel carefully, the cut flowers in a vase will move slightly during breakfast. But especially one's own mind in noticing. If I notice a tree or you, I have certain levels of concentration and awareness. I can look at the tree carefully, then I can pull back and so on. Okay. Now, if you notice, and now I'm just going off on a tangent toward the center. If you notice that, in fact, if I look at that plant or Palantine or whatever, there's a pulse in my consciousness itself.

[12:54]

There's a pulse in my thinking itself. Sometimes that pulse we find goes from noticing to thinking about, noticing to thinking about, noticing to thinking about. And that noticing, going to thinking about, pretty soon you're not noticing, you're just thinking about it and you've forgotten what you've noticed and notice it, you know. Good. is you can use that sense of noticing and then thinking about. Instead, notice and shift to seeing the whole field and then seeing the particular. In other words,

[13:55]

tendency for things not to stay and to change is not the same necessarily as going to thinking. You can't change the fact that things don't tend to stay. But you can change what they change into. But you can change what they change. So, if I'm looking at you, you know, oh dear, why am I, maybe he's still not going back to America soon. Oh dear, maybe he's still not going back to America soon. tell you everything I know. One minute. Everything I know would fit into one minute. A friend of mine has had for a long time a record company.

[15:32]

And I told him once, I said to my daughter, I taught him everything he knows about rock and roll. Because I, in a sense, introduced him to And he said, and my daughter said, My father says he introduced you, taught you everything you know about rock and roll. And my friend said, yes, Sally, and it took exactly one minute. So much, you know. Yeah. So you can get in the habit of...

[16:38]

Feeling the particular and then feeling the whole. Feeling the particular and then feeling the whole. And the result is you don't go to thinking, go to another kind of feeling, and you end up feeling the context and the particular in a different way. So, in a passive sense, things appear, they last for a moment, particularly when you notice your mind itself perceiving. Particularly when you, if you're looking at a tree, you're looking at an object, a mind object. But the object can be mind itself.

[17:45]

And when you notice mind itself, it's much easier to notice that there's change all the time. So what you do, you notice, and then you... You notice more strongly, you notice less strongly, some kind of pattern like that. And you can call that duration. There's a certain duration. And then there's a dissolution of that noticing, and then that noticing appears again. But if you're a practitioner, then make it disappear. In a sense, you clean the slate, clean the blackboard. So, you know, if you learn to play tennis, you know, you may play creatively in a different way than others, but still there's a basic way you do tennis.

[19:01]

I don't play tennis, but yeah. And in yogic thinking, there's no natural. It's all something you learn. And you may think there's natural, but the natural is just embodied habits from your culture. Okay. So things are born or appear. They have a certain duration. And during that duration, you can name them. Or you can refrain from naming them.

[20:01]

Or you can name them and then discriminate about them. Or you can name without discriminating. Where you can discriminate, then cut that discrimination off. Like going to the field of mind instead of the particular. Okay, well, if you do this, if you cut it off, And you're not thinking you're naming, but you're experiencing, that's called suchness. You feel a physical presence of each thing which isn't so different from other things. There's a kind of thusness to you, and a thusness to you, and a thusness to you.

[21:04]

It's not blank or nothing, and you're different than her, than she, but there's still a thusness quality of each of you. It is not in the sense that it is empty and you are of course different, but nevertheless there is a quality of so-ness in everyone. This feels like this and this feels like this. Yes, so-ness also connects. So there's a constant internal and external stream of images.

[22:13]

And consciousness is a balancing of these internal and external flow of images. Dharma practice is to enter into that flow and stop it. And know, feel what appears. Now, if you understand that as the central act of Buddhist practice, Then you can see that this particular way of describing the mind hinges on consciousness from here on.

[23:17]

Everything from here on is a function of consciousness. Self, memory, language, etc. At this point, you change all of this. Yes. What do you mean with interrupt, not to go into consciousness, to stay in awareness, or what? To find consciousness, the threshold, the point at which things appear, From the field of mind. At that point, you decide whether to go into discriminating or not to go into discriminating. Dogen says an ocean mudra samadhi.

[24:27]

Isn't that a great thing? That things appear, but the observing eye consciousness doesn't have to appear. And things disappear, and the observing eye consciousness doesn't have to disappear. He means things can appear and disappear without a relationship to observing eye consciousness. That changes the function of self, of karma, of the unconscious, etc. I, pronoun I. The pronoun I. The pronoun I. Not the visual I. Not the visual I. I'm sorry. It's not because things appear with this I. In this case it's the pronoun I. The observing I doesn't have to appear.

[25:35]

Yeah. So if the observing I doesn't have to appear, with Zen results in self, memory, language, etc., you actually change the dynamic of how you function. doesn't mean you eliminate that. It's just that you don't have to go into it. Okay, I think it's about time to take a break. What do you think? Okay. Okay. I'm already halfway on my break already.

[26:39]

Otmar, you have so much authority. Oh, boy. I mean, old girl. Kukai, the founder of tantrism in Japan, he was a contemporary of Padmasambhava, who played a similar role in Tibet.

[27:46]

A kind of phrase he used as the center of his teaching. Soku shin jo butsu. which is hard to put in a few words in English. But it means something like... We are already Buddhas. But we haven't realized it. And this is at the center of Dogen's teaching and the center of Shinran's teaching, who started the Pure Land School of Jodo Shinshu.

[28:47]

Now, this basic idea that you're already Buddha, you're already enlightened, and you have to realize it, or you can realize it. Isn't a concept like uncovering, like Nietzsche had the idea, you uncover stuff that's hidden? As if it's already there and you have to take the top off. And each of these three teachers, Zen, Japanese, Buddhist teachers, has a different way of practicing with this concept that we're already enlightened and already Buddhas.

[29:57]

But Kukai's view and Dogen's view are very, very similar. So, this phrase, Shokushin, Jōbutsu, means something like, since you're already Buddha, you have to trust those parts of you that are Buddha and let them guide your And this Buddha will be realized through the body. Now, consciousness you can think about the world in. bodily knowing or this lebit space the moment before consciousness arises or thought arises you can't think your way to or think about means that trust

[31:24]

has to be a very big factor here. Okay. It means you can't decide what to do on the basis, oh, this is reasonable, this is moral, this is rational, etc. But if we have this idea of this rather dangerous unconscious, how can we trust non-conscious behavior. We may be just acting out unconscious fantasies or neurotic tendencies. So how can we trust ourselves not only to be moral and appropriate, but how can we trust ourselves in such a way that we might be Buddha? Now, this question that I'm bringing up doesn't arise in Japan and Japanese Buddhism in quite the same way.

[33:01]

Because they don't have this concept of a dangerous, unconscious Buddha. hiding underneath the surface. But they certainly know what it's like when somebody acts out, in fact acts, what we would describe as acting out unconscious desires or something. So how can you trust your actions, your doing, before consciousness arises. And take responsibility for how it develops. Now, Yuan Wu, this person I use as my main Zen authority, the compiler and author of the Blue Cliff Records,

[34:28]

So if anybody's an authority in Zen, he's an authority. He says, just once you've understood the gist of the teaching, and he would mean once you've embodied it, the function of the teachings. then just concentrate continuously without breaks. Now we have to ask ourselves, what the heck could be concentrating continuously without breaks? This is impossible. So a kind of concentration that's possible must be met. An example I usually use is, in fact, you are concentrated continuously on your posture without hardly noticing it.

[35:56]

Und eines der Beispiele, die ich immer dafür bringe, ist, dass ihr ununterbrochen auf eure Haltung konzentriert seid, fast ohne es zu bemerken. Even during the night, you don't fall out of bed. You know which side you're sleeping on. I mean, you usually don't fall out of bed. Also, selbst in der Nacht fallt ihr gewöhnlicherweise jedenfalls nicht aus dem Bett. Ihr wisst ungefähr, auf welcher Seite ihr liegt, und so weiter. Children learn not to wet the bed and not to fall out of bed. Die Kinder lernen, sich nicht ins Bett zu machen und nicht aus dem Bett zu fallen. Sometimes they do both. Manchmal machen sie aber beides. So just once you've embodied the gist of the teaching, just concentrate continuously without breaks and let the womb of sagehood Develop and mature. Okay, now both Dogen and Kukai would be talking about something like the womb of sagehood developing in your activity.

[37:11]

And how can we trust this womb of sagehood? How can we trust this bodily wisdom? may be intuitive knowing before consciousness arises. Okay, now what I'd like you all to do is to turn among each other in groups of four or five and have some discussion about this. Right here in this room, so I can listen to the Deutsch buzz. Okay, now I would suggest what I'd like you to sort of like, you can talk about anything you want, you know. But what I would suggest is you speak about

[38:15]

Ways in which you have trusted a kind of bodily or intuitive knowing. Or ways in which you find yourself really knowing what to do, but sometimes you don't do what you know what to do. Okay, something like that. And the translator can join one of the groups. Okay, please. I don't know. I'll ring a bell three times. Bang rules. Bang rules. Probably we'll stop before lunch. But I might have each group catered.

[39:24]

So after lunch I'd like to hear something from at least one person in each group. And because we don't have so much time, not... not too lengthy, but whatever, it will be all right. And then we'll try to look more closely at this bodily knowing and trusting and evolution in the present moment. So it's 12.30. So we come back with at 2.30 minus one and minus one person. Then we have an hour and a half.

[40:31]

Well, if we take two hours, that would be 2.30, then we'd have an hour and a half. What do you think about just taking 90 minutes? Well, that's up to you. If you can chew fast. 90 minutes. 90 minutes. Okay. So an hour and a half will be good enough? Okay. Yeah, I know. So an hour and 45 minutes. So we come back at quarter past two. What's the matter? Okay, who would like to speak first? Or who is willing to speak first, even if you don't want to? Yes. I can always depend on you, Andreas.

[41:36]

Almost always I can depend on you. It's difficult for me to remember what we were talking about, but I will try it. One example was yesterday evening. We wanted to go somewhere. We didn't know, couldn't make up in mind where to go. So I said to myself, I just stand still and wait and listen to my body what will appear. This is how I find him this morning. And that, as I said, could be experienced by many people in other situations.

[42:57]

There is also a portion of trust. And what is perhaps special about it is that you don't have to be in the structured consciousness to know what to do next. It means that there is a certain portion of trust necessary and it means that you don't need to be always in the structured consciousness to know what to do next. Someone else told me that during an action, someone who made a decision on the basis of a good feeling and then did something, then found out that it was not so good. What someone else was reporting was, having made a decision with a real good feeling, and it just felt right, and later on discovering that it didn't feel so good after all, while still being in the process.

[44:01]

We then found out, Herr Gruber, that this might mean that if one is following such an impulse, that one is not old, but one is following something new again and again. And what we discovered in our group was that having followed such an impulse, other things follow from that. Yeah. Okay. Someone else. Yeah. I mean, for me, the first thing that came to mind was, for intuition, I have to create space. The first thing that came to my mind was for intuition I have to make room, space. And in many parts of my former life it was that I just had an emergency room. For example, if I went to the toilet, the world could stay outside and there could be some relaxation when going to the toilet.

[45:11]

What do you say in Germany? Where the emperor goes alone? It is a completely different thing where through practice and through sitting you can create a much wider space. It's a different, it's a difficulty and it's a completely different effort in daily life to create this space of mindfulness. It's an effort to do it?

[46:25]

Sometimes. Yeah, okay. And difficulty. Okay, someone else? Yeah. . I had an experience where a very deep longing broke out in me. And I actually had the feeling that it was a decision, yes, for me it was also a very deep decision towards Zen, which I had not made, which I had not made from my head, but which was actually a decision that I had made. During the practice period there came a deep... At Johanneshof? There came a deep sort of longing and a decision was made, which I didn't make personally myself, but to go nearer, closer to approach Zen more.

[47:32]

Where is this with my consciousness? There were many reasons speaking against it, but altogether it was right to have made that decision. Yesterday, when I was ringing the bell, suddenly this longing was there again. And I found it so interesting, because it was this memory through the bell and this prayer in the St. John's Cathedral, which on a physical level immediately brings me back to this deep longing. And I found that very interesting, because I thought to myself, Yesterday when you rang the bell this deep longing was there again and it was sort of that the body had saved this memory which completely reappeared and it was sort of back in that mind.

[49:03]

Okay. What is it now? It is on a physical level, so it is certainly not, it was already there. I ask myself where I got it from, because it was not in the area of consciousness, but on the physical plane, and at the same time it just happened like a repetition. So, when I quote a poem by Mironeshoff with the Glocke or with the Tuchler, this memory was born. Looking at the flip chart, I couldn't find where this figures in. It was just this bodily memory which was triggered through the bell, like in Johanneshof, but on a bodily plane, so to say, but I couldn't make up where to find this here or how this fits in.

[50:16]

I wrote that. Well, this isn't a complete picture, but to the extent that it does fit in, it would fit in the so-called fourth mind. By the way, how are you feeling? How is your health this day? So-so. I hope you get better. Yeah. Yes. I have a question. A couple of years ago, I very often worked with I Ching, and my feeling was to work with I Ching was a decision made by my consciousness. But the answers I got, I felt they came from a different space.

[51:17]

Yeah, I understand. Deutsch, bitte. A few years ago I worked quite often with the I Ching and had the feeling that when I ask my question and of course also make this decision, I want to question it, I make my decision on the level of consciousness and the answers that I have received, I had the feeling, do not come from consciousness, but from another space. So anyone else want to say something? We went sort of circled around this theme and found many examples where people thought talking that came from a different plane of consciousness so to say. One example was when you wake up in the morning but you don't get up yet and you are lying in a dim state and suddenly the impulse comes, get up now.

[52:26]

There is no reason, it could come a little earlier, a little later, at some point you have to get up. Example being that lying in bed at the morning where you don't have to get up and sort of dozing away half and then suddenly the impulse is to get up where you could have gotten up earlier or later. Where does this impulse come from? Yes, and then we talked about it and expressed the assumption that it probably plays a role much more often than a conscious one, i.e. an inner control that is not lost through a conscious decision, so to speak, but you usually don't perceive it, that there is actually a control. So we concluded, I came to the conclusion that this takes place much more often sort of in these impulses or these activity is much more than... More common than we know to think usually.

[53:28]

Okay. Yeah. In our group we had a discussion and how far you can trust these things for important decisions in your life. Some have said how often it helped them and how good it was. And others, for example Gerhard, have said that they also experienced the opposite, that they had a good intuition and the decision was subsequently wrong and that they sometimes several of us found this very helpful in our lives basing the decisions on such a feeling but also the other way around having a good feeling in the beginning but then sort of finding out it was wrong decisions or having a bad feeling in the body

[54:44]

staying with that, that turned around to be something positive than later on. And we agreed upon that in the more detailed, the sort of smaller decisions in daily life, it was sort of more, it fit more than in the big decisions of our lives, big situations. But I think sometimes we make a decision and we say, I had no choice. And those are often big decisions and it's the same kind of decision. I don't know if I can express it, but I try it.

[56:03]

Meanwhile, I got kind of the feeling that what you told us about this wired up guy who has an activity somewhere before consciousness starts making a decision. I knew it from German people that invented this stuff as well. I've made the same work here. It seems to me as if while I... far less, as if my life always happens this way and consciousness is nothing else but adjusting to what's going on. But it didn't occur to me before that it is this way. But when I look back, because I'm a little old meanwhile, when I look back I can see I didn't do so much. And what turned out good was when I could fit into what happened anyhow. What you said, I had no choice. I don't think it's good or bad.

[57:09]

That's not the question. It's... How can I express this? It's just fitting into or trying to fight something you can't fight anyhow. Okay. So what is good? So it's like, I would say in my language, it's like pissing against the wind. So you'll get wet. It's not the wind that makes it. It's my stability. Why not turn around? And my life seems like everything that worked was like pissing in the right direction. So my decision is... There's some basic things we have to learn. Particularly if we're a boy. Sorry. I only try to... No, no, I understand. I don't know any words when I do.

[58:09]

No, I understand. Deutsch, bitte. Oh. I forgot it completely. As I said, with the consciousness, when he looks back, let's say, it was often the case that his consciousness, more or less tirelessly, adapted to how it was already decided. It was not decided by the consciousness, it was fused. And more or less ten years ago, consciousness has been incorporated into it, so to speak. Or rather, it was like this, you can choose whether you tickle against the wind or with the wind. Something like that. Something like that. Yes, but it's not good or bad or hard or easy.

[59:10]

It's just. It is. And the rest we do up here. Yes. Then we make a program for it. Yes, and that fits in or doesn't fit in. Hmm? Yeah. It's all nonsense. Just do it. It's completely nonsense. Just do it. Just be. Just be. Alive. Happy as anyhow. Yeah, okay. Valentin, would you like to speak for your rather silent group? Would you like to speak for your rather silent group? I have to remember what we talked about. It wasn't too long ago. Maybe some of the group can help me. Good. What stays in my memory is, well, there's a few things I'm concerned with, but first somebody else said...

[60:17]

that they lived with their partner, spouse, for, I think, maybe eight years. They went married. And suddenly this physician came, and this person would ask his girlfriend if they would marry. And I thought, understood him right, he didn't think about this. The decision was one way, just that. She'd been waiting. Or she ran the other way. I don't know. Go ahead. Maybe some people in the group are going to have to go. Okay. Well, let's see. Who's going to help there? Er hat davon gesprochen, dass er ins Kloster gehen möchte, wenn man Impuls dazu hat.

[61:25]

Aber der Verstand sagt ja und nein, dass er sich dann nicht klar wird. He talked about that he had the impulse to go into the monastery and his consciousness mind said yes and no and the decision was difficult. If I understand it right. Okay. Okay. My experience was, in a situation in my life when satsang doesn't just work out right, I go with relatively much trust into it. And I have the feeling I have to change myself and I have to change my attitude that something changes around me.

[62:28]

And I have the feeling I have to change myself and I have to change my attitude that something changes around me. When I live into something new, it may even take a year to see that my attitude did change, in fact. The main points about it are that I can wait, that I have relatively much trust, and I don't take too important what I'm doing. Serious. Serious. Serious. Too seriously. Yeah. Okay. I guess that's all the groups, but does anybody else want to say anything? Jerry?

[63:34]

Jerry? Jerry follows his impulses all the time. He was checking out things in the hallway when he thought I wasn't looking, you know, what's in the drawer and things like this. Okay. Yeah, please. We had a little discussion among ourselves because my friend is an anesthesiologist, and actually what happens when you sort of put out the, well, chemically, of course, put out the consciousness, what remains? You go into anesthesia, or you're being put into anesthesia, and of course the body functions. mostly again and there are different sometimes different reports sometimes people dreaming sometimes sort of even half wake half not but I found that out when I had my hernia operation that I really tried to get it what was going on it was just like a switch being turned it was out and on

[64:46]

Yeah. I've heard that especially from people who had this cornea eye operation. They say, okay, now we're going to do it, and a moment later they say, you're finished, and a couple of hours have passed, and they say, what, you just started. But, you know, Arnie Mandel has done this work with people in comas, which they can really, there's a lot going on underneath. And then there are cases of people who actually seem to be dead. Their hearts stop, they're slowed down, their brain is cut open, everything's flat-lined, and then they tell you everything that happened in the room. Well, I don't know if there's any explanation for this, except that it does happen.

[65:52]

You want to say something? We speak about awareness. Yeah, I understand. Awareness, it means they realize everything that happens, but they can't speak. Yeah, it's not conscious, but they're aware. Yeah, that's it. Awareness, like you explained before. I think that's the case. I describe it that way, but I think it goes beyond that description and I don't know how to describe it. But let's just say that for now it's in a different territory of knowing and consciousness. Shall we have a stretch and then I'll try to finish?

[67:10]

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