this body of the Buddha, actually. That's how I understand it now. Okay, so when you hear this airplane, and there's a little, maybe one aspect of it, it's an airplane, but you might not even think that. You hear this airplane. And you might not even notice it's an airplane, really. You don't have to notice that. It's just the music of the spheres. And you feel the air, hear the air in the mind. This is also the actual experience of interdependence and impermanence.

[01:10]

And when our experience finds everything familiar and intimate, It's simultaneously Sophia's, mine, and everyone's. We call that experience in Zen, self covers everything. Okay. So let's sit for a moment and then we'll have lunch. Do we go out to restaurants or do we eat here? We eat here. Oh. How luxurious.

[02:21]

When the self covers everything, what is the world? I don't know.

[04:59]

We're coming all this way. How was your trip? Fine. I had good company. We seem to be exploring some of the ideas we talked about in our recent seminars. You're well informed. Well, let's keep this context of discussion that we've had. Gerhard, could you mention the two things you mentioned? Lunch, one about just sitting I was dealing with the question of intention during meditation.

[08:17]

To state it simply, only when I started sitting down with intentionless, without any intention, my feeling is that practice really, there is some progress, it really works. And before, sometimes anyway, you did a more guided meditation? Or structured meditation? So he's from Theravada tradition and has practiced with Ayurkema for several years? Mm-hmm. and they are teaching the jhanas, the meditative states also.

[09:43]

So there it was somehow prescribed how a successful meditation should be done or how it should be developed. So this felt successful to a certain extent, but I was dissatisfied because I felt I couldn't somehow enter the possibilities of meditation, something like that. And since I stopped that and I just sit down without intention, without expectation, without success, my feeling is I'm entering something original,

[10:48]

in the sense of original mind also, and individual somehow. On the other hand, the guided meditation gives me some security, and I miss that. Yes, and especially this kind of mental meditation, because you can get very deep into a kind of very good jhana, or a kind of deep... deep absorption. Yes, I understand, yes. So I seem to be somehow drawn between the two ways of meditation. Yes. So at the moment I cannot decide what I should do and I practice both and it seems to work.

[12:38]

Yeah, and you also mentioned the feeling of... both you and your wife responded to the idea of nourishment or looking at what nourishes you. His wife was in this lecture on Wednesday evening. Her strongest impression was when you said that. And this is exactly the experience which I had once at the seminar at Johanneshof. And my intention, or maybe yesterday, I tried to spend all the day and all this keeping that in mind to everything that way that nourishes you.

[13:58]

Like a mantra. It was very successful. Oh! Really? No, I'm glad. Only thinking of it. Yeah. Everything suddenly changed. Yeah. It cannot be explained properly. But I understand. Well, much about what Zen Buddhism is, is contained in what you talk about. But the field of practice in Zen is pretty wide. So you can practice any structured form of meditation you'd like.

[15:07]

Anything that works for you is fine. And my impression was is that Iyakema was quite a good teacher. What would make it Zen practice is that even though you do some structured form of meditation or some intentional practices, the basic posture of your practice mind is unstructured or uncorrected. I say we practice uncorrected mind in zazen. And maybe we could take that as, you know, like, there's no Zen failures.

[16:26]

If you failed some other school, start Zen. We don't have any... And you may not really have failed any other school, but you just thought so. I'm just kidding about it. one of the fundamental reasons why Zen does not suggest or almost ever do any kind of guided meditation. Because of a very, because of a conceptual commitment to, in a sense, the evolution of mind.

[17:37]

In other words, if we tell you, here's what you do to get to there, that assumes we know what mind is. But in the largest sense, Zen assumes we don't actually know what the mind is. And in different generations, in different times, in different cultures, our experience will be different. Even if we practice some kind of absolute emptiness, if we can imagine such a thing, it's always a freedom from form. It's an emptiness in contrast to something, and that something conditions then it is always a freedom of form.

[18:47]

It is a freedom of something, and this something determines the emptiness. It doesn't say there is emptiness and form, it says emptiness is form. So in that context, you can understand Sukhiroshi saying, each of you will have your own enlightenment. Because some schools assume they know what enlightenment is, and it is an experience you can know. And they'll guide you to it. But Zen doesn't make that assumption. Or that the ultimate experience is the Buddha's. But the Bodhisattva idea is more that our experience arises and has its place in our own historical culture.

[20:01]

So we can talk about the Buddha. Buddha has a more timeless sense. Bodhisattva has a more... in this particular place sense of realization. So sometimes a particular intention may work in your zazen practice, but you want to be free from that intention at the same time. Now, I think what's useful is to think of... to notice that we have an initial state of mind or can have an initial state of mind. And that is reflected in a lot of Zen terminology.

[21:23]

Like the first principle and the second principle. The first principle means emptiness and the second principle means the relative. Or host and guest. Host and guest is again the absolute or emptiness and guest is form, the relative. Now, these terms aren't actually the same. I mean, they're not just symbols. Not just synonyms. Which would make them just some sort of symbol. But they're experiential terms. Like in the, don't invite your thoughts to tea.

[22:46]

The guests, the people you're not inviting to thought, the thoughts of the guests. And to not invite them is to be the host. Not a very polite host, but the host. So Zen practice doesn't really say you don't ever have intentions. It just says your initial mind or your basis mind in practice is no gaining ideas. Okay, because certainly, for instance, when you practiced like a mantra holding the idea of what nourishes, this is an intention.

[23:55]

So that would be practice in an intentional context or framework. But if you start saying, oh, jeez, I failed to be nourished today, oh, you know, So there's a kind of craft to this. It always feels funny to say it's handwork. I imagine, you know... Anyway... Intention, let's say that intention in practice has quite a specific meaning. It means to hold something in front of you. It doesn't mean to do it. So it's, I don't know, how do we make these words work for us?

[24:58]

It's a kind of non-doing, no expectation, intention. It's maybe a view. Marie-Louise has trouble with the word view in German. I don't know. exactly what the feeling is, but in English the word view feels okay. Does it feel okay in German? Is there some problem? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Because intention is, you know, the eightfold path starts with right views and then right intentions. And they're very closely related. Okay. Hey... Thank you for coming.

[26:34]

You're welcome. Like if you practice the five skandhas it says hold the five skandhas before you or in the midst of your activity. Not to hold it in front of you without doing anything. Without trying to make it happen. Or maybe you try to make it happen a little, but mostly you just hold it. What does that assume? It really is an assumption of a dynamic changing, that everything is changing in a very dynamic way. That being alive is an activity.

[27:36]

And at every moment, lots of things are appearing. What? What part of what appears do you call your world? What part of what appears do you notice? So if we look at it that way, then intention is a kind of intelligence. In other words, it functions like intelligence. If you choose the right intention, wisely you choose an intention, that intention lights up your life. you begin to notice things, perhaps, that you haven't noticed before through that intention.

[29:00]

So, as I say, if you decide to... Do things in a way that nourishes you. First you have to get a feel for what nourishes you. A bodily feeling for what nourishes you. And I think one of the easiest ways is to try to notice When you're taking a walk, what pace nourishes you? Just strolling along a street. Or walking slowly in the woods. Or riding a bicycle at a pace that you find nourishing. Once you catch the feeling of being nourished by the way you're walking, the way you're breathing, what you're noticing, you can extend, you can... you can...

[30:27]

discover that bodily feeling, and then you can extend it into walking faster or any situation. Like as I'm speaking now, I try to speak in a way I feel nourished by speaking. If I start feeling depleted or drained or something, then I stop and I try to find a way to speak in a way that nourishes me again. And we can call that right speech then. That's one way to define right speech. Now, what makes something like this also a context of practice is you decide, you make an intention to not stray from this.

[32:07]

Okay. Now, that could create a success-failure situation, right? Okay. But the initial mind, if we try to get a feeling for that, in practice always has to be acceptance. That's just more fundamental than any accomplishment. Of course, just plain old acceptance is also an intention. To practice uncorrected mind with no gaining idea is an intention.

[33:22]

Okay, so how do we have an intention which doesn't put us in some sort of, move us away from just sitting? And that's the craft of Zen practice. That's one reason we say in Zen we practice without scriptures. It means we can practice with all scriptures. And Zen uses more of the traditional teachings than any other school. But it doesn't take any of them as definitive. The only thing that's definitive is your actual experience.

[34:22]

And so another discipline of Zen or a rigor of Zen practice is you always limit yourself to your experience. While you may scan a book or be interested in some kind of teaching, if it's really going to be teaching practice, then you read it at a pace at which you can experience each line. Reading a sutra especially is that way, like the Diamond Sutra or the Lankavatara Sutra or something.

[35:24]

If you don't ever finish it, it's just fine. Und wenn du dann niemals damit fertig wirst, das ist völlig okay. But the lines you have finished, you're very clear you're practicing them or you know you can't practice them. They're just too much or you're not there yet. Aber die Sätze, die du geübt hast, du weißt ganz klar, dass du sie geübt hast oder dass du sie nicht verstehst und dass du sie nicht geübt hast. Mhm. So to practice the mind of acceptance, I recommend people just say yes to everything. First, but then the second mind, you can say no. My wife teases me.

[36:36]

She says, you diet on the first serving. Yeah, somebody offers me and I say, oh, I'm not going to eat so much today. She says, wait a least, you offer in seconds. So on the first, when people ask you to do something, you say, oh, yeah, sure, I can go to the movies. Because you're really saying yes to their asking you and wanting you. But then you say, yes, I'd like to, but I have to take care of the baby tonight or something. This sounds just polite. Well, that's okay. But to make it a habit in your own feeling to whenever something happens, Yes.

[37:46]

This is a kind of nourishment. But also if you don't feel nourished or it doesn't fit, you just say, yes, this is the way it is. Just as it is, just sitting. So this yes mind or welcoming mind, like welcome, whatever it is. It's very good to have the intention to cultivate this mind. Hmm. I would like to say that being able to hold a teaching and not trying to grab it, I think this is really important for the way to relate to a teaching.

[38:57]

I think it really is a faculty to learn that. And I think very often in my experience, hearing something new, I just want to understand it and I want to get it. And And I think by trying to get it, it really stops something. Yes, true. And I think if you try to get something, then something is really held up. And this was my experience in the last seminar with the psychotherapists, because I think they know how to hold something. And that was my experience in the last seminar that we had with the psychotherapist, because they really have the ability to hold something.

[40:06]

So you think that's what made the seminar work? Yeah, I think it really... So the question is, what does to hold mean? For me it means just being... to expose yourself to it without trying to grasp it with your thinking and... Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Does it mean something like devotion or surrendering? It can, sure. It can mean to surrender to the teaching. And it's also the sense that the path... You generate the path in your practice, but the path also generates your practice.

[41:21]

But that's basically an idea of sudden practice in Zen. What is sudden practice? Sudden practice is enlightenment not in the future. It's right here. Where else would it be? I mean, everything's right here before you. Yuan Wu says, realize right where you stand. Everything you need is right here before you and nowhere else. That's a kind of faith.

[42:26]

And Yuan Wu, who I just quoted, is one of the defining figures in all of Zen Buddhism. Und Yuan Wu, den ich gerade zitiert habe, ist eine der definierenden, zentralen Figuren im gesamten Zen-Buddhism. Because he was the compiler and principal creator of the Blue Cliff Records. Er war derjenige, der das Blue Cliff Records zusammengestellt und zusammengefasst hat. He said this whole world was made just for you. Er sagt, diese ganze Welt wurde nur für dich gemacht. Ready made for you. Well, that kind of, when you carry it as far as Yuan Wu just did, and I'm doing, means you have to reconstruct your worldview a bit.

[43:26]

Okay. So... You know, to me this is extremely interesting, obviously. What would I be doing with this? But it's interesting to me to have Christina say what her experience is. Because we more and more have shared experience here, practicing together. We begin to be, in Wittgenstein's sense, practiced in the structured use of words. Wir beginnen, wie Wittgenstein sagt, to be practitioners, Übende zu sein, of using words in a way which we share the structure of their use.

[44:41]

Worte zu verwenden, wo wir die Struktur ihres Gebrauchs miteinander teilen. Yeah. Another idea of Wittgenstein's, which I talked to some people about yesterday lunch, is that a lot of the words we use are fragments of lost mythologies. And what he means is a lot of words used to have a taken for granted meaning for people. They made just complete cultural sense for people. And they've lost that meaning. And we still use them.

[45:51]

Like corpses we can't quite bring to life. Or we use them in sentences to say something, but we don't have the deep feeling of the roots of those words. Und wir verwenden sie in ihren Sätzen und wir haben aber nicht mehr das Gefühl der Wurzel dieser Wörter. Okay, so I'm trying in practicing together, we're trying to root ourselves in the use of certain words that allow us to practice. And even if we're going to say we don't, practice means to suspend thinking. Since we know our world primarily through thinking, we're conscious of our world primarily through thinking.

[46:56]

or direct experience. Yeah, kind of what recently I've been calling, in the terminology of the 60s, right brain experience. The That's coming from partly the assured relationship between the mother and the child. And the development of the infant brain through its major period of growth. occurs during a period in which the right brain is dominant, before language kicks in. So I think what Zen practice is doing

[48:09]

First of all, it's not assuming like Freud and Anna Freud and Melanie Klein and John Bowlby, etc., Not assuming that it's all formed in some kind of crucial early period. And then we live out that as a kind of fate. That's a very God-created-the-world type thinking. There's no question that the brain is more plastic during those initial two years when it's growing so dramatically. But it's shown that the mother's brain is also plastic and changes during the relationship with the child.

[49:32]

So Zen assumes that the plasticity of our brain Our biological plasticity, not just mental plasticity. And Zen uses them. most, let's say, all our life. So I would say what meditation is doing is not just suspending language, but it's holding aside left brain dominance During periods of meditation especially.

[50:38]

So actually the left brain becomes dominant. The right brain? The right brain becomes dominant. Yeah. So during meditation, your right brain becomes dominant. And I think that could... I'm quite sure if you did real-time imaging, that could be shown to be the case. That means with meditation practice, you're working with your biology... not just attitudes and so forth. Okay. So when I first got on to how to think about this, When I first started practicing

[51:51]

And a friend of mine at the University of... I worked and was a graduate student at that time at the University of California in Berkeley. And a friend of mine there was a pure mathematician. Meaning his job was to try to solve problems that hadn't been solved before. And because they hadn't been solved before, you couldn't think your way to a solution. So you needed mainly two things. or three things. You needed faith that there probably could be a solution. And some of these things take generations before someone hits on the solution.

[53:12]

But you have to have faith that there probably could be a solution. Then you have to absorb a lot of information about it. Then you basically have to hold it in front of you. And you hope for some concatenation or some arrangement of something that a way to look at it pops out. Pops out, yeah. That's it. We're teaching Zen pop. Yeah. And practice is very much like that. You're Even if you're moving into territories of familiarity with yourself.

[54:26]

And possible realizations. Or freedoms from certain things. And even if your teacher or other people you know have had this experience. It doesn't help. I mean, it helps in giving you faith or confidence. A certain bodily feeling you grok, you catch. But They can't show you, and you can only find it in your own path. So you hold the intention of what's the solution, but you can't think your way to it.

[55:27]

Also, du hältst die Absicht, was ist die Lösung, aber du kannst den Weg dorthin nicht denken. And it reminds me of Ivan Illich saying, we can't think our way to the world we all want to live. Und es erinnert mich an Ivan Illich, der sagte, wir können den Weg zu der Welt, die wir alle gerne hätten, nicht denken. Okay, so it's nice in a day like this. We can spend so much time on something so seemingly simple as intention. Yeah. And it's taken me also a long time to realize the confusion between the confusion a confusion that's in the word intention, meaning not just to intend but also to make it happen.

[56:42]

Yeah, the confusion in the word intention would both be to have an intention but also to make it happen. Die Verwirrung, das darin liegt, sowohl eine Absicht zu haben, aber auch es geschehen zu lassen. It's more like willingness than will. Es geht mehr um eine Bereitschaft als um den Willen. You're willing for it to happen, but you don't will it to happen. Okay. So I think we should take a break in a minute, but just let me take this one step further. Okay. So there's a particular teaching or something. And you want to hold it for you. How do you do it?

[57:44]

Well again, this is a skill or a craft or something you get the hang of after a while. When you read a koan, you want to notice any phrase that sticks to you or sticks to you and perplexes you. Yeah, so usually such a phrase will open the koan up for you. So you begin to get sensitive to phrases that stick to you and perplex you. And I call these phrases gate phrases. And they're also called wado, traditionally wado phrases. And the word wado means the roots of the word or the sources of the word.

[59:16]

So it means to get to the sources of the word in your own experience of the word, not what the dictionary says. But let's just for now call them a gate phrase. And I think the most common one that I suggest to people is just now is enough. This is basically within the pedagogy of sudden teaching. Just now is enough. So these Zen phrases or gate phrases are an attempt to create words that turn you away from thinking

[60:21]

and turn you back to the source of words themselves, the mind, and in particular the view of the world that's opened up through this phrase. So just using this as an example, just now is Certainly not enough if you have to go to the toilet badly. Or if you're really hungry. But if you can't go to the toilet just now, it has to be enough. In the tough sashins that they sometimes do in Japan, they actually don't let you leave the cushion and people piss right on the cushion. Just now is enough.

[61:42]

I think this is carrying it too far. Plus it makes the Zendo such a mess. Yeah. I think we can reach an understanding in more subtle ways. But in any case, just now as a fact has to be enough because you have no alternative. It doesn't mean you can't get up and we'll have a break in a minute and so forth. Und das bedeutet nicht, dass du nicht aufstehen kannst und in einer Minute werden wir eine Pause machen. But just now is enough is another way of saying acceptance. Aber gerade jetzt ist genug, ist eine andere Weise zu sagen akzeptieren. But it's also a way of saying whatever Buddha mind is, a realization isn't anywhere else.

[62:48]

Aber es ist auch eine Art zu sagen, was auch immer Buddha mind ist oder Verwirklichung ist, es kann nichts anderes sein als hier. So you practice as if it's all possible now, no seeking is necessary. So let's take a break. Thank you for coming all the way here from the great city of Wien. You're welcome. Does anyone have any comments on our discussion about intention? It's not about intention, but about the last sentence you said before we had a break.

[64:10]

Okay. My difficulty is that on the one hand, There is the idea that there is enlightenment and everything is here. On the other hand, I have the idea that at every moment actuality is created. And this somehow in my thinking or feeling is somehow a contradiction.

[65:13]

If it's already there, how can it be created in this moment again? So what you're saying is that If enlightenment is already here, how can it be already here if everything is created in this moment again? Because when you have the freedom of everything being created in this moment, Denn wenn du die Freiheit hast, dass alles in diesem Moment erschaffen wird, das ist Erleuchtung. Wenn du die Freiheit hast, dass alles in diesem Moment geschaffen wird, When you feel absolutely free in each moment, because this moment, there's no past, no future, there's only this moment which you're participating in, we can call that enlightened.

[66:42]

So practice would be, for example, knowing that but realizing you don't experience it. But still, knowing that allows you to hold yourself or feel that and be open to the experience. to say it is here because it is creating in every moment. I have to examine the language a moment. Well, I might say here moment is.

[67:44]

Because if you say it, there's already a problem. It's like it rains. I always joke that I told my daughter, she came in, I said, what's happening? She said, it's raining out. And I say, well, would you go back out and find the it that's raining? And my daughter says, don't be so zen, Dad. Ha, ha. Hey, I can hear it. That's it. And just to say it's raining out, of course it's not raining in the house, hopefully.

[69:04]

that's that song the window she is broken and the rain is coming in and if you know that manana manana is good enough for me that's the opposite of just now is enough Mañana is good enough for me. That's a kind of enlightenment, though, too. Mañana. But this whole distinction is like inside and outside. They're very real to us, but they're completely mental distinctions. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're practical distinctions if you want to stay in out of the rain.

[70:08]

But when you act differently outside than inside or dress differently, that's a cultural distinction. We're trying to teach that distinction to our daughter. And we try to bring these differences to our daughter. Yes. Someone else? Something else? Yes. famous German physicist, Heisenberg, who realized that he wasn't really getting where he wanted to get to with his thinking mind. He could not really understand the world the way he wanted to, and he used to take a nap. And he developed a technique to catch his non-thinking mind by putting a metal bowl underneath his desk and holding onto a spoon while falling asleep.

[71:20]

Because he knew from experience that when he was about to fall asleep, he was going to drop the spoon, because his muscles would relax, and the spoon would then drop into the metal ball. He slept under his desk? No, sitting at his desk. Oh, I see. So the spoon would drop into the metal ball, would wake him up, and right at that moment, He came to a Spanish theory of, I think it was the quarks. Yeah, quarks, yeah. He knew that he was not getting there with his thinking mind, and to abolish his thinking mind in order to understand. Yeah. And I found that really smart. Yeah, it is very. Well, smart people sometimes, you know, come up with smart ideas. Deutsch bitte. Deutsch bitte. A piece of his Heisenberg, which always impressed me very much, because he tried to find a technique, how he could switch off his thinking spirit. One tried to release or to come to an understanding of the world, but noticed that his thinking did not come to him.

[72:25]

He always had a lunch break in the afternoon and sat down at his table with a spoon in his hand and ordered a small metal bowl under the table. He knew that the moment he fell asleep, he would let go of the spoon, because his muscles would get stuck there, the spoon would fall into the bowl and the sound would wake him up. And just at the moment when his mind is in the circle, That's very clever. Thank you for the story. Yeah, Watson dreamed the DNA.

[73:26]

What do you call it? The whole... Helix. Helix, yeah. He saw it in his dream and then he... And Teller, unfortunately, thought up the hydrogen bomb sitting in front of a supermarket while his wife was shopping. I wish his wife had insisted he help. But since you mentioned that story, let me say that part of Zen practice and Zen practice is always to work as much as possible with...

[74:29]

with your ordinary experience and to work with things as your capacity to do so develops. One of the rules of Zen practice, of Zen teaching, which is on the whole perhaps counterproductive, which is you don't talk about anything that the people you're talking to or the person hasn't already experienced. So there's the granting, so-called granting way and gathering in way.

[75:51]

Now, today, you know, on a day like today, This prologue day, I like to just go over, if you don't mind, some basic things. So we can share some kind of feeling, understanding as we go into the seminar. So like host and guest, the granting way and gathering in way are referred to directly and indirectly in the koans, particularly the Heikin Ganroku, the blue cliff records.

[76:57]

Now that means... I can say some things about it. But the... The fullness of such a simple formulation only comes out through practicing together. It parallels host and guest, two other, another dual term in the blue cliff records. So the granting way and the gathering in way refer to two aspects of mind.

[77:58]

So if I speak about them, I'm also gathering, we're gathering a definition of mind. So when Zen uses the word mind, you should understand that it also means mind can be structured. And if mind can be structured, it also means mind can be free or relatively free of structure. And a lot of practice falls in that territory. Okay, now one aspect of the, that mind can be structured or has a particular dynamic as well, is that mind can have a direction, can have direction.

[79:30]

I can direct it at you, I can direct it at my breath, and so forth. But attention is a way of directing your mind. But it's more than just an intention, it's a movement of mind. And I can direct attention inward, I can direct attention outward. And when we spoke this morning about the experience, not just the understanding, but the experience of interdependence, That's directing the mind outward. But you can also feel it. You can feel mind almost like a field or something that can be, you know, like outward. Du kannst den Mind fühlen wie ein Fell, das draußen ist.

[80:57]

And you can feel that, particularly if you withdraw attentiveness, attention to things. Wenn du die Aufmerksamkeit, die auf Dinge gerichtet ist, wenn du die wegziehst. If you can withdraw, say, typically to feeling attention. You're seeing your mind behind your eyes, not at the front of your eyes. You feel more of a field than... And you can also draw this feeling of mind in until mind is concentrated on itself. Or just on the sensation of breath. Or the contentless field of mind itself.

[81:58]

Okay, so that's The gathering in way is identified with Manjushri or wisdom. And the extending out way is identified with Avalokiteshvara as compassion. Okay. And those two movements are a lot to do with... Stopping that.

[83:06]

Our distracted monkey mind... can be brought into, the same energy of movement can be brought into these two movements of an outward and inward turning. As an unfolding and an infolding. Okay. And it can also be understood then as what's called, again, using the same terms, granting and gathering in. Granting way is your Buddha, your Buddha.

[84:09]

Each of you is Buddha. The gathering in way is you're not Buddha. And that's also taking all distinctions away. You're not Buddha. There's no distinctions. No, they're very similar, actually. But as a style of practice, Zen always says, you are Buddha. So it doesn't want to, as a style, say the ways in which you're not Buddha. It wants to give you the confidence of sudden practice. To start at the top of the mountain, not climb up the mountain.

[85:17]

So it denies the gradual way of practice which many other schools emphasize. But actually, if you look at the craft of Zen practice, you can say it's a kind of gradual, graduated practice. But by emphasizing by only teaching that which you already know the lineage has forgotten much of the teachings. Because you teach various of your disciples. And you accept quite a few of them.

[86:29]

And some of them don't understand too well. Yeah, but you kind of hope that they will understand. But you only teach them what they already know. And soon they think that what they already know is all there is to be known. So out of this compassionate feeling or kind feeling of not to put people in a place where you don't know and I know, Many Zen lineages teach a very simplified form of Buddhism. Sometimes when they carry the practice itself in a good way, the practice itself carries the subtlety. And sometimes when you carry the practice in a certain good way, then this practice itself leads into a kind of subtlety.

[87:49]

But I've made a decision primarily through what I've needed to do to try to make an adept lay practice possible. I've decided to make the Zen teaching much more explicit than it is. So anyway, the custom in Zen is for instance you work with visualization practices when you bring to your teacher the fact that you've begun to visualize. You work with the chakras in particular ways when it's clear that you're very close to working that way already. But until then, work with your chakras is, for instance, disguised in the form of ordinary meditation or how we use the eating bowls.

[89:13]

So teachers like Dogen tried to take a lot of all the preceptual, all the many precepts the monks took and many of the teachings and build them into the daily monastic life. So you didn't take all these 250 precepts, you lived them in the daily life. And they tried to base the ordinary facts of daily life on Buddha mind. Okay. Okay. So all of that came out of your little statement about... Because as well as practicing with what I call the bump of going into zazen,

[90:32]

You also practice with the bump of going into sleep. And Because as I said the other night, in Peel, when you fall asleep, you go over a little bump into sleep. And you may not notice it because you've gone to sleep. But if you sleep with somebody, a child or a spouse, You can usually often feel them go over that little bump, you know, when they've gone to sleep. As I said, it's very difficult for the consciousness to pretend to be not conscious.

[91:58]

If your child is pretending to be asleep, you can... You can feel the consciousness in their breathing and so forth. Involuntary, uncorrected mind is not present. But at the same time, Zen wants you to realize something we could call imperturbable mind. A mind that's always present. The word Dharma means that which holds. In this midst of everything changing. So what is it that could hold? Yeah, in this moment-by-moment existence.

[93:07]

In this moment-by-moment existence. Okay. What mind could be present? Even when you abandon yourself, turn yourself over to what you're doing, to your lover, to lovemaking, to... to being present in the world? What mind still stays present? Experimenting with this is part of Zen practice, but you experiment in your ordinary activity. And the one way is to practice with staying aware but not conscious when you sleep. And one way I've... I've told this.

[94:18]

This is something lots of people have picked up on. To hold something in your hand while you're sleeping. ist, etwas in der Hand zu halten, während du schläfst. And to see if you can hold it in your hand all night. Und zu schauen, ob du es die ganze Nacht über in der Hand halten kannst. I tried it the other day just for the hell of it. The heck of it. I mean, the tushita of it. What? Tushita heaven is something. Also, ich habe es einfach neulich wieder mal ausprobiert. Yeah, I took a nap. Sometimes I have a kind of jet lag from this radiation treatment. And if I can take a nap during the day, it's nice. I still can't sleep at night much more than six hours. I always just wake up. But if I sleep six hours or so, I still, nowadays I need like a nap in the daytime.

[95:28]

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