Anyway, it's very nice that you came. You didn't translate. You were almost out of a job. No, it's okay. The arch-translator understood. Yeah. Yeah. So, I thought I should start talking about the text you looked at. Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching of the what I call the 12-fold links. Sounds a little bit like a champion golf course, though. but it's it's um it's one version of the

[01:08]

completely basic Buddhist teaching of dependent or conditioned arising. Yeah, or dependent, most often translated probably dependent origination. Back in the 60s, one of the common translations was codependent arising. But that was dropped quickly because it was a psychotherapeutic term for a dysfunctional alcoholic couple. They were co-dependent. So it got changed to dependent co-origination. We do have to find a term for these practices that allow us to focus on the practice.

[02:42]

A very basic version of dependent origination is the teaching of the twelvefold links. Now, I actually never liked this teaching very much. You did or you didn't? I don't like it very much. I didn't. I don't know. Because in early Buddhism it's used primarily to show reincarnation, rebirth, etc. And its early Buddhist uses also I find too singular in its direction. This leads to this, leads to this. But it's still a very basic and ancient Buddhist teaching.

[04:05]

And we should certainly be familiar with its elements. I don't think we have to emphasize such a chain of causation. And so sometimes I call it the 12-fold interplay. Yeah. And basically Thich Nhat Hanh takes this view too. And when he emphasizes the chicken is in the egg and the egg is in the chicken and the road is in the chicken. Oh, he doesn't say the road is in the chicken. The chicken is in the egg, the egg is in the chicken. That's good enough.

[05:19]

And that's really the later teaching of interpenetration. So it's also, as you may have noticed, parts of it very similar to the teaching from the Lankavatara Sutra of the five dharmas. So one of you might take, I would ask one of you or several of you, to take the five dharmas and see how they relate to the twelvefold links. And one or several of you could perhaps take the five dharmas and see in what way they relate to these twelve chains. Because dependent origination. It's such a basic teaching.

[06:34]

It's a way of saying everything changes. But everything changes without any outside, without no soul or prime mover. In other words, there's nothing but this nexus of causes with really no results. It's all cause, cause, cause, cause. The main thing in entering this practice is to find yourself in this fabric of causes without any outside. So you can see if you can work with the idea of no outside. It's all, and we can say, if we use the conception of outside-inside, we can say it's all inside.

[07:55]

And sometimes I say, imagine you're in a big stomach. And there's nothing but digestion going on. And digestion is a way of saying dependent origination. Now that these twelvefold links start with ignorance. The twelvefold links start with ignorance. So in right views, the eightfold path, ignorance would be a wrong view. Dependent origination would be a right view. abhängiges Entstehen wäre eine zutreffende oder richtige Ansicht.

[08:58]

How do you put then dependent origination in place as a view? Und wie setzt man also dieses abhängige Entstehen an seinen richtigen, an seinen Platz als eine Sichtweise? Now it's said that no one knows for sure, but tradition is that the Buddha initial enlightenment experience. Under the Bodhi tree. No, no. was his recognition of dependent origination. So, in that sense, Buddha's enlightenment starts with the recognition of and then the teaching of dependent origination.

[09:59]

Okay, so then you can assume that the teaching of dependent origination is part of every Buddhist teaching. And what I'm trying to do here is give you a sense of how to work with these various teachings. So you look at the twelvefold links as one way to talk about dependent origination. And various parts of it, what we've talked about often, ayatanas and vijnanas and so forth. So how do we enter this practice? Now, what I would suggest is we work with our initial mind, initial mind, as a mind of acceptance.

[11:27]

Now, I say that, I say over and over again, always, Practice has to start with acceptance. We have to start with the way things are, even if they're terrible. That's no choice. You've got to start with whatever it is. And the minute you notice you'd like it to be different, You make use of this resistance to make a shift into acceptance. And this shift is Important.

[12:34]

Completely important. If the Buddha was enlightened under the Bodhi tree, through recognizing dependent origination, It means that he didn't recognize it before. So through his meditation, he suddenly felt how everything interdependently arises. So basically, he's got a world view in which his energy... The structures in which his senses see the world. Also grundsätzlich hat er eine Sichtweise, also die Strukturen, wie seine Sinne die Welt sehen.

[13:57]

Is seeing things as entities or some kind of permanence. He is seeing things in some kind of way where things are permanent or static or something. I mean, I wasn't there. Okay. So he's got his energy tied up in that, and that really means your energy is tied up in it. You've had 10, 20, whatever your age is, years of... Seeing the world that way. Those habits are built into your senses. And the way you bodily live in the world. and the way you think.

[15:04]

Okay, so when that becomes clear, and the part of the practice of the Eightfold Path is trying to get to the place where you can see the views you already have. Because if you can see the views you can already have, and they're deluded views, ignorant views, etc., there can be a release from that. So part of mindfulness practice is to find out how dumb we are. To really look at ourselves. Only then can there be this kind of shift. And when there's a shift, it carries you the rest of you with it. Der zieht den Rest von euch mit sich.

[16:28]

It's like you start to fall. Your hand... you're taking hold of something and it slips or something, it's not just your hand that falls, all of you falls. So in a way you fall down into enlightenment. From some sort of platform of delusion. No. So make use of resistance. Let's say today it started to kind of snow and rain and I knew that... Reiner and Ulrike were on the way here. So you worry, is traveling going to be okay?

[17:32]

Even in such a small instance, Oh, darn it, it started to snow and I was about to go to the post office. You note the resistance to its snowing, to the weather. And then you shift to accepting the weather, the storm, whatever it is. And you'll be lucky if you can notice this resistance. Because when you notice the resistance,

[18:33]

And you shift to acceptance, there's a kind of release into another body which accepts. Now, this isn't like, oh, you accept it, it's raining out, oh, okay. This is a kind of precipitation. I'm not making a joke. Precipitation means it happens all at once. It precipitates. So you make use of the resistance and you find yourself in a wider space. Where things are as they are. Now, all, everybody... has, oh damn, it's raining out or it's snowing.

[19:53]

But can you make use of this as practice? The twelvefold links are links of realization when you can begin to feel these transitions. Their links of realization, yeah. And although it's good to study the 12-fold links just to get all the elements, see all the parts, these are the different ingredients of Buddhism. But the ingredients don't make a soup. The ingredients make a soup when you put them together a certain way. And you wouldn't know the ingredients.

[20:55]

You know, I'm not much of a cook. Until recently, people wouldn't even say, not much of a cook. Zero cook. But I've been cooking three meals a day for ten weeks. I'm not a fun. And I think it really makes a difference whether you put this in first or second or you... fry it first before you put it in and so forth. So these things work as a practice when you know you have a beginning to have a feeling for how they fit together. And this more likely happens if you've been meditating and if you practice mindfulness.

[21:57]

Meditation and mindfulness make you aware of and engaged Aware of the ingredients of your living. And allow you to have the pace of being present in these ingredients. Okay, so you... Notice a simple thing like resistance to it starting to snow. Which everyone might notice.

[22:59]

But the practitioner really notices it as a kind of ingredient of living. And doesn't just react to, oh, it's bad weather, but reacts to it as an opportunity. As Thich Nhat Hanh talks about associative causes and and concurrent causes. That when one thing arises, the opposite can be there. So to know that and get used to that. And to be present within it.

[24:04]

So when you have in a simple thing like a reaction to the weather, a resistance, say, and then you shift from that let's say, resistance recognition, to acceptance. Now, do you see what I'm doing here? I'm doing exactly what the Abhidharma does. Resistance recognition, acceptance, In other words, you can notice in your own experience the same dynamic of how you notice things.

[25:12]

And one of the conditions Thay, Thich Nhat Hanh mentions, is priority. Which has priority? In this case, the priority is to turn resistance into acceptance. And you can immediately feel you're in a wider state of mind and body than you were before. And you can say, oh, this is the mind of acceptance. And you can notice it. And you can have a feel for how it makes you more open.

[26:13]

Okay, so once you notice this mind of acceptance, And it's often forced upon us in a Sashin. You're sitting and your legs might hurt or they might kill you. And there's no choice but to sit there. I mean, you could get up and leave, but your friends wouldn't like it and so on. So you sit there if possible until you maybe have to move. But as long as you're not doing physical damage to yourself and you should know the difference. you at some point just say, accept it, you accept it.

[27:27]

You shift into the mind of acceptance. And I think all of you who have done Sashin, which is most of you, will recognize that the relationship to the pain changes dramatically. Sometimes the pain just disappears completely when just minutes ago you were begging for someone to hit the bell. And sometimes acceptance isn't that deep and it still hurts, but it's still quite different. Okay, so all of this points to the mind of acceptance. And the twelvefold links really are rooted in the mind of acceptance.

[28:44]

Only through the mind of acceptance that you can be present to these links. Okay, so once you discover this, and you really discover it, and you notice this mind of acceptance, it really, yeah, it's a good starting point. It doesn't mean you just bear indefinitely the situation no matter how bad it is. But once you've shifted into the mind of acceptance, which is a physical experience, um, you're much clearer about what to do, how to solve the problem, if there's a problem.

[30:06]

We make much better decisions about what to do when we start from acceptance. This is practical stuff. But it's one thing as a kind of strategy to function in the world and another thing to be at the basis of how we live in each moment. So now once you've noticed this mind of acceptance, Then, as I've pointed out often, the practice is to cultivate this mind of acceptance. Cultivate it as your initial state of mind.

[31:07]

In every circumstance. Now this is a teaching, a practice I've spoken of often. And I'm trying to illustrate how it fits in to a basic practice like dependent origination. So I would put resistance and recognition as one fact, one point. And then second, acceptance. And third, a feeling of releasing into acceptance. Release into and then settling into acceptance. Some very quick process like that, if you can be present within it.

[32:34]

You'll find all your life turns more into practice. If you can settle into this, you'll find all of your life is more practice, all aspects. So when I say I make resistance and recognition one point, because sometimes there's recognition, Without resistance. So I suggest sometimes you practice with, for example, when you first enter a room. That's one of the main examples. That's one of the reasons this little bit about which foot you go in the door with next to the hinges.

[33:47]

This is a way of making use of the threshold. To cut off thinking at that moment. Get in the habit of being able to do that. And just see and feel the room with no views, no ideas. Feel the room with your body. And then go in and do whatever you do. If you do that with every doorway, from now on, the rest of your life, you will be good at cultivating and developing initial mind. Another is to use a phrase like, just this.

[34:48]

Every now and then you stop and you just, just this. Whatever your eyes fall on, your mind, attention falls on, you say just this. Pause for acceptance. And you let that kind of recognition, release, settling happen. To do that now and then deepens your initial state of mind of acceptance. And although it's an existential fact, there's no choice but acceptance. That's usually hidden under our busy mind.

[36:04]

So practicing something like just this or pausing for acceptance against to awaken mind of acceptance, this initial mind of acceptance, underneath our busy mind. Now if you look deeply at the mind of acceptance, you'll see that in the mind of acceptance, where everything is a causal nexus of dependent arising,

[37:07]

There's no outside to this. There's only inside. And once you see there's only inside, then you have the practice of the Tathagatagarbha. the womb embryo worldview. And this worldview of the Tathagatagarbha is another worldview and the Mahayana Yogacara practice of the twelvefold links. So I'm again trying to illustrate how these Abhidharma teachings and the basic idea of the Abhidharma is the practice, not the philosophical, but the practice interrelationship of the various teachings.

[38:23]

I'm trying to show how the Abhidharma teachings, not the theory, the learned side, how the practice, the Abhidharma practice, affects the interweaving of the different teachings. And the many-fold links with your actual practice. moment, micro-moment by micro-moment existence. Okay, thank you very much.

[38:54]

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