Let's go back to the question I asked earlier. We can observe the contents of mind. How do we observe the field of mind which doesn't have content? Or it doesn't have manifest contents. Now this kind of question is typical of the craft of yoga. And I think we, as you know, most of you know, I think we need a pretty strong emphasis on the of practice, not just the understanding. Okay. So how do we observe the non-manifest field of mind?

[01:03]

Okay. So let's say that you have the experience of observing the tree and the corn stalk. So, you know, you've noticed that experience of observing the tree and the corn stalk. And then you turn your attention, bring your attention to the field itself. And I think physically there's a kind of shift down into the chest. Into the heart or into the breath.

[02:23]

In a sense you are suspending observing. Yeah, but you can get there by first observing and then suspending observing. So the action of stopping observing, you have to observe to have the feeling of stopping observing. You can enter into the experience of non-observing through the gate of observing. Okay.

[03:37]

Now, Yao Shan, Yue Shan, it's pronounced and spelled both ways, Y-U-E-H, Yue Shan, was the teacher of... of Yanyan, the one who sweeps and is not busy. And Yanyan is the teacher of Dongshan, who is considered the founder of this particular way of looking at Zen practice. Okay. Now, Yao Shan was asked by, you know, a monk or the proverbial monk. Also Yao Shan wurde von einem Mönch oder einem angehenden Mönch gefragt.

[04:40]

What are you doing when you meditate? Yashin said, think non-thinking. So again, the monk said, in steadfast sitting, steadfast, steadfast, solidly located sitting, in steadfast thinking, sitting, what do you think? Kaushan said, think non-thinking. And the monk said, how do you think I'm thinking? Good honest question.

[06:05]

And Yashan said, beyond thinking. No, we can't, it's pretty hard to say these things, you know. Matsu, famous Matsu, most famous of all Zen masters, though he was really created by later generations. If you look at his lectures, his lectures, which were clearly from his time, are quite traditional. In the Tang Dynasty. But in the Song Dynasty, they kind of tried to create what the Zen school is, and they redid who Matsu was. So Matsu, then the most famous things attributed to him, these very Zen-y sayings, were all pretty clearly written in the Sung Dynasty, not from his time.

[07:21]

I mention this to you just so you don't take this all as gossip. It's a tradition that we're shaping, and we're shaping it now. As we say, we may be born in the same lineage, but we die in different lineages. It means that Buddha is not the end point, but the beginning point. Where we go is what we do rooted in this experience of practice. Okay. So Mansu is famous for saying, this very mind is Buddha. And he's also famous for saying, this very mind is not Buddha.

[08:56]

So Dogen says, this very mind is Buddha. Easy to understand, hard to practice. This very mind is not Buddha, hard to understand, easy to practice. In other words, we can understand, not Buddha, not Buddha, not Buddha, but actually, it's a very powerful way to practice, even if we don't understand it. So much of what I'm trying to say is hard to understand, but I hope easy to practice. Okay.

[10:03]

Instead of fast sitting, what do you think? I think non-thinking. How do you think non-thinking? Beyond thinking. Well, it's very hard to say something about this. And unless you practice, it's a mystery. And most Dogen scholars truly don't know what, because Dogen uses this statement a lot, to think non-thinking. Yeah, they don't know how to translate it or what it means. They don't have a feeling for it. But if we start out with the sense of the contents of mind and the field of mind, We have a dreaming field of mind which produces the contents of the dream.

[11:26]

It's easy to notice the dream, it's hard to notice the field of the dream. or again quoting Wittgenstein he says there's nothing in this scene that indicates it's being seen by an eye there's no information in the contents here that shows that a mind is perceiving And that's not noticed unless you remind yourself of it. And we could say in this case, wisdom is to notice what's not noticeable. Or to remind yourself of what

[12:29]

The real situation is and not just what your senses tell you. Because the real situation is all of this that I'm seeing right here is appearing in my mind. Which means I can only know it insofar as my mind can know. And if I can only know it insofar as my mind can know, it means that it's fundamentally a mystery. Because whatever all this is goes beyond what my mind can know. In a similar example that I use very often is if you hear a bird. You only hear what your ear can hear. And we know for sure the bird's song is more complex than our ears capable of hearing. Und wir wissen aber ganz sicher, dass das Lied der Vögel sehr viel komplexer ist, als das, was unsere Ohren überhaupt befähigt sind zu hören.

[14:12]

Also was die anderen Vögel hören, das ist für uns ein Geheimnis. Das heißt nicht, dass die Vögel nicht für uns singen. As well. So now we're trying to, well, let's say, understand, perhaps get a feeling for it, what Yao Shan meant by think, know and thinking. Now maybe you can understand it by the feeling of to observe the corn, etc., and then to feel, let's call it feeling, the field of mind.

[15:26]

Look, while I see all of you, I can simultaneously feel the field of mind which is knowing you. That is knowing the situation. Okay. We just have a paucity, paucity, a poorness, a paucity of words for the mind and for thinking. Okay, so we have ideas like think before you speak. Yeah, so like brush your teeth before breakfast. Sophia has a children's song, which is, you wake up in the morning, you don't know what to do, brush your teeth.

[16:50]

Yeah, that's it. Oh, the line, the refrain is, brush your teeth. But Think before you speak is not like brushing your teeth before you eat. But linguistically it's the same. But we are actually speaking is a form of thinking. And if you've noticed when people read a speech how dead it is There's no thinking in their speaking. And you know sometimes we understand something in a flash. There may be a complex problem and you suddenly see it. So this is sort of like Bundled up thinking.

[18:07]

Now when I first started to practice, I found with scientists, particularly pure mathematicians, had a process of thinking very similar to meditation. Because what is pure mathematics? It's to solve problems which haven't been solved before. So you don't really know how to get there. You study all the sometimes 100 or 200 years of people trying to solve a problem. How do you go where you can't think to? And among pure mathematicians, like among athletes, there was a kind of secret knowledge. Like with athletes, there's a kind of secret knowledge.

[19:19]

I love it that you can say all these things in this foreign tongue. I mean, foreign to me. I'm always amazed that my daughter speaks German. You know, I created her, and now she's... or helped, and now she's doing all kinds of things. I have nothing to do with it. But where was I now? I need your help. The scientists knew, the pure mathematicians knew they had to get all the information they could.

[20:20]

And then create a state of mind where things popped up. And then they had to follow what popped up if they were going to find a way to... So it's a kind of beyond thinking. Meditation practice and Dogen and Yaoshan, etc., they all assume this is the most fundamental way to think. This should be the basis of your thinking and knowing. The more usual thinking one thing after another is necessary for some things. Like to buy a train ticket.

[21:27]

And since I'm not very good at this kind of thinking, I depend on my wife. She's my better aunt. She's much better at it than I am. So I'm on the train. It's going to be half an hour, 45 minutes late. What am I going to do? I love living in a mystery, but when I get out in Hannover, I don't know how to talk to anybody about how to find another train. So I called my wife. What should I do? Call Andreas. I called Andreas. He said, okay, I'll be down at the station. I'll look up on the computer what the next train is. So both kinds of thinking are necessary.

[22:38]

You have to do it yourself if you don't have a wife. Or if you're a woman, you might need a husband. Okay. Now this is not, this is also, since we're on this kind of theme right now. And this, let's speak now about developing an initial mind. If you recognize that you can't always just accept everything but fundamentally we do have to accept things then you want to develop this as an initial mind. I hate analyses with computers and cameras, but I'm going to make one.

[24:01]

You know, it's like one of the automatic cameras. You push the shutter partway down and it sets the camera. So it sort of accepts what's there. Then you decide what you're going to focus on or you decide to switch to manual so you adjust it yourself. So, you know, what I always suggest is you use doorways. Doorways. Thresholds. And, you know, there's a practice which you're not supposed to be told. You're supposed to notice that your teacher does it. But I always tell you, You step in the door with the foot nearest to him.

[25:20]

And if you get that as a habit, if you step in with a different foot, you notice that you stepped in with a different foot. These are just little tricks of the craft of practice. So that the threshold is, I make a bad pun, is an entrance. So you use the doorway as just a chance to return to a basic mind. So you're not always caught up in the contents of mind, but in the Feel the mind.

[26:32]

So when you open the door or step in through a doorway you stop for a minute and just feel the room. Don't think about it. But then when you step in you start thinking about it. And you go through a lot of doors in your lifetime. So here's a chance just to use that as a chance to kind of get feel for this initial mind which feels the field. and isn't thinking. So one of the essentials of the craft of practice is developing a habit, an initial mind. Das ist die Gewohnheit für einen anfänglichen Geist.

[27:49]

This is Dharma practice. Otherwise the word Dharma doesn't make any sense. Das hier ist Dharma praxis und weil das nicht so ist, dann macht das Wort Dharma überhaupt keinen Sinn. Doesn't make any experiential or practical sense. Es macht dann keinen erfahrungsgemäßen oder praktischen Sinn. Because Dharma is pretty superficial as a philosophy. But as a practice, it's the most profound thing I know of. And Dogen says, again, we can understand Genjo Koan, as I've told you often. That means to complete that which appears. But you can't have a sense of what appears unless you have an initial mind. If you're thinking the world, things don't appear.

[28:59]

You're deciding what they are. Okay. So things appear and you complete that which appears. And second part, koan, we can understand. To mean things are simultaneously particular and all at once. and all at once. Okay. Now, isomorphically, that means it has the same pattern, but different causes. It has the same pattern but different reasons for it.

[30:15]

So this knowing things are particular and all at once simultaneously It's similar to the practice I gave you yesterday of noticing the particular and the field. The particular and the field as a perceptual posture. And now we have the phrase, just now is enough. Which is one of the two phrases that have been most useful to people in our practice here in the Dhamma Sangha. And it works because it's obvious that just now is not enough.

[31:27]

So it's the tension between, psychic tension, between just now is not enough and just now is enough that gives it its power. If you're hungry or you really have to take a pee just now may not be enough. But if there's no food or toilet just now has to be enough. So just now is enough is, you know, has to be true. Because there's no alternative to just now. But our mind does not accept just now is enough.

[32:43]

We're all thinking about what we want to do. And we're hardly in the room we're in often. But it's very helpful if your initial mind is just now is enough. It's again isomorphically similar to the one who is not busy. Yeah, as, you know, Yao Shan is sweeping and his brother comes along, Dao Wu, and says, too busy. Yan Yan says, you should know there is one who is not busy. This is a koan that Thich Nhat Hanh told me was maybe his first enlightenment experience as a teenager.

[34:07]

So here we have the tension again of being busy and yet somehow There's one who is not busy. Somehow there's the contents of mind and there's simultaneously but inseparably the field of mind. Now all this assumes a bundled way of thinking. I don't know how to say it. There's no words for what I'm trying to say, really. But I think you understand it. Thinking in nuggets. And the nugget is? Do you say chicken?

[35:13]

Chicken nugget. McDonald's. Oh, a goldmine. McDonald's taken over the gold rush. Chicken nugget. Chicken nugget. I lived in California a long time. We don't think of them as chicken. A nugget is like a nugget of gold or some ore. When you know something in a flash, it means there's what we can only call simultaneous thinking. all wrapped up together is lots of information. If you examine your own thinking, playing with, as Wittgenstein did, the problem of think before you speak,

[36:21]

And don't just accept what he said or what I'm saying. Examine your own thinking, your own mentation. Okay. So I'm speaking to you right now. Okay, I let stuff come out. Then I trust what pops up next and I say that. But more fundamentally than that in a sense I know what I'm going to say before I say it.

[37:26]

I can say that. But I can also say I don't know what I'm going to say before I say it. In other words, I have a feeling which is not yet unwrapped. I have a feeling that's bundled up. Bundled up? Bundled up is one of those funny words in English. You probably can't translate it, but I'll just say it. We bundled up our child and bundled her off to school with her bundles where she had a bundle of fun. No, there are all different meanings of the word bundle. So a lot is bundled up in the word bundle.

[38:39]

A bundle is a package, of course. But to bundle someone off is to hurry them off the stool. And to bundle someone up is to put them in warm clothes. So I'm using the word bundle because there's a kind of feeling that has what I'm going to say bundled up in it. And my speaking unwraps the bundle. So I can't exactly say that I haven't thought before I speak because I have a feeling for what I'm going to say but I don't know what I'm going to say.

[39:41]

Does that make sense? So it's a very primitive statement to say, to think before you speak. It's a kind of moral caution to not say stupid things in public. But it doesn't really say much about the actual process of thinking. And again, you know, if I hear an airplane and I think, oh, in Zazen... And I think, oh, that's an airplane. In Buddhism or in yogic thinking, that's not a thought. Because thoughts are not just noticing something, thoughts are part of thinking.

[40:44]

So the word thought isn't necessarily thinking. But in English, at least in English, it's all confused. But you have to, if you're sitting and you Just hear the airplane. You can just hear it. It sounds beautiful. And you can notice, oh, that's an airplane. But that's not thinking. That's just a kind of noticing. And if you start thinking, oh, that plane is going to Los Angeles or Hamburg or something. That's thinking.

[41:54]

So that kind of thinking is what Yao Shan means when he says non-thinking. Just the nuggets or bundled thoughts, that's not thinking. It's a mental formation. And an intention is a mental formation like that that isn't thinking. It's just something you can hold in your awareness like you're almost holding a magnet You don't change the magnet. The magnet remains the same. But it attracts.

[43:00]

So when you look at the teachings, you know, and you hear a phrase like think non-thinking, you actually have to notice what your own your mental, the contents of mind don't fall all into the category of thought. And a phrase like, this just now is enough, is constructed as if it were thinking and you can say it's arrived at grammatically by thinking and Dogen says discursive or discriminating thinking says discriminating thinking is very useful to decide to practice.

[44:24]

But it's not useful as a form of practice. So the phrase just now is enough. while it's in the form of a sentence, it's actually a feeling. Or it can be turned into a feeling or an intention. Like bringing your attention into your heart or your breath. So I feel the room, I accept. Well, looking at each of you, I accept each of you. I feel the acceptance. And in that mind, just now is enough settles mind and body. So if you have the intention to realize just now is enough,

[45:25]

That's an intention that, like a magnet, doesn't change. It just wanders in the forests of thought. And sometimes it's there and sometimes it's not. But sometimes when it's there, it just takes you right out of the forest, into the soil of mind, the field of mind. This is all the craft of practice. This is like putting together the feelings, the insights you have from your own trying to make sense of the world. And the integration that can happen through meditation practice.

[46:44]

And the gathering and deepening of our experience through mindfulness practice. The craft of practice, the wisdom of practice, is what helps put this together. Okay, so let's go back just before lunch to what Dogen happened to say in the lecture. And Gikai, one of his main disciples, heard it and realized, enlightened through it. The truth abides objectively. In the fields of spring, the hundred flowers are red.

[47:45]

Doves crying women. Now, maybe we can get more of a feeling for this statement from this simple kindergarten picture. You know, it's simple, but Darwin's observation was very simple. Adaptation according to circumstances. And that adaptation can be passed on to successive generations. But this simple observation has changed the world more than anything, more than what Einstein did. Yeah. That explains much about how we exist.

[49:03]

Okay. So we have this very simple picture. And it's simple until you try to relate it to contents of mind and field of mind and our own experience of that. Or notice when you're thinking. Are you really thinking in sentences one thing after another? Or is it a succession of feelings which actually can be unwrapped and you kind of know what's going to happen when you unwrap them? And if you know that, the more you know that, the more you can leave it wrapped up for the kind of power that's involved in not unwrapping it.

[50:10]

That's complicated. If you see what you think in these wrapped up bundles you can also discover a power in noticing them but not unwrapping them. Or feeling a certain intention with the person but not expressing it but allow the whole presence of you to express it. I think maybe you can see that this teaching of Zen Buddhism is just a way to help you, nudge you toward studying yourself. And nudging you toward nudging? Nudging is to push. Nudging you toward, pushing you toward studying yourself. So the Truth abides objectively.

[51:50]

Yeah, just here. Whatever is present. We can't know it fully, we just know what's present. It's a kind of objectivity. And there's a there-ness or here-ness to everything. Things are just there. Just here. Okay. And in the fields of spring. Okay, so now we suddenly have the sense of the field. Not that there's the corn and this, but there's the field of spring. Okay. The state of mind, or in the sense of spring, the creativity from which everything comes forth. Sometimes we speak of it as the sky of spring.

[52:52]

And I noticed in that faded picture van Gogh upstairs. Would you say it the proper way, please? How do you say how the cheese? Everybody says gouda. Okay. Yeah, well, I can't say Bach, you know. It's so similar in English, but you have to get your mind. Okay. It's faded, but you can see in some kind of intuitive meditative sense these two sleeping peasants in their blue outfit belong to the blue sky.

[54:02]

So the fields of spring The hundred flowers are red. Of course it's not true the hundred flowers aren't red. There's not a hundred, there's probably a thousand, or three, and they're not all red. But the truth abides objectively. But this is an untrue statement. So how is it true? Well, It's true that they all share the field of spring. It's true that they're all red, but these are all just minor differences. Somehow they all have a sameness.

[55:05]

It's true that they are all red? It's not true that they're all red. But on some other level, it's true that they're all red. Yeah, they're all some color. These are all just mental categories. They're all red. They're all some color. And don't cry in the wilderness. Yeah. Things are just here, they're objective, it's a kind of objectivity. Each thing is independent. Not philosophically, just experientially. You're independent. You're independent. Each thing is profoundly independent.

[56:08]

At the same time, we're all in this room together, in the fields of spring. There's this interdependence. And yet even with that, there are things that go beyond what we hear, there are things that go beyond what we know. I mean, there's things, the truth abides objectively. And yet, We can't see them, the doves crying in the wilderness. So whatever we see is also includes what we, goes beyond what we know. So this is also an example not consecutive thinking, but the simultaneity, the nugget of this thinking, which can do all of these things at once.

[57:28]

So all at once I can feel all these particularities The all-at-onceness of this is that it's this mind knowing it. And even within that, the crowd cry in the woods. Okay. Thank you so much.

[58:00]

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