Or how the self colors the objects of consciousness. Yeah, I own this or I don't own it or I like it or whatever. I want this. This makes me sad. this kind of observation of mental formations. And anything you notice that brings up associations is a mental formation. It is now possible with a developing clarity through your practice of the first two foundations of mindfulness.

[01:13]

Now, this all goes on simultaneously. Sorry, I lost it. What's now possible? This clear comprehension or observation of the... of mental formation. Now, practically speaking, we practice all four of these simultaneously. Although the last one, to observe everything as dharmas, is pretty difficult until you establish the first three. But as you do practice the foundations of mindfulness, you want to keep deepening the first foundation, bodyfulness of the body. The bodyfulness of the body.

[02:25]

Instead of mindfulness of the body, you're really talking about bodyfulness of the body. We don't have mindful in German. We'll say it in English. Everyone hears. I think it's good. Mm-hmm. In the sutras it's literally knowing the body in the body. Okay. And as I said yesterday,

[03:26]

When you observe the objects of consciousness, like an emotion, like anger, the mind of mindfulness merges with or touches or transforms the mind of anger. Now the fourth foundation of mindfulness, as starters, you just observe everything changing. When you observe everything as impermanent, simply remind yourself that things are impermanent.

[04:53]

And you can take various ways to remind yourself of different aspects of impermanence. One that everything is changing. The stick that Suzuki Roshi gave me has some kind of burned mark on it here. I don't know if I didn't make it, so I don't know if he made it or some previous owner made it. I don't know how many owners it's had. It has some dents in it, probably I made it. So you notice the marks of change.

[06:05]

And you also notice that you're participating with it as a kind of change. So interdependence is also a kind of change. Yeah, like you look at a tree. And the tree is... One tree when the sun's out. And it's another tree when there's a cloud over it.

[07:06]

And it's another tree in the dark. And probably the tree is different in the dark. And certainly her digestive system is different at night. So probably the tree is drinking, living differently at night. So we could call this infolding and outfolding change. The rain and dirt is affecting the tree. And the tree is making air. oxygen, etc.

[08:11]

So you just actually intentionally, consciously remind yourself of this kind of infolding and outfolding change. The change of interdependence. And as we spoke, the change of activity. Then you have what we could call phase change. Like when water changes to steam. And this is the change of ripening. When a fruit appears. Or spoils. This is the time of Dogen's When all things are the Buddha Dharma.

[09:24]

When you feel the ripening of each thing in its own time. In this sense we don't share one general time except as an other. as some kind of idea. We don't share general time. We really are different times in a common time. Each of us is a different age, even if we're the same age. Each of us is ripening. The Dharma Sangha is ripening. The Dharma Sangha is also ripening.

[10:45]

Maybe this Buddha and this Ceremony Monday is a phase change, a ripening of the Johanneshof. And then there's the change of, what can I say, signlessness. We really can't name or grasp anything. The stick and those grasses of the garden are beyond any categories. They are some kind of mystery. As each of you is also some kind of mystery. And letting that sense of mystery or the tree that we can't name, signlessness,

[12:05]

It's also a practice of noticing impermanence. And finally, I would say to notice momentariness. The cusp of past, present and future. The cusp of past, present, future. We can't say how long. A kshana, it's a moment, totally brief moment.

[13:13]

I think it's defined various ways, one sixty-fourth of a snap of a finger or something like that. And I like the definition that when an able-bodied person... ...scans across the immensity of the sky filled with stars... The length of time it takes to notice one star. And it's a real length of time. You notice the difference between a star-filled sky and a few stars. So this ability to notice things in very tiny junctures, the twinkle in a person's eye,

[14:28]

This is also enhanced by the practice of mindfulness. So I think that's enough for today. I want to say, you know, In the Diamond Sutra it says, if a daughter or son of good family were to hold only one stanza of four lines, Hold, recite, hold it in mind, recite, practice it. Yeah, recite and practice it and demonstrate it by living it and illuminate it fully for others.

[16:01]

The phrase illuminated fully for others is added when it's a Mahayana text. I think when it's more of a Theravada and a Hinayana text. The same type of formula just emphasizes practicing. But when you just so practice and illuminate One stanza, four lines. If there's any such thing as merit, you acquire more merit than a son and daughter who filled a thousand million world's systems with the seven precious things. Then it says, how much more so if someone illuminated and practiced the entirety of the Diamond Sutra?

[17:30]

This is like the seven days or seven years. But what I'm saying, and I think this is right, if you really practice four lines, You can illuminate yourself in the whole of Buddhism. If you really thoroughly and fully practice these four foundations of mindfulness, Wenn ihr wirklich durch und durch und vollständig diese vier Grundlagen der Achtsamkeit praktiziert, könnt ihr euch öffnen und entfalten oder auffalten und die Lehre des Buddhismus. Vielen Dank. Thank you.

[18:57]

Thank you. Satsang with Mooji

[20:45]

Chant Chant I've only read the whole thing, but I'm not going to comment on it. I think it's terrible that now thousands of young people have lost their jobs. Now I'm going to tell you a story that you can't tell anyone. I think it's the most beautiful thing I've ever done in my life. Now I don't know if I can bring together the themes we started with in the first day.

[22:26]

Because there were several things. One of them was the... disintegrating force of actuality as it is. I said that actuality as it is can be a disintegrating force. Of course, taking away the constructs we tend to believe in. Yeah, or even if we don't believe in them. You might not believe in an inner tube if you were afloat in the ocean.

[23:37]

You might not believe in the inner tube. You might recognize it's a temporary construct filled with air. But all by yourself in the cold, dark sea, you wouldn't want it taken away from you. Yeah, and I think sometimes in Sushin, some people at least feel they're in the cold, dark sea. Yeah, at least the last couple of days. Before that, we felt like we were the frog in boiling water. Put in too slowly to jump out.

[24:39]

Yeah, okay. You know, it's wonderful to see these little calves across the street. They're sometimes frolicking around just like calves in cartoons. Maybe they've seen some of those cartoons. Jumping around and do it.

[25:39]

Yeah. And they're only a few weeks old. One of them is only about a week old or something. And they've got it together. Four legs working. They seem to be already able to eat grass. They can run faster than I can. This little baby can't do anything. At this age, she doesn't seem to even be able to focus her eyes. You know, why is she so stupid? These calves are really way in advance. Well, one of the problems is she seems to be in a war between her mind and body. Her interest is in advance of her body right now.

[26:49]

And I heard that there's two kind of babies. Mellow and back archers. mellow babies are satisfied with visual phenomena back archers want to get up and do something and she's a back archer she's determined to sit up to walk to do whatever she can But she can't even get her eyes in focus. She can't get her sense fields in focus. And her body isn't able to do what her mind wants to do. Mm-hmm. So it's interesting, this mind-body dualism is starting right now.

[28:13]

She experiences her body as something holding her back. That's what it looks like to me in here. And she's going to struggle to teach her body to do what she wants. So maybe the body she has to get together and the sense field she has to get together, which obviously is more complex than this calf. Also vielleicht ist der Körper und die Sinnesfelder, die sie zusammenfügen, viel komplexer als das der Kälber und es scheint auch so zu sein. So she's trying to turn her, she's trying to create a consciousness which can do things. Sie versucht ein Bewusstsein zu schaffen, welches Dinge tun kann.

[29:18]

A consciousness which penetrates her body and allows her to sit up and crawl and so forth. She can already and has been able to for a couple weeks turn over, roll over, which mellow type babies can't do till when? Five to six months. Yeah, after all the zazen I've done, I hoped for a mellow baby. Okay, so here we got this kid, right? And she's kind of run, [...] right? Now say I could grab her and hold her down. And all this energy which went into I want to do that, I want to do this, etc.

[30:24]

I trapped her and held her down. Finally when she couldn't make her mind do anything She give up and relax into original mind. And innate awareness would blister out. And that's in a way what Sashin's trying to do to you. The schedule and everything's trying to get a hold of you and say, stay there, you idiot. Give up wanting to do this and that.

[31:25]

Give up believing in your spirit. Give up believing in likes and dislikes. So they're wonderful things, but they're functions of the self. And perhaps the spirit. But they're not functions of Buddha nature. So we hold you down until this wide unperturbable awareness appears. Once you've really, in a cellular way, got that, Once you have understood this on a cellular level, then the spiritual spirit and these preferences and deviations come from another source.

[32:40]

And this is in any case this fundamental concept behind a Sashin. Sometimes maybe Sashin is a little rough. One of my motivations in talking about the four foundations of mindfulness was to make it a little less rough. through the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness, you could realize essence of mind. You could see the possibility of essence of mind. Without it being forced on you.

[33:47]

By the rigor of Sashin. Yeah, but maybe they work together at least. So Sashin softens us up some. So what I've done is I've taken a basic so-called Hinayana or Theravadan teaching and I've Mahayana-ed it. Or I've zended or something like that. Oh dear. May I throw you... No, I shouldn't throw you.

[34:49]

I'll tell you just because it occurred to me. There's some very gay poet named Taylor Mead. There's a very gay poet Terry? Ted? Taylor Meade. I actually used to know him slightly in New York. But I don't know why I'm telling you this. And I have a habit of trusting what pops into my mind. But if you've ever seen Andy Warhol's movie Tarzana Resedida, It's a place in Los Angeles. Taylor Meade plays Tarzan. And he has a little poem, which is totally dumb. Und er hat ein kleines Gedicht, das vollkommen blöd ist.

[35:59]

There's an ant in his food. Der ist nämlich eine Ameise in seinem Essen. He says, zen, zen, zen, zoom, zoom, zoom, get out of my food, ant. I'm not Albert Schweitzer. Also, zen, zen, zen, zoom, zoom, zoom, Ameise, geh aus meinem Essen raus, ich bin nicht Albert Schweitzer. One other little story about this movie. I was watching this movie. It goes on for hours and then about two hours into it they start playing it backwards. And I'm sitting there sort of like watching it, you know. And a couple, no, three or four people to my right got up and left and I stood up and let them go by and the first person coming by was a Chinese woman and I said giving up huh yeah

[37:01]

And she said, Philistine, the lobby is more interesting. Which I always thought was great. The lobby is more interesting. I can see somebody getting up from Sashin and going out. The hallway is more interesting. Okay. So why do I say I've mahayana, or zended? Because I've looked at the four foundations from the point of view of two different kinds of mindfulness.

[38:22]

And that is because I have looked at the four foundations of mindfulness from a point of view where I assume that there are two different kinds of mindfulness. One could be called developmental mindfulness. Or an intentional mindfulness. And the other, an intrinsic or innate mindfulness. Now, I'm also just trying to, you know, in the spirit of the Diamond Sutra, illuminate as thoroughly as I can four lines, or in this case, one teaching.

[39:30]

So we all get a sense of how to go into a teaching. And if you look at a teaching, Look at the deceptively simple part. We have this rather complicated first foundation. And a lot going on in the third and fourth. But the second one is just feeling likes and dislikes. Why is it so simple and the others are all these things you have to do?

[40:34]

Because it's the hinge. It's where the whole thing turns. So I also want to take an accessible, nowadays in the West, popular teaching And utilize it in a Zen way. To show, illustrate how we can make any Buddhist practice a Zen practice. Almost any. Okay. Okay, so I made somewhat clear yesterday these two different kinds of awareness. Yeah, but I'll try to make it a little clearer again in another way.

[41:49]

Okay, so there's mindfulness, intentional mindfulness. Would you make an effort bringing yourself to your activity and so forth? But there's also this awareness when you are no longer caught by likes and dislikes. Now the Dzogchen tradition calls this innate awareness.

[42:53]

Now, I object to all these words like innate, even essence, and so forth. Because... This isn't very interesting to you, but I should say it because it's important in the framework of Zen itself. Because if you call it innate, meaning it's already there, Because then you teach practice as a mode of discovery. And I'm convinced we should teach Zen and recognize that everything is a construct. I mean, here's this little baby.

[44:30]

Sophia. Stuck with a name. Yeah, I know she's a construct. I helped. And I watched her growing. Before she appeared. But now she is discovering her body. For her it's an already there. But I know it's a construct. And she's discovering her consciousness. And she'll forget she created it. But she's creating her consciousness.

[45:31]

It's not innate. It may be implicit in the genes, but still she's generating it. She's participating in creating it. So when you peer between the branches or trees of likes and dislikes, you see between the trunks The space of awareness. It's neither like nor dislike. The peering itself is a form of constructing it. Constructing it, the awareness, the space.

[46:32]

There's no space. It's just, I like this, I dislike that, blah, blah, blah. And you look carefully and you begin to see, ah, there's a space. And you say, ah, it was there before. No, it wasn't. By looking, you're making the space. And you're also then stabilizing it developing it, using it, etc. So I wouldn't use the Dzogchen term, usually translated as innate awareness. And right now I wouldn't use original mind. I do now. But I would say, let's call it essence of mind.

[47:53]

Best language I can find right now. Okay. Okay. So implicit in the way I'm teaching the four foundations of mindfulness... which is, by the way, this sashin is the most thorough and in-depth treatment of mindfulness I've ever done. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I forgot what I was going to say now, but let me just say that on the one hand we make an effort at mindfulness. On the other hand, as we begin to feel this essence of mind,

[48:58]

And we realize that mindfulness is rooted in essence of mind. That essence of mind already tends to pervade things. we can relax into this mindfulness. It's even the mindfulness we have at night. At least for me, I experienced it most directly in Shashin's. Where I found I could be awake all night and yet fully asleep. So I could experience directly the awareness that allows you to say, wake up with an alarm clock at a specific time.

[50:34]

Although I don't experience that every night. I now know it well enough to know its presence. So, for example, most, I think almost any time, I can have a conversation with somebody and stay asleep. I mean, somebody could come into the room while I'm asleep, ask me a question, I can talk to them, etc., and my sleep stays undisturbed. Most of the time that's true. So that's coming into the awareness that's not consciousness.

[51:40]

Or you can turn it a little bit into consciousness for the conversation, but it goes back into awareness. Now the pedagogy of Zen, much of it is based on realizing essence of mind and original mind. So I've tried to ferret that out. You don't want to say that with martyrs in the house. What's ferret out? Ferret is like a martyr. But it's not a work? Yeah, to ferret out means like to... It's just my little joke. A ferret is a kind of weasel. I know, but I don't know the word. To ferret out means to... Do like the ferrets does.

[52:59]

Ferret out means to figure out what it's all about. Okay, what was the whole thing about? I said, I started to say ferret out, and then I said, well, with all the martyrs in the house, I don't want to use that word. Okay. Excuse me, I have my own little jokes. Yeah. Yeah. So I've tried to teach the foundations of mindfulness as a way to make us to develop the practice of mindfulness to make us aware of mindfulness and make us aware of fundamental mindfulness.

[54:07]

Which we don't so much make an effort to realize, we relax into it. Like at night you relax into awareness. As you relax out of wakeful consciousness, you relax into sleep. But you also relax into awareness. But it's pretty much continuously always present.

[55:27]

But we don't have the means to notice it. Because we notice things through consciousness. So the practice of Zen, why one of the reasons we give you nothing to do except sit there, Well, you can do a little of this or a little of that. Count your breaths if you want. We don't give you many stages. You do this and that. That's partly because we assume the... Evolution of consciousness.

[56:29]

In other words, we don't know what consciousness fully is. Consciousness, big mind. So we don't want to fool you by giving you a map. Which presumes we know what it is. But we also want to realize this awareness which is pretty nearly signless. Aber es geht darum, dass ihr dieses Gewahrsein erkennt, welches fast ohne Merkmal oder ohne Zeichen ist.

[57:30]

Also wenn wir euch dafür dann Zeichen, also Wegweiser und Landkarten geben würden, dann würdet ihr den Wegweiser nachgeben. Dann würdet ihr gar nicht erkennen, was unterhalb der Landkarte zu finden ist. It's a little bit like one-pointedness. There's the one-pointedness you make an effort to achieve. And there's the one-pointedness that you relax into. Because you don't have to concentrate an active consciousness, but rather you relax in a way that the mind rests wherever it is.

[58:59]

Just rest wherever you are, whatever you put it on. How to teach this difference is the conundrum of Zen. Okay. Now, I should say a little bit about the fourth foundation of mindfulness. Then we can stop. Okay. Now, the fourth foundation of mindfulness is to notice The phenomenal world. But more specifically, it's not just to look around and say, hey, it looks nice.

[60:13]

But to notice it as it is. So first we're giving you the techniques through mindfulness, so that you can notice it as it is. You decide what it's like. the last thing you make, you decide what it's like. You might decide it's permanent. Good luck. Then you can see what you can make of it as permanent. Yes. Okay, but then say after a while you say, oh no, it's not permanent.

[61:28]

Okay. So if you've come to that point, then this fourth foundation of mindfulness, says if you see it as impermanent, oh yeah, what's that mean? See it as dharma and see it as dharmas. So see it as the teaching of Buddhism, which is everything is impermanent. And more specifically, see it as units of experience. Okay, so the first is you see it as impermanence.

[62:31]

So as I'm going over a little bit what I said yesterday, you see it as the activity of change. Aging, movement and so forth. Everything is moving, changing, etc. And you bring your mind more and more in accord with that. As your attention always sees change, Your mind less and less holds on to the delusion of permanence. And then you see change as, as I said, phase, or I think you translated aggregate change. Changes, ripening or transformation, so forth.

[63:42]

And you feel how things ripen and transform. that also moves you into feeling your own transformation all the time. Because you're not just changing from moment to moment, you yourself are also involved in change which builds up and then there's a jump, a leap. So we're always involved in kind of change after change, and then the change which leads to insight or personal transformation, even small ones every week.

[64:47]

Also, we are always busy changing unambiguously, but also these shifts of change that lead to insights and what? small ones every week. Okay, now let's look at change as units. So you want to get in just the habit of seeing things in breath units. Also wollt ihr euch vielleicht zur Gewohnheit machen, Dinge in Atemeinheiten zu sehen. Breathe your noticings. Breathe each thing you notice. Atme jeden Ding oder Gegenstand, den ihr bemerkt. You look at a flower and you breathe on the noticing of the flower.

[65:59]

Ihr schaut eine Blume an und dann atmet ihr Even your language, you breathe into each word. Or into a phrase or into a sentence. A period or a comma is where you take a breath. So you're just getting the habit of noticing units. Yeah, then you want to notice more... I don't know how to put it, the small units of experience, the smallest units of experience.

[67:04]

And I've called those junctures. One time last year I said, you know, there's a big storm at night. And you wake up and you hear the rain hitting the windows and all. And for a minute, Dogen says, black rain on the roof. So for a moment you hear this black rain on the roof. And then you go back to sleep.

[68:06]

And the next morning you say to someone, did you hear that storm last night? And they say, no, I slept like a baby. Not this baby anyway, but... They didn't feel the storm. They didn't have a juncture with the storm for a moment when you feel the storm. And I would call that a natural, maybe a phenomenal or natural juncture. And then there's human junctures. Those really brief moments when you notice someone's a friend. There's some feeling of understanding passes between two people. In the eyes or in the body.

[69:23]

That's what I'd call maybe a human juncture. And then there's junctures when you know yourself. Or insights. And then there's teaching junctures. Like maybe we're talking about the four foundations of mindfulness. And the lecture's going by. And you hear every third or fourth sentence. And then suddenly you, oh, that's what it's about. How long is that moment? It's real brief. So those junctures are actually happening all the time.

[70:24]

Every moment with people. with the day, the weather. So the practicing of units or junctures allows you to feel these junctures. And I've also defined for you in the past, dharmas is when you feel a moment, a nourishment or completeness on something. Mindfulness helps you notice these things.

[71:24]

Then there's that we notice the arising, creating and disappearance of the moment. And that's the Genjo Koan type teaching. Things arise to complete what appears. Do now your mindfulness is mature enough in depth enough that these junctures appear you feel your participation with them you bring them into attention in effect complete them

[72:29]

They're just completing them with your noticing them as a kind of completion. But each moment has an implicit coherence that you can bring together that is being brought together It brings you together and then you release. And that's to notice the cusp of the moment. So this is to notice and practice the fourth foundation of mindfulness. As phenomena as dharmas, and also as empty,

[73:50]

As phenomenas and as dharmas or phenomenas as dharmas? Phenomena as dharmas. Phenomena as dharmas. And phenomena and dharmas also as empty. Because you see things arising and appearing, a construct and disappearing. So now you feel the field of mind out of which things appear. And the object itself is also empty because it appears from the field and disappears back into it. So now the fourth foundation of mindfulness. Particularly as a Mahayana way of seeing it is to notice and experience each thing's appearance as empty and finally as mind itself as well.

[75:23]

Because everything that appears partakes of mind. Takes part? Yeah, partakes of. Everything that appears is part of mind. It's inseparable from mind. Because everything that appears is... Well, if I see this, my seeing it is partly a mental act. Yeah, and an act of my senses. So it's inseparable from my knowing it. And the mind and senses that know it is also impermanent. So my knowing is wrapped, we could say, in impermanence. And then there's finally almost the impermanence of beyond signs.

[76:51]

You can't grasp it with the mind. Because you can't grasp it, it's also impermanent. And the one I forgot, the impermanence of interdependence. of the infolding and outfolding, interdependence of everything. These are ways of practicing the fourth foundation of mindfulness, Phenomena as objects of mind. As mental formations. As dharmas. And as empty. And as the activity of a Buddha. I'm sorry that went on a little long.

[78:36]

But I covered much of what I started with on the first day. Not that you needed me to do all that. I probably should have said to be completed the next seminar sign up outside. But I wanted to give you the best I could today. Thank you very much. And I want to test her ability to translate.

[79:03]

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