You're ready to write something. Maybe you should say something. So what would you say as... Hi. I would say the... clearly the most important phrase for me. I would say for me the most important sentence is all that arises is subject to cessation. And it's worked both as an anchor and a magnification, a clarification of a feeling I have. And it's also helped me to ripen and unfold that experience.

[01:01]

So your notice, the phrases helped you notice sensation and also helped you to unfold the experience. And the whole, and the, and to... Using the phrase to notice sensation required you to hold the phrase. Sorry, I didn't get that. Using the phrase to notice sensation. And to use this sentence, which in the past... Can you tell me again what sensation is? The feeling. To use the feeling. Cessation or cessation?

[02:22]

Cessation. Cessation. Should I start over? Yes, please. To use the phrase to notice cessation, you had to hold the phrase And to hold the phrase required mindfulness practice. So working with the phrase really... To hold it requires a prior development of mindfulness. In fact, all teachings in Buddhism are meant to be held.

[03:24]

They're not meant to be understood. In general, the Chinese concept of a phrase, a teaching, a sutra, is the meaning is not in the phrase. The meaning is in the repetition of the phrase. And unless you repeat it, You don't discover the meaning. Yeah. I also found with this phrase that the phrase held me. I didn't just decide it was a good phrase to practice with.

[04:27]

to it independent of my thinking about it or thinking it might be useful. There is a power to it. One of the characteristics of, if I dare say so, American poetry is And free verse in general. Yeah, one of the... differences in America in both its philosophy and its poetry is there's much less tradition. And so there's much less pressure to conform to tradition. So you often have people, American poets, don't even know what a poem is. So one of the characteristics of American poets is they don't know what they're doing.

[06:03]

They're kind of lost. But this is an advantage, too, because it creates poems rooted in a groundlessness. And one of the reasons probably Chinese poetry and translation, you know, has been so important to... Western American poets. And what's funny is American poetry influences how Chinese poetry is translated. And then the Chinese poetry influences, et cetera.

[07:16]

So generally, the way many American poets It's really just as Paul said. A certain line, a certain phrase grabs them. Like the snow where it's undisturbed is... half a meter deep. Maybe some just some ordinary observation like that. But it feels like it's just the surface of something. And so you assume the whole poem is in that phrase. And then the rest of the poem keeps opening from that phrase.

[08:18]

Now, I don't mean that Europeans don't write poems the same way. But if you look at American poetry and philosophy, you always have to deal with the fact that it's in some kind of fight with continental... European philosophy and poetry, and also lost because it doesn't have the frame. And if you look at American poetry and poems and philosophy, then somehow something is always lost and also in contrast to the European good. Yeah, now why am I saying these things? We're not really talking about literature here. I'm saying it because it's something I've been thinking about recently. But I'm also saying it because I'm, again, emphasizing that consciousness is different. And if consciousness is only slightly different, even only slightly different,

[09:35]

If you have less tradition or more tradition, or you're in some argument with tradition, it influences how you do such basic things in a culture as writing a poem, or practicing philosophy. Yes? It was the phrase already connected for a while, or the words already connected for a while, but since half a year it's not present so much. Magst du übersetzen? But then happened that I felt so much the disconnection in various ways, in relationships and in my own way of relating to the world. But then it happened that I rather experienced the interruption or the separation in a very diverse way and also suffered a lot from it.

[11:07]

And also suffered from this feeling. And just now I thought, what is it that I cannot come back to this phrase, or this phrase cannot really come back to me, or I bring it back? Then I thought, why can't this sentence help me when I suffer from it? Why can't I get it back? And then when we were talking, I just thought, yeah, it has to change, it has to change, but it's not ready yet, not cooked. Maybe the phrase has to be, it has to change. Since you just said it with a certain figure.

[12:15]

It has to change. Yeah, phrases do get used up. And they also become the way we view things. And then they lose their punch, so to speak. Their power. Their power. Punch is also juice and gin. Yes. Punch is also juice and gin. And when you said, when you held already connected, did you hold it in English or German or somehow both?

[13:21]

Yes. I'll say it in German. A sentence that follows me or accompanies me is, a moment of immediate awareness is worth more than all temples and jubilee shrines. I read that somewhere. Can you translate that? A moment of immediate consciousness is worth more than 100 temples and jewels.

[14:24]

More than, better than ten thousand words. Because temples and shrines of jewels fall into dust. A moment of immediate consciousness goes right into enlightenment. Bodhidharma said the same thing. But he wasn't so funny. That's not the whole story, but this first sentence out of the story always pops up into my mind. And on my way to the Johanneshof yesterday seven hours by train I read a book about time machines, black holes and wormholes.

[15:54]

It's about the speculation about time machines and Einstein's theory of relativity. And popping through the black holes into another. And at one point the writer feels sorry about that and he says that one gram of observation has more power than One kilo of theory. One kilo of... Okay. That remembered me and... Reminded you, yeah.

[17:12]

Reminded me to my phrase. Yeah, yeah. One gram of observation. That's better than a kilo of theory, yes. Okay, someone else? Yes. When I heard for the first time, there's always one who is not busy, I felt deeply touched by that, because I spontaneously felt or felt because it reminded me of feelings and experiences I have had before in my work, during my work. And now I'm using that phrase when there's too much trouble around me to come back to my center, to center myself.

[18:33]

Yeah. It's amazing that these phrases can do this. But they're also, again, as I said with Paul, tied to the practice of mindfulness. We could call it sort of articulated mindfulness. If we start wondering What kinds of mindfulness are there? Someone else? Yes. For myself it has been the sentence, don't invite your thoughts to tea.

[19:44]

And I always used that during my meditation. And I noticed that my state of mind during my daily activity changed. So that my past and my future became less and less important. And this sentence finally held me So that sentence helped me to be more and more present in the present moment and not to look for my continuity in my thinking that much anymore. And especially it helped me not to compare my life with the life of others.

[20:57]

And that makes me more happy. Yes, our life is incomparable. I'm just making a little joke. Incomparable, you understand, in English means it's the best. It can't be compared. But it also means simply don't compare. And when you don't compare, your life becomes incomparable. Okay. I tried to get the difference between sasen mind and the mind in awareness practice.

[22:07]

By awareness practice you mean mindfulness practice? Mindfulness practice. In mindfulness practice, the mind is more directed outward. In mindfulness practice, the mind is more focused to the outside. Yes, and I try to direct the attention to how the phenomena on my mind And I also try to focus my mindfulness practice how the phenomena reject back into myself.

[23:08]

Reject? Reflect back onto myself, yes. How does my mute change? How does my observation change? and actually I only work in the mindfulness practice with Satsang, for example, just connected, already connected. And my practice in mindfulness practice is working with phrases like already connected or just this. And in Satsang mind And my feeling is in sasen mind my physical presence is more difficult.

[24:13]

Can be more difficult. Can be more difficult. More difficult in what way? Difficult to you or difficult to... Difficult for me. Yeah. So your experience is more kind of like more vivid or unpleasant or something? No, because I'm closer to dreaming mind. And so if I'm in dreaming mind, it's an invitation. For fantasy and... Oh, no. So I have always to take the invitation back. Aha, I see. And my experience is that in the context of monastery it's much easier to work with satsang mind and it's more difficult in my private personal life.

[25:24]

Thank you. Someone else. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. I noticed that phrases I worked with time ago like Just now is enough. Or be nourished that these phases changed. Or arriving now here. Just now arriving.

[26:26]

So it turned more into a phrase like, my life just happens now. Your complete life happens now. And I'm very busy during my daily life. I ask myself, how can I get to that sentence to practice with such a phrase here? And there's a memory. Then I go into the feeling of this phrase. And then it's like stopping. And then I have the feeling I can change from mindfulness mind into meditation mind. Okay. Someone else? Yeah? The most powerful phrase to me has been this feeling of something appears, duration, and then the dissolution.

[28:12]

The four marks. And it works in different ways. Sometimes I get out of my conceptual thinking. Sometimes it's a bridge to my background mind, like you mentioned the background mind in seeing all these boards along the highway. Yeah, yeah, billboards. The billboards, yeah. Recently you talked about how we decide how long a moment lasts, and in that context it was like an aha-experience for me, that I decide the duration of a moment, or I decide the duration of the moment when I write on the blackboard.

[29:39]

And recently you mentioned, and this has been a kind of experience for myself, that I am able to, the duration of this, that I can hold that mind, the duration of that mind, that I'm able to do that. Yeah. Now, Mudita, we're supposed to eat at 12.30? Quarter to one? Find out what they're actually going to do in the kitchen. Quarter to one, okay. Okay. Because I believe on the prologue day we end a little earlier than on the seminar day tomorrow.

[30:50]

I think it says we end at 12.15. But of course we can. as we wish, up to a point. You know, I really like hearing what each of you says. And, yeah, it's just helpful to me and it's Yeah, I always feel good that somehow this practice works for each of us. Or at least works for many of us. And then I wonder, now if this was a group of people practicing at...

[31:54]

And I just came here, of course, from the practice period at Crestone. Now, if you were all in a practice period at Crestone, would you... bring up the same experiences. And Peter made some contrast between the experience. And I think that as a Sangha, as a Dharma Sangha, it's important for us to have a general understanding of the difference between monastic practice and lay practice.

[33:22]

the difference between monastic practice and lay practice. And because actually the Dharma Sangha's overall concept of the Dharma Sangha is a mix of lay practice and monastic practice. So you have your daily life, We have seminars. We have practice weeks. We have Sashins. We have a practice month. And we have, hey, such riches. And we have the three-month practice period at Creston. And we find out ourselves what tends to support us in our practice. And even if we all can't...

[34:30]

have a fruitful lay life or have a time at Crestone, say. The varieties of ways we practice separately and together strengthens the Dharma Sangha. strengthens the Dharmasanga. And it's clear, as we've pointed out, that in general, the Crestone and Yohannesov are the people who take care of it and live, are mostly people who at least have some period of monastic practice. So, The variety of practice helps support the whole of the Dharma Sangha.

[35:58]

But now I wonder if, again, you were a group of people who were all in a three-month practice period together. Perhaps you wouldn't mention phrases so often. You might speak about a particular experience or an insight. I know that would be partly true, at least. Okay. But... whether we're in a monastic practice or we're primarily a lay practitioner, still, by far and away, the majority of our time is not sitting zazen. So the fundamental practice at least in quantity, is mindfulness practice.

[37:10]

Then how does he articulate that mindfulness practice? At least if what you've said so far is representative, then it's the phrases which have articulated our mindfulness practice. Now, if we take even a simple phrase, which is not even a phrase, it's just an instruction. It's not even a... Wado, it's just an instruction. Instruction. Instruction, yeah. For example, don't invite your thoughts to tea.

[38:10]

Okay, so this can be a phrase, obviously. A gate phrase, as I call it. A door-satz. But... But initially it's just an instruction. But what she recognized intuitively or whatever, that it's a phrase or an instruction That assumes a very different world view. To not invite your thoughts to tea. But clearly means thoughts are not so important. Yeah. Or that you don't have to identify with your thoughts.

[39:26]

And if you start not identifying with your thoughts, as you pointed out, you start not identifying with thoughts. what's carried in the thoughts. All that's carried in thinking, self, comparisons to others and so forth. So what happened, she turned to not invite your thoughts to tea, she turned it from an instruction to a gate phrase and then in having it present in her mindfulness, the phrase began to unpack many other aspects of her life.

[40:41]

No, it's what I said more or less correct about. Yes. So mindfulness is the condition for a phrase being able to unpack itself and unpack you, if we use that current term in philosophy. And what would be maybe jarring or threatening or anxious making, by holding a phrase that as an insight might make us anxious, might disturb us,

[41:47]

The mindfulness lets it happen, notice it incrementally, incrementally is little by little, and supports us like a cushion in the process of knowing, noticing. So mindfulness then becomes a kind of The continuity of mindfulness becomes a kind of support. So now we have, we could say, articulated mindfulness. And we have cushioning, easy chair mindfulness. Mattress mindfulness? No. Anyway, something like that. Okay. Yeah, so let me just tell you an anecdote now.

[43:24]

Did you say that's funny? Just a translation, yeah. Fun people can make anything funny. Okay, so I'm at the B&B. Ich bin B&B. Bread and breakfast. I mean a bed and breakfast. Ich bin also im bed and breakfast im Hotel. Okay. The students at... The Dharma Sangha practitioners in Boulder have bought, as most of you know, a bed and breakfast. And it's called the Briar Rose. And it sounds a little bit too much like a British pub. Pub, yes.

[44:33]

So I'd rather call it the Mountain Rose or something. Anyway, they've... bought, everybody mortgaged, quite a few people mortgaged their houses and so forth, and for a million dollars they bought this bed and breakfast. And it was almost entirely done with loans from students and not from banks. So, but it does mean it has to be run as a bed and breakfast for a pretty long time, 20 years or so. But we're trying to build a small Zendo there now. Anyway, it gives me a nice place to stay when I go to Boulder on the way here for instance.

[45:37]

I spend a night there before I come. Then we all sit in a little tiny room in the mornings before guests wake up. So I was there a few I don't know, a few weeks ago I was there. And at breakfast there was this extremely talkative man. And he talked with rather a loud voice. And he was from Florida. And he surely voted for Bush. But I kept my good humor.

[46:40]

And listened to this guy. And he was actually quite a sweet, sincere guy. And it amused me that he complained about the Jehovah's Witnesses. You have Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany too, right? They come to the door and then they talk, right? They have been here. When I lived in New York, I always used to invite them in. I'd give them tea and, you know, so forth. And tell them I was a hopeless case, but I've had... Anyway... So he was complaining about how much the Jehovah's Witnesses talked.

[47:46]

And finally, I mean, I had to get away from the table because it was such... And I went and sat over on a little couch in the living room. It's a very nice place with a lawn and trees and right across from Naropa, the... Trungpa Rinpoche School. Yeah, so I went and sat in the living room, which is next to the dining room. And then another guy was sitting there with his niece. And he listened just like I did. And one of the things this guy told him and also told me. Because I asked him because he told me that he was a born-again Christian. I've been through the birth canal twice.

[48:54]

I wish I could have caught him the second time. but I was too late he could change history if I'd been caught some other guy the second time so I asked what made you become a why were you born again This is the kind of conversation you have in a bed and breakfast. So he said, because I looked at things and I saw them clearly.

[49:54]

And I realized they were so complicated. So amazingly complex. That there had to be a creator. This experience changed my life. It was clear it did. And he had come all the way from Florida to see what was going on in Boulder because he heard it was a strange place. I think he wanted to see people who hadn't been born again. He was trying to be tolerant and open and so forth. He tried to be tolerant and open.

[50:54]

Now it turned out the other person he was talking so much to came over after a while and sat on the couch with me. And we started talking. We both said, geez, it's quite interesting what his experience was. And I said to some point, he asked where I lived. I said, you know, Colorado. I asked where he lived. He said, India. And he was clearly not an Indian. So I said, where do you live in India? He said, Pondicherry. And I said, oh, I know someone who lived in Pondicherry, an old friend of mine, Mike Murphy. And he said, oh, I'm seeing him this afternoon.

[52:04]

He was flying to San Francisco and then to Esalen and meeting with a whole group of Indian scholars who were worried about... Indian fundamentalism. Yeah, because you remember what happened to that British novelist, what's his name? Rushdie, yeah. Being attacked by fundamentalist Muslims for what he wrote in a book. Well, now in America, there's quite a lot of scholars of Hinduism and Indian philosophy who are being attacked by fundamentalist Hindus and their lives threatened if they don't

[53:13]

toe the line. And a number of these people have made huge amounts of money in software in America, but they're supporting fundamentalist causes in India. And some scholars are having their life threatened. It's a crazy world we live in. So to discuss this, Michael, got together a whole bunch of scholars in this field. So I talked to Michael later and he said, oh, that fellow, I can't remember his name right now, is the leading scholar on Sri Aurobindo and Indian philosophy.

[54:19]

So now, again, why I'm telling you this story is what was interesting is the difference in how this man and I understood what the Floridian said. The Floridian, the man from Florida. It could be also a person with a red face. To be Florid is to have a red face, so a Floridian would be somebody with a red face. It's possible. Because of the sun or what? Or just embarrassed at having been born again.

[55:31]

Okay. is that when he saw everything very clearly and precisely and concluded that there had to be a creator, there was... his context for this experience. So I'm... was there's an outside world separate from him. And he couldn't have created this. And he did not believe in evolution that things create themselves somehow.

[56:35]

You can't believe in evolution if you don't believe things create themselves. So he made this experience into a belief in God. This Indian scholar, scholar of Indian philosophy and myself, having a similar experience, noticed the clarity of the mind. If we see something, everything is very clear and precise and complex. Our context, to not see the outside world as something separate from us, we see the clarity of our own mind.

[57:43]

And that clarity of our own mind is some kind of enlightenment experience. So what the three of us recognized was the validity of the experience. validity, the truth of the experience. But the context of interpretation was different. So that's enough to say, I guess. So you can have experience that's the same and come to a very different conclusion about the world. So the consciousness, which is the context of the experience,

[58:52]

even controls an experience that can transform consciousness. So what is the context of our consciousness? That's part of the question of this seminar. Okay, let's sit for a few moments and then we'll meet. That's a dragon. What? I have it. Thanks. There are sounds.

[61:17]

What mind absorbs these sounds? When our thoughts are not invited to tea, what mind absorbs the presence of each other here? Accept the presence of each other. Knows the presence of each other. When other is no longer other,

[62:23]

What mind is this? Is it consciousness? Do we need a name for it?

[62:40]

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