I enjoyed watching the game with many of you last night. Not having grown up with football, The first two things that have struck me is, one, it's a fairly ordinary body type. It's not like American basketball players or football players. But also that it's such a low-scoring game. But that always seems to me to add a tremendous amount of chance or luck into the game.

[01:03]

Because, you know, you guys, I'm just talking as an onlooker, but it seems that if you get a lucky goal in and the teams are fairly equal, that may be it. So it looks to me as if you get a goal through luck and the teams are about the same, the teams are just as good, then that's it. So I'm sorry the French had those two lucky goals. The French? I mean the Italian. The Italian. The French too. The French, yeah. So I'm sorry that the Italians had those two lucky goals. And Germany almost had goals so many times. Janette kept pointing out. If ever I go to a soccer game, a football game, I want to go with her, you know. Okay. Thanks for your compassion, yeah.

[02:23]

Yesterday, both here in the discussion and in the tea show, we talked about the The concept of Dharma practice leads to a moment by moment monitoring of our activity. And the moment by moment. Is monitoring something neutral or it always needs to be like a security, a person who watches? It doesn't need to have a police. Monitoring means just you watch.

[03:33]

You watch and note. Watch and note. Yeah. Keep track of, something like that. Keep track of. Yeah, that's English. Sounds like English. Anyway, I don't know what word you should use in German, but in English it's pretty accurate that you, through mindfulness, you monitor your moment-by-moment states of mind and so forth. Yeah, because we have the word observe more. To monitor is registrieren. Well, you could say, I mean, I could say in English, we observe our moment by moment, but to observe is very neutral. Monitor means you actually notice what's happening and act in regard to it. We have the right register.

[04:42]

What I used, überwachen, is really monitoring, like, you know, if you sit there in a store and a detective sits there in the back and watches the camera. But she says it's a good word because it has wakeness in it. Yeah. But it's... Monitoring comes from operations where you monitor the patient, so it's not a... Okay, so the doctors like the word because for them it's just watching the patient. It comes from there. Yeah, to track the patient, how he's doing, etc. Okay, sorry for this. Oh, that's important. I could say register register is a little too strong in English because it sounds like you're writing it down in a book or something. But, you know, I just thought it's useful and important for us to notice that this practice assumes the ability and thus the emphasis on mindfulness.

[05:57]

I can do it, it's gone though. The ability. It assumes the ability to monitor your moment by moment. So sometimes I say, for instance, take an inventory of how often you think in a self-referential way. Yeah, because, I mean, if you do that, you notice it. Much of the time you're not thinking self-referentially, and much of the time you are.

[07:02]

We have a habit of generalizing our behavior. I'm always like this, or I'm such and such. So, just anyway... basic approach to our existence we could say is a basic approach to our existence in Buddhist practice is monitoring your states of mind. We could say it's a kind of surgical procedure. Or a healing procedure. And a way of knowing, noticing, a way of wisdom. Now, Zen practice particularly takes on this monitoring as a mode of practice.

[08:08]

Now we could try to imagine why this is the case, more so than other schools which use more textual study, etc. Zen is characterized by a continuous monitoring of your behavior. Not only by yourself, but also by your teacher. And not only by your teacher, but also by the whole Sangha.

[09:32]

So there's a kind of awareness develops in the Sangha that practices together of what each person is doing, what their states of mind are, and so forth. And a lot of the koans assume a monitoring by the teacher so he knows just when to interject a comment or interject a shout or something. And also in the koans it is said that this observation of the teacher is present and that he knows exactly in which moment he makes a comment or a word, a scream. And you can also understand the detailed behavioral ritual in Zen monastic practice.

[10:32]

Detailed behavioral ritual. As aids to help you monitor your behavior. That your ankles should always be that far apart and so forth. That your gassho is always, you know, this distance, this height. It's like you could put an egg under here. All of that is really arbitrary, somewhat arbitrary, but it helps you monitor your state of mind. Okay, so who's next here who has some kind of comment on the text?

[11:35]

For me, there are several steps during those days. These days? I can't do it. These and those, you don't distinguish so much in German, I guess. Those days could be the ten-year celebration, you know. These days, yeah. Okay. That's always a combination of what the text kind of... What inspires and what you've said, Roshika? Especially when there was this encouragement for volunteering.

[12:56]

And I volunteered and I had no idea what I volunteered for or what that meant, but I volunteered. And then I got busy with all these things, like Shiannas and scandals and so on. And then I kind of dealt or studied Vijnanas and Skandhas. And the text in combination with your comments really opened me towards a new field. And since years I've been trying to practice with the sense fields separately. Then suddenly to notice these are the vijnanas. And then it's through those suggestions I can go to step back into this mano-vijnana.

[14:13]

or finally gives me the opportunity to put an end to the lost and mixed, this fog cloud, as it stands here, to put an end to it, to dissolve it. that there is suddenly a possibility to put an end to this entanglement in the cloudy mind. And then, more or less, we say that these dharmas that appear and the experiences that we perceive And then I noticed that those dharmas and the experience fields and sense fields and mind fields that those give us an idea or suggest objectivity

[15:35]

So then this is like Like everything is actually happening at once in one moment, those fields. And if I then let the mind field or allow the mind field to create itself by itself, And then I think I'm standing at the threshold of what impermanence tries to teach or convey, what it wants to convey.

[16:53]

I can't get across. That's what Hande Witt says you have to turn 180 degrees to make out of Vijnana to turn it into Jnana. At that point I see I'm clinging to it again. Back into my ordinary reality. That part in... Handavit, you might read to me later. Yes, I did, and I don't understand it. Well, you can read it to me again so I can see what he's saying. I remember he said about 180 degrees, but becoming a jhana, I have to look and see what he means.

[18:15]

What of the various teachings you volunteered to present do you feel most comfortable presenting? All the vijnanas. Okay. So which of the things you have voluntarily explained to yourself to show, do you feel most comfortable with? And these are the Virginia Rases. German or? German, yes. Should I put that away? Then I can translate it simultaneously. It's not German, it's English. Take the torso chair right from here. The basis are the five senses, that's how I understand it.

[19:39]

That means seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, touching. These are the first five vijnanas. From them arise our sensual impressions. And Hanne Witt writes that it requires three conditions for this. First, that there is something there that can be seen, that there is the ability to see it at all, and then the ability to recognize what is seen, to become aware of it. But at the moment, as far as I understand it, it is not yet conscious. Yes, at that moment it is not yet conscious. Because now you know. which comes from Mars as a gift from the spirit, and only through this spirit, the consciousness, which is translated into German, this is also a problem.

[20:46]

The mind is often described as consciousness in the past. But only through this Manu-vijnana, through the consciousness, through the spirit, are these impressions of the mind perceived at all. ...registered. [...] And what's the best thing about it? What I found interesting, he says, the usual way we see it is that we see it as an entity, but you have to see it as an activity.

[21:54]

Also not that the focus is on the organs, but on the activity or ability of the higher field, the seafloor, the higher self. That's how I see it. Let me interject. I think helpful when you initially think about these things is really not to say it's mind or consciousness or anything, but just say it's a function within mind. This is a particular way of functioning in mind, and whether we call it mind or something is not important, it's a function. If you think about it, don't think about whether Manu is a spirit or consciousness or whatever you want to call it, but think that this is a special way of functioning of the spirit. Excuse me for interrupting. And what I found very exciting, which I didn't know yet, is that if you have your spiritual activity with the perception and the recognition of the impressions of the senses, it can go in two directions.

[23:09]

One would be One would be that in the Mano Vijnana, all the memories, all the ideas, the concepts, the wishes, the impressions, etc., that they are here in the Mano Vijnana and appear as a world of experience and mix with the five senses. And when they mix with the kleshas, and they mix the five senses plus the spirit field and plus the memories and so on Then it starts with what I described earlier, a kind of...

[24:16]

from where things originate. And you live in a normality that constantly confirms itself. He also says, this was also new for me, that all these memories and so on come from the Alaya Vishnu and that it is always there again and again. That would be another form of Vishnu. Yes, yes. And with Alaya, as I have understood it so far from your lectures, there is a non-ending range of possibilities of forms of impression, images, sensations, whatever can appear.

[25:19]

And my personal experience with it is that I love the Allaya Vishnu, it is my favorite Buddhist pot, because almost all of my stories that I create as a puppet performer myself, or that arise from me, come from images similar to daydreams, from impressions, fragments of emotion that seem to emerge from nowhere and partly complement each other, partly form into stories, because I then consciously implement them. And also, what I love is to inform my colleagues, and you really focus on what is happening with each other. Then things arise where I consciously never thought that I could think or say something like that. I could have never thought, I could think that when I say that.

[26:38]

It's unbelievable and freeing. And the right meaning is that it confirms itself. And you can always be stuck in this duality. Does it confirm itself or creates itself? He says it confirms itself. And also it feeds new. It confirms itself because you believe it is real. Reality. But real. This confirms it. All the things that come up from Alaya Vishniana that we think are our reality and we feed it again while we act out of this and feed it with new impressions.

[27:49]

When you say it goes back a step to this initial moment, when people don't mix it, do you see or in your mind, [...] Then you can go back a step and you can always go a little faster. That's the term you had there. And how clear it is. Ah yes, because it's all in English. Clear. Clear. It's a valid cognition. [...] Yes, because it has inspired me so much.

[29:07]

A few things struck me again that I had recently talked about in a small conversation. It often falls apart when one shares impressions, splits them up or separates them from one another. It must have been at least ten years ago. I was in one of these great autobahn men's toilets. The women don't know the house. You try to figure it out. And then I thought, because I had read it somewhere before, Sinnesweb, and so I thought, why now? I take a deep breath. And I take everything I smell now, without judgment, without discrimination. And at that moment, and that was before I came to the Jannishof and got to know Buddhism at all, suddenly a huge range of... [...] It's true.

[30:20]

Realness. And this is... We should demonstrate our own practice here. And that's what they're talking about from time to time with each singular sense field. And very independently from the... Just going to hearing and hearing is just one thing and the rest hasn't got anything to do with it. Now, thank you. Now, don't go away just yet. Does anybody have something you want to comment about this? Yes? Where's the awareness that I posit as? Let's leave that out for now. Because that's a category they don't use.

[31:24]

So we have to think about how that category may or may not fit in. But it's an essential question. We're going to understand how what I'm presenting relates to what the tradition is. But that's an important question, because then we can see how what I teach is related to the traditional. Christoph? As I understood it, and I don't know, maybe it's shown to me, perception itself is only possible in the combination of the five senses. The last fifth mental source, those six together, They kind of create the vijnanas, and then, I would say, you have the possibility of going into klesha, vijnana, or vijnana.

[32:31]

One thing, It stays unclear for me. And it sounds a theoretical question, but it has practical value for me. What is this mental source, or what actually is mind? Because we speak here under the precept that we assume that mind exists. And where does that show itself? How does it show itself? Well, let's try the first part. How do you... what do you say in relationship... like you said, first, the second part, I mean, that's a whole different question, it seems to me.

[33:43]

And, you know, I think Descartes saying, I think, therefore I am, is as critical... as criticized as that is in general, still, we know we're conscious because we think. To even say, am I conscious, is to prove that you're conscious. to prove that there's mind. I don't think that answers what you are not, but at least we have to start there. But why don't... We stick to what this is presented right now. Do you have any comments on what he said? When he said, where is mindfulness here? For me, on the one hand, Hande Witt wrote that Manu Vijayana Pur in itself is mindfulness, is the function or activity of mindfulness.

[34:57]

See as perception, then in this field there is area, which is fed from the sense fields, fed from alive memories and thought impressions. This remains my consciousness or activity of mind. Someone else? Yes. Not in my genes, not in my cells. I don't think we want to make the jump to a collective unconscious.

[36:30]

And as Jung proposed it, to me that's conceptually virtually identical to believing in God. And particularly to imagine that somehow Greek or Archetypes are universal. It doesn't mean we don't share all human sentient beings share some kind of inner resonant awareness, let's say. What do they share in it? Let's say a resonant awareness.

[37:36]

But part of the Abhidharma is to, in a way to use the word surgical, to remove any metaphysical ideas or any extension. Oh, this would be nice. No. All mythology, etc., it's not true in the... Some of the later Abhidharma, but the basic idea of the Abhidharma is to remove everything but your own experience. But it's not useful to call it a container. Again, what are we doing when we call it a container? We're viewing it from the outside.

[38:42]

I don't think we can develop this kind of system here of thinking about this without some viewing it from the outside, but as a kind of initial rigor in our discussion is let's not view it from the outside. Let's view everything as... Activity or function. And not as entities or... Okay, then... Can't I see this container thought also as a function, as something with which I am in a relationship?

[39:44]

Or at least an impression of it? From moment to moment I get into a relationship. Well, I think you could say that, if you want, that this function has a container-like function. Yeah, well, again, let me just use it. Wittgenstein says, I think I mentioned this. I just use him because I think I'd like to use Western sources, too. It sounds circular, but no matter where I am, I'm in a particular location. You can say there's no self or something like that, but in fact, everywhere you are is a particular location. And that sense of a particular location is a fundamental idea in Buddhist thinking, Zen thinking particularly.

[40:59]

So one reason... The Enso, the circle, is so important to paint the circle. That's why your lineage papers, those of you who have Araksu, the lineage paper is a circle. It goes from Buddha down through all these people, 90-some people, and me, and you, and then back to the Buddha. And it's a circle. Even though it's a circle like this, still, if you stretched it out, it would be a circle. So we're always in a particular field of activity, but there really are no definite boundaries to that field. For the unpampered rabbit Achilles, it was a container.

[42:15]

But anyway, yeah, someone else? Yeah? One can also, and that's how I saw it, see it as a process of information processing. And I understood the order a little bit differently than you. Maybe this is too confusing if I say that. Let's see in a little bit.

[43:19]

He says there are five sense fields in the sixth one, which we would conclude like a perception organ, however it is understood. They are concepts, emotions, and so on. And the task of Manu Vishnayana and all these fields of knowledge is the sixth field of perception. The task is to simply fill Manu Vishnayana with material. And Manu Vishayana is the level of consciousness. The problem with Manu Vishayana is that it doesn't necessarily discern what's right and wrong. And when I see my own process, I know inner spaces. These are just biographical background.

[44:35]

Nowhere. I am absolutely in my own world, living in it. I have explanations for what is happening, what is happening in this world, and feelings appear, and I can prove it all, and I am somehow aware of it. And if I am not in this world, I look at it from the outside, wouldn't I go back to that? And I remember such states. And I can see this is totally fictive right now. And I'll make two points. An example of something that I shall wish you never did, which is maybe no time, but an example of Watzlawicz. A hammer story. A man wants to hang up a baby, and he has no hammer. And he thinks his neighbor might have one. to remember that he had a strange situation with the neighbor.

[45:50]

In any case, the end of the story is, he goes to the neighbor and opens the door. The neighbor stands at the door and he says, keep your damn hammer. I don't want to have it. I don't know anything like that. I would like to place the Kveshavijjana before the Rangavijjana. I can really notice where everything is kind of complete, you know. When I am in this world, there are the enemies and I am bright. And that's what he says, that's a dual world. In this world, I can be conscious and I can perceive.

[46:57]

That's why I'd rather put this place up above the Mano, sort of. Okay. I mean, I think when we look at this, we want to rearrange it according to our own experience and see if... If that works, why did they do it this way? Somebody else want to comment? Yes? I find those technical lists very helpful. But it's also helpful because it somehow opens up because this is the way to look at it it's black or white and there's not that much in between it's just these are the terms and this is how the machine again this term is working but that opens up an understanding or appreciation of

[48:02]

more Zen term, for example, how it's called in the eyebrows. That takes away the container, that takes away the entities, that takes away a possibility to name it. It's just something, it's just a state of mind, holding a state of mind, and this puts that in another relation to my own experience, yeah. Could you give us the statement about the eyebrows? Do you want me to say it? Let me see if I get it. Yeah, it's in the eyes it's called seeing, and the ears it's called hearing, and the nose it's called smelling. No, just the first two. The eyes it's called hearing. And how is it called in the eye? What is it called in the eye? What is it called in the eye? That's a typical Zen comment on the laya vijjana. It's Deutsch, glaube ich. Yes, I think such exhibitions are very helpful because they also correspond to my way of thinking and my approach.

[49:14]

But I think you really have to say that it has something of entities and of containers. It offers that, that you put it in there. But if you ask a question like that, seeing and hearing in the eyes, how do you call it, with the eyes, then... Yeah, and that koan also has the phrase, in the moment before thought arises. Yeah. Gerald? I want to also, we have to sort of wind up here, but I'd also like if anybody, one or two people, have a comment on how this can help practice.

[50:25]

I just wanted to add to that. When you presented the Jñānas years ago, I started practicing with these sense fields, especially with the hearing and the eyesight. And it made a huge difference to look or hear at it in terms of fields and How? Space, space. So, for example, if I hear, I now hear the sound within a space, and that makes a big difference. So I can hear 360 degrees and maybe visually have a field of 200 or 220, but more than I used to have. So that's one thing, and if that... The other thing I wanted to mention is

[51:29]

For a long time it sounded to me as if it is kind of a fixed storehouse where all my memory is stored and so it comes up from nowhere, not knowing how it came up. and it was mixed with the sense fields and the thinking. It was quite a confusion, although you had explained everything. And in the last, I don't know, two years, I realized that I can look at my memories and what comes up in terms of what would I like to water of that that comes up and what would i like to have more dried and not grow so and so that gives me a tool to uh to change it actually yeah so the

[53:02]

where something is being raised up, such as memories and old things, which then came up, mixed with the fields of senses and also with the spirit. And only in the last one or two years did I realize that I can take this memory, that which comes up, so to speak, and I can water one, and I can remove the water from the other. And so I can directly influence it. In this context, I always find it very, very important that all these things that come from Malaya Bishara, and so on, and that one feels as a memory, that one sees that this is now, this is at this moment, this is an appearance of the moment now, because otherwise one can ... Do you support this sequence of time, the history of the past, the fears of the future, and so on? When you say that everything that appears now in my mind, I have a completely different feeling.

[54:14]

or a very different perception. Can I say a second thing? Yes, to the thoughts, because the point was, before the thoughts arise, several have already mentioned that when you describe the thoughts as a field, as a space field, then you are no longer bound by your spiritual identification in your thoughts. You can see with a clearer observation or a clearer perception that the thoughts also take care of themselves, just as the hearing takes care of itself, and the feeling takes care of itself, and so on. We need antidotes to our habits of thinking.

[55:26]

And we tend to think again in the habit of containers. And Freud's concept of the unconscious is a container concept. So we want to contradict that thinking just to free ourselves from that. No, I'm emphasizing it. As an antidote, I'm also emphasizing it is really a way to explore. Maybe it is much more like this. It's not just an antidote. So it's also we have a habit in the way we speak and think of imagining things from the outside. Now, when you say it, when we say in English, it rains, this basically is an imagination of the raining from the outside.

[56:48]

As if there's a doer of the rain. And in this very same way, when you say, and one of the scientists at this meeting could not, no matter how smart he is and how much he thinks about these things, how much he agrees, can't get away from who does it. And with this scientist last week, he was very, very intelligent. But no matter what, he didn't manage to get rid of the question of who causes it, who does it. It's a category error. There is nothing outside. So another way to kind of have an antidote view is this is all inside. There is no outside. We're walking around in the stomach of the world.

[57:51]

And we're trying to avoid being digested too quickly. And what would follow from that in this... And what then would follow? Sukhirashi... No, that's another anecdote. Okay. Now, I asked you to stay here while we're discussing this because your presence, I think, helps us stay with the topic. Yeah. And one thing I'd like to add, one useful way to look at this As if it's an hourglass. And the upper portion, let's say, could be either, but upper portion is the five senses. And at the neck is a manas. And the lower part is the alaya vishnana.

[59:30]

And this visual image, looking at it this way, helps you see that the manas is where it all has to go through. Now, you have two aspects here. Manas is not only mind or the functioning, this editing function, discriminating function, filtering, but mind is also accompanies every sense. Now what is the difference between the mind that accompanies each sense that accompanies hearing or seeing and the mind which edits? Now, let's play with this idea of blindside again. If someone throws me a ball and I catch it, it's taken a rather complex calculation to know the arc and put my hand where the ball is going to land.

[60:49]

That's outside of consciousness. It happens very rapidly. Consciousness isn't fast enough to do that. One of my definitions of awareness is it's faster than mind. Now, it would be interesting if I could play with Helen, the chimpanzee, I would throw a ball to her and see if she caught it. And that means that blindsight is making a calculation. Now, when I pointed this out a couple of times, because as Evelyn noticed with some startlement yesterday, my cuckoo clock... And some of the neighbors below us I hear complain about the cuckoo clock.

[62:16]

But in every residence I have to honor the long winters of the Black Forest, I have a cuckoo clock. You all understand the association? Well, clocks were invented in Italy and... I don't know. A long time ago. And they were made of metal. And no one could afford metal except the upper classes. So the smart folks, poor folks living in the black forest with nine months of winter carved the insides of the clocks of wood, not of metal.

[63:35]

So all over the world, Moscow, Tokyo, the first clocks everyone had were black forest clocks, because they were wood, they were cheap. And then when metal clocks became cheap, black horse clocks became schmaltzy. Is that the right word? And they started carving the outside instead of carving the inside. So I don't know. Anyway, I find that... The cuckoo came into? No. Only that the cuckoo came into or the cuckoo was already into before? I don't know exactly. The cuckoo was early. The cuckoo was early, yeah.

[64:39]

They had a lot of different things that didn't. They had a whole range of small figures who did all kinds of things there, even earlier. I don't know if... If you want to get up now. Thank you for sitting there for so long. Thank you for sitting there for so long. One story I've heard is that when you hear a cuckoo, a real cuckoo, which you hear around here sometimes, you're supposed to wish, you can make a wish when you hear the cuckoo if you're quick enough. So since most of us aren't quick enough, we put it in a clock. Most of us aren't quick enough, so we put it in a clock. And every hour you can make a wish. And this little boy, what's his name? Janosch, the kid of Bernhard and Julia.

[65:42]

I told you this story before. But we have a little wooden whistle that imitates very effectively a cuckoo. And he was, what, two or something like that? And so I gave him this little whistle and showed him how to use it, and he went, woo-woo, woo-woo, and it worked. And just at that moment, the cuckoo clock came out and went, woo-woo, woo-woo, and it worked. And he stumbled back as if he'd seen Krishna's mother and seen the world in the mouth. He stumbled back and said, I called it forth, I called it forth. So then I had to spend about 20 minutes turning the clock every time.

[66:50]

Okay, when you see, if you do with this... Well, first of all, simply, if you see that our mental processor is constructs, we can change the construction or unconstruct. If we see that our mental... If we see our mental structures, our structures, our constructs, wow, we can do something about it. We're not given at birth, we're not, you know... That's a tremendous insight. And it's why Buddhism is a mindology and not a psychology. We don't have to go back into the past to rearrange all the parts so they work better. We can just change it. Okay, so now we're going to change it.

[68:09]

Well, we have to see what the structure is. So this gives us a chance to see how the structure. And if you see it, if we take this image of the hourglass, if we see Manas is there, hey, maybe we can do something about Manas or change its location or make it wider, make it like this instead of like this. Then we have to explore that in our own experience. Now, of course, I'm listening, as Gerhard said yesterday, as through Marie-Louise as the translator, you said our mind is involved with or something like that. or not involved.

[69:12]

In English, you can't say it's not involved, but you could say it's not identified with. In English you can't say it's not involved, but you can say it's not identified. I don't want to discuss that now. We want to be careful about what words we use. And you said that this happens by itself, sort of something like that. That's true, and that's why, again, we can say Zazen practice is uncorrected mind. But we create or are the way it happens by itself. So it doesn't happen by itself as if there was some outside agent doing it.

[70:29]

Which in extreme form is a kind of schizophrenia. So... Yeah. Now, just one little... Maybe I should stop. I don't want to stop. You do, but you don't. I don't want to, because it's such fun to be here. I'm sorry I didn't join you for... but since my radiation, I really can't function unless I have at least seven hours of sleep. But it's a lot better. For a while, I couldn't function unless I had eight or nine hours of sleep.

[71:31]

Okay.

[71:32]

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