This is one of the ways Dogen defines zazen. This is one of the ways Dogen defines zazen. This is one of the ways Dogen defines zazen. So the whole body studies everything including the great path of the complete body. You can understand that. Dharma path, entire body. This is the definition. He also defines zazen as

[01:21]

These are all definitions of Shikantaza. meaning just sitting or single-mindedly sitting. Now in this statement there's an assumption of somatic intelligence. Or bodily intelligence. Because the entire body is the path. So this is sitting concentrated just on the act of sitting. It's something like the mountain walking. And Dogen says, if you doubt the mountains walking, you doubt your own walking.

[03:16]

So what I'm trying to get at here is this sense of uncorrected mind, which Dogen and our lineage, or my lineage, has taken as the highest teaching to be directly induced. So again, I'm throwing things out.

[04:23]

Dignaga again said that perception is cognition free of conceptualization. Cognition free of conceptualization. Knowing directly without conceptualization. And Nagarjuna talks about knowing when that which is known is not found. And that's one way he defines emptiness. So it seems like because it's something weird, it's part of what we're talking about, and it's come up several times, I think I should try to give you a conceptual and experiential definition of emptiness.

[05:35]

Emptiness. You think I know German, I don't. Just guessing. Could you say more about the practice of uncorrected mind? I'm trying. Yeah. And the practice of uncorrected mind includes all the problems of practicing uncorrected mind. It includes the effort to find out what this could possibly mean.

[06:53]

Or to think non-thinking. As Dogen says. So in some ways these statements are meant to not be an explanation but as a seed of discovery. Vasubandhu says something like, that which appears is interdependent. That which is perceived or cognized is constructed. And that this kind of observation is essential to all of Buddhism. That everything just appears independently, but as soon as you know it, you're constructing it.

[07:59]

So it means that we want to be involved in the act of construction. And without this, there's no enlightenment. It's knowing that it's an act of construction which allows you to construct differently. Or to go back to talking about civilization and culture, civilization has an amazing persistence. Tens of thousands of years of these stories, for instance, about these... The Amerindians off the coast of Seattle.

[09:17]

Amerindians? American Indians. Amerindians. Mm-hmm. But they also say that the Amerindians did not see the ships of Columbus. They'd never seen anything like this. So they were docked right off the coast, but they didn't see it for days that there was anything docked there. I don't know. Supposedly they thought it was shadows or something. They didn't quite know what it was. So they just ignored it. Until Columbus stumbled ashore. Yeah. Saying, I've discovered you.

[10:30]

No, thank you. So there's this amazing persistence of culture. But like us, culture is rooted in intention. There's an amazing persistence of our sense of identity and continuity. But it's still rooted in views which we've intended or can intend. And the individual can be transformed through changing his or her views. And likewise, society can be transformed in a very short time if the fundamental views of a society are transformed.

[11:33]

So you have this amazing persistence accompanied by an astonishing fluidity or flexibility that's there too. So the Genjo Koan, to complete that which appears. Okay, we have this sense in the Abhidharma, in all Buddhism, as the momentariness.

[12:43]

That things just appear. so you can close your eyes and you open them and there's, close your eyes and you open them and everything is there. But it's assumed in Buddhism that that's actually the way it functions. As you're constantly coming into standing, You're constantly coming into being. And of course, practically speaking, the more you experience yourself as coming into being, The idea of death as the big end is not the same kind of fact. There's a coming into being, and sometimes it's stronger, more vital, sometimes it's less.

[13:43]

Sometimes it's more vivid, sometimes less. So instead of Buddhism as an abhidharmic teaching, instead of emphasizing the continuity, emphasize the momentariness, and emphasizes the momentariness for philosophical reasons because in fact everything is changing and for therapeutic reasons because in fact it will help heal us to know this And for sociological reasons, because it's the root of enlightenment. Is there a difference between coming into being and appearing? For us, no.

[15:20]

I mean, what appears is the possibility of coming into being. So, in a sense, what Dogen would say is that you complete each moment. So there's a perfecting or completing of each moment. And only when you complete each moment you come into being. So in that sense we have the distinction between what Vasubandhu makes between everything that appears as interdependent but the cognition of it is coming into being. If that's what you meant.

[16:22]

Okay, so let me give you one thing I've been speaking about a lot recently. is bringing your attention and energy equally to each moment. That's another practice as essential and a further step in bringing attention to your breathing. You're bringing your attention then into the washing machine of the present. And I say washing machine so you don't think the present is just some passive thing.

[17:38]

To bring your attention into the present does something to you. But when you do it unequally, you're actually bringing the attention to mental space. You're bringing it to what's important to you. Dogen also defines zazen as going there, go there. Coming here, come here. Without gap. So this is a way of speaking to bring your attention equally to each thing.

[18:39]

And this is uncorrected mind as well. Because what appears you, okay, that's what I am just now. You don't say, oh, this is not really zazen. I should be doing something important here. What appears is what appears. And we value what appears without saying, oh, this is less, this is not important. Now, it... It means you're going to go through a period of a lot of boredom. Because that's what appears. This is pretty dreary. I'd rather listen to the radio. But you've got to develop the habit, even with ego trying to bore you, The habit of bringing your attention equally to each thing.

[19:52]

And if you can bring your habit equally to each thing enough times, it breaks holes in the conduit of future-oriented conduit of discriminative thought. I mean, as long as you're in this sort of conduit, conduit? Pipe. It's kind of boring. After a while, the water gets thinner and thinner, and it's just metal, and there's a few rats, you know. So you just bring it, what's this rat doing here? He got in here somewhere. Where's the hole? So you see, oh, big space. Through the rat hole.

[20:52]

Yeah. Because bringing your attention equally to each thing dissolves this conduit. And then really each day is a good day. These statements make it just obvious. Each moment is quite fine. And then it's quite easy to say, you know, between happiness and unhappiness, happiness is the much better choice.

[22:01]

But suddenly you have a choice. But you have a choice through this practice of bringing your attention equally and energy equally to each what appears. So this is dharma, dharma practice, the momentariness of each moment, of what appears in our senses, what appears from our storehouse consciousness. And the storehouse consciousness is not just a kind of dead old warehouse. It's a maturation. It's a place where our experiences are matured. It's where the seeds of our experience, it's where the dross of our experience turns into the seeds of enlightenment.

[23:18]

When you do... Thresh, the wheat, the stuff that falls out. Okay, so there's a sense, what does it mean to complete? To see each particular as universal is also to bring your attention equally.

[24:20]

If you bring your attention equally to each thing, you're changing the surfaces in which you live. And you're beginning to trust just being alive. You're trusting this immense body of the whole earth. And your own being within it. See if I can remember Yamada Momon Roshi, my teacher in Japan. See if I can remember what he said. He said, the single most important thing for us to know is that the entire universe world is functioning to make this moment possible for you.

[25:40]

This is again an easy kind of thing to forget. But we forget then the miracle of being here at all. So there's a kind of a profound trust involved in this practice of uncorrected mind. Now this moment of just what appears is immediately constructed.

[27:02]

And what attitudes can we bring to this moment? What views? What intentions? Which most most beneficially construct this which appears, so it is healing and revealing. So this is the matrix of what I meant by transforming the present.

[28:04]

Again, the present isn't just kind of a here. It's a here that's constantly appearing and changing in you. And it's absolutely unique. And when you don't know its uniqueness, it means you have a subtle belief in permanence. So somewhere, some idea of permanence is working in you, which prevents you from being present to the uniqueness. And you get bored. Of course, we're all going to be bored now and then.

[29:05]

Our mind is constructed that way in its habits. But we can find ourselves in living, finding ourselves almost, find ourselves very close to it not being possible to be bored. Then we're closer then to Dogen saying the entire body, the all-inclusive, the entire body studies all inclusively the dharma path of the entire body.

[30:08]

Now, although we cannot do that all the time, not until you're a Buddha at least, it can be something you approach or touch in your zazen. Or in your practice of mindfulness. Now, what's interesting, to go back to our original statement, when... Now, we emphasize in our ordinary thinking, I think, the duration of time more than the timeliness of time. Generally in yoga cultures, when they speak about time, they mean timeliness.

[31:10]

There's a moment when things are possible. And it's not about... correct or uncorrect or right or wrong. If you wait until it can be correct or right or wrong, then you're in duration of time. Timeliness means, I don't know if this is right or wrong, but this is the time. This is the time to do this And you don't stop and think, well, is this right or wrong? No, this is the time is telling you to do it.

[32:13]

So arises. So arises. So this statement doesn't mean when you have a healthy conscious attitude all the time. It means momentarily you may have a healthy conscious attitude. That is linked to knowledge. That is permeated with serenity. but is in the feeling of sensuous related embodied space because everything happens in that kind of time not this kind of time we die in this kind of moment it's not measurable the flu takes a long time

[33:13]

Death is like that. So, it's like that Alzheimer's joke. The Alzheimer's joke is you go to the doctor and the doctor says, I told you, it's a dumb joke. The doctor says, you want the good news or the bad news? Something like that. The bad news is you have Alzheimer's. The good news is you're going to forget it. So... So... So death is like that. The bad news is you're going to die. The good news is you're going to forget it. So a wisdom view is to shift ourselves into noticing momentariness and timeliness rather than duration.

[34:25]

It doesn't mean that, again, it's not saying duration is wrong exactly. It's not a useful way to plan your schedule. But in terms of how we actually exist and how we're most going to heal ourselves, it's best to see things in their momentariness. So the positive thing here is that is to create a situation where just momentarily this healthy attitude is there. Because those are the moments where things turn. So I'll say one more thing.

[36:12]

One more? As you know, I've often said that that We have three minds. So we can say it's something like this. And this is, let's put consciousness at the top. Or waking mind. And let's put dreaming sleep and non-dreaming deep sleep.

[37:14]

Okay? That's what we're born with. And they don't communicate so much with each other. So Zazen... I'll have to get it later. Oh, I got it. So Zazen is a fourth mind that's constructed from wisdom. We can say that, yes, it's some kind of substratum mind or something like that. But that's kind of philosophy and it may be useful and may not be useful. Buddhism is a wisdom teaching created by human beings. Because it's something human beings have discovered living together.

[38:24]

And practicing, it's not born. And we can imagine cultures without this wisdom teaching, a different kind of teaching. But this wisdom teaching says, discover, generate a fourth mind. So, this is the fourth mind. And we can call that Zazen. Okay. Now, what happens when you're doing Zazen? Is that sometimes Zazen partakes of waking mind and sometimes it partakes of dreaming sleep and sometimes it partakes of non-dreaming deep sleep and so while you're doing zazen these aspects of mind are coming into it

[39:44]

Are you following my little picture? So you're doing Zazen, but sometimes you're thinking about this and that. And sometimes it's kind of dreamy and there's a lot of images and it's like being in a conscious dream. And sometimes it's I don't know, unconscious, solidified, or like samadhi. And it's like, then like non-dreaming deep sleep. So it begins to... And so all of that's zazen. You can't say only this is zazen. And it's interesting that in Hinduism, vijnana means... Absolute truth manifested in... Absolute truth realized in the manifest world.

[41:02]

And that's... And not just in samadhi. Okay. So, Vijnanas comes to mean something rather different, a little bit rather different in Buddhism. But still, basically it's the same, to not just realize through some special state of mind, but in the everyday perceptual world. So that's one reason it's important that zazen partake of all these, it's not just samadhi or something. And if you're correcting your mind too much, you're trying to emphasize samadhi or something. So the basic correction is to sit in a way that allows you to have some experience of this fourth mind.

[42:18]

To have a posture that's neither sleeping nor waking. posture which induces a mind that doesn't normally come in waking, dreaming, deep sleep. Yes, sir? So it's as long as you don't drop from the self with something. That's right. Because what happens to me very often in the early morning is that I'm dreaming about, and the border between dreaming and really sleeping is very fine. Very thin. Of course, that's exactly the reason We have scheduled zazen before the sun comes up usually and before you're fully awake.

[43:41]

Because we want you to enter into that area where you're usually asleep and you begin to bring consciousness into it. So there's other times to do zazen, but the most productive all in all, if you have no other choice, is just after you wake up. Or perhaps just before you wake up. And also to get up before the sun comes up. Is to make yourself the center. We don't get up because the sun gets up. We get up because we get up. And the sun gets up because it gets up. That's the sun's business.

[44:46]

Our business is to get up. It's that kind of feeling. Okay, so then what happens, of course? Which one do you use? There begins to be a movement this way. Okay, so zazen begins to permeate these three. Your waking mind begins to have a quality of stability or a meditative mind permeating it. And your dreaming mind begins to have more and more lucidity.

[45:47]

You can walk in and talk to somebody and they stay completely asleep and they have a conversation with you and everything and it's just like a dream. I mean they know they're talking to you but it doesn't disturb their sleep. They can notice the external room the same way as they can notice a lucid dream. So... What? Practical. Yes, it's very practical, particularly if you have a baby sleeping with you. You don't want to roll over on... And the early teaching in Vedic, Indian background before Buddhism was that this non-dreaming deep sleep is actually a state of blissfulness.

[47:12]

Which we need every day in our life. But we forget it more completely than we forget our dreams. And that Zazen, or this fourth mind, is a remembering... of the bliss of not dreaming deeply. And what happens is you begin to have more and more this blissfulness start coming into you. For no reason, you just feel blissful. Your breathing just feels ecstatic. Or some kind of unusual pleasure. Or a moment ago you were hoping the bell would ring.

[48:16]

And now you hope it never rings. And that might be a very small moment when you hope it never rings. But then you don't say, oh, that was only a small moment. You don't know how things exist when you say that. Everything exists as a small moment. So what happens is, if I draw this again, if I draw it from the top, we're looking down on this now. You see, looking down on three things, okay?

[49:38]

Okay, does that make sense? Then, zazen mind is right here beside this, right? So, we're looking down, right? Zazen mind is really next to it, we're all architects. And zazen mind begins creeping behind all of them. And pretty soon you begin to have a background mind or foundational mind that's underneath all of these. So first there's this kind of double flow here, and then it begins to creep around it. And really, we could have drawn these, of course, more like this. Because these are... These actually aren't fixed boundaries.

[50:58]

They're kind of floating boundaries. Which allows this permeation to occur. And it allows this to transform the present sufficiently so that you can reconstruct the present. So each moment that arises, you're beginning to perfect it or complete it from Zazen mind rather than just one of these three. And it's been discovered that you can develop this more by bringing your attention to your breath throughout the day.

[52:15]

For some reason, the more you bring your attention to your breath, the more you move yourself into an embodied space And the more you move yourself into an embodied space, it supports this fourth mind permeating the other three minds. Now, in a way, this Zazen mind is most like non-dreaming deep sleep. As a field of mind rather than contents of mind. As you said earlier. Okay, so how you realize this field of mind...

[53:17]

This is to bring your attention in effect away from the contents of mind. And the first step in that is to bring your attention equally to whatever contents that are there. Because just as there's no consciousness in non-dreaming deep sleep, there's a knowing in non-dreaming deep sleep. But it's not a knowing we can know. Or it's not a knowing we can cognize, at least. But by practicing Zazen, you begin practicing uncorrected mind You begin to develop the ability to know without cognizing. So first we have this process of nijnaga. Perceiving without... Perception is cognition without conception.

[54:32]

And now we have knowing without cognition. Okay, so my last drawing here is eventually what you come to. is these three. Looking down on them. Are completely surrounded by Vajrayana. And then this would be considered the Dharmakaya and this would be considered manifesting these from this.

[55:58]

So I thought I could just use a simple drawing to show you how the fourth mind begins to permeate the other three and then become the substratum for the other three. And the key to that is uncorrected mind. Now in a similar way, we could look at the vijnanas, which we've discussed in the past, and the skandhas, because it's similarly related to this way of looking at things.

[56:59]

And if we want to, we can do. I can draw little drawings of that later, but we don't have to. Maybe now is a good time to take a few minutes of sitting. And this sense of bliss.

[58:54]

Which I think we need in our life. And we need a sense of timelessness as well. This sense of bliss is the center of what is meant by a healthy, conscious attitude. Belonging to a world of connectedness, sensuous connectedness. We can feel in our breath, in our body, accompanied by serenity, linked to knowledge. And it's not just because bliss feels good.

[60:30]

It's also because bliss is the avenue of wisdom. The avenue of intelligence. The avenue of compassion. This bliss of non-dreaming deep sleep or original mind is waiting to seep into us.

[64:20]

if we stop interfering with it. And uncorrected mind is the practice of not interfering. Of profoundly leaving ourself alone. Thank you, Din, for translating.

[65:48]

Thank you. Thank you for finding everything funny. Okay. Chow down. Do I have to say something? Please don't point it out when I'm late. Okay. Now, I, of course, would like some feeling for the discussion you had, whether it was fruitful or... I know you can't recapitulate it, but I'd like to know, you know, something.

[67:06]

I would like to know if the discussion was useful for you. And I know you can't recapitulate everything, but of course I would like to know a little bit. and what came up that we might follow up on. Is the rug here made of loden cloth? What I would be interested in from our discussion at the very beginning was the question whether the sasen, which Richard described, whether Richard really means the practical sitting and the, so to speak, the activity of the sasen, or whether it describes a state that is always realized everywhere and is always realized.

[68:17]

whether it is something that we do in everyday life as well. What came up in our group at the beginning was what you meant with Zazen here is that a state of mind that can be present with all kinds of activities in our everyday life and so forth. Or do you mean the gate to this Zazen mind is through the body, through the actual posture, or through the activity of Zazen in Zen practice? necessary beginning. Zazen mind is a mind, a state, a mode of mind independent of zazen. However, It is in human experience virtually impossible to sustain a knowing of zazen mind without doing zazen.

[69:43]

To study, observe, develop, mature this mode of mind is virtually impossible without doing meditation. I'm sorry. It's just the way it is. Well, in our group, we tried to approach Dharma therapists in the second part. What does it mean?

[70:44]

What could it mean? And my idea was that we weren't quite clear. And this came to the point where the three these three parts of teaching on reality, what was the second healing, and enlightenment. The importance went to focus on what? That got a little confused. To me, I thought I had understood, but I didn't. Maybe it would be nice to follow up on that. So in this group we have tried to understand what a therapist can mean. And we came to these three elements of teaching related to reality, healing and enlightenment.

[71:47]

And it was not quite clear what they were. Well, the way Buddhism is usually taught, I should say, especially the way Zen is usually taught, it almost entirely emphasizes the soteriological or realisational aspect. And as a style, And as a predominant emphasis, it undermines Zen as a practice almost entirely.

[73:10]

It turns it into some cartoon of enlightenment. Now, this may not be the case in a Buddhist culture, where the assumptions of the culture support practice. and where in an apprentice-like contact between teacher and disciple, there's an immense amount of implied knowledge. But in general, my experience is even in the West, when the realisational aspects are primarily emphasised, I mean even in Asia, when the realisational aspects are primarily emphasised, most people actually don't know what they're doing.

[74:23]

And even when enlightenment is an experience, they don't really know how to pass it on, how to mature other people. Does what I said just make sense? Okay. So actually I think for us it's beneficial, both as Westerners and as practitioners, To emphasize the philosophical and therapeutic aspects. And they're almost inseparable from each other. And you can study Buddhism very thoroughly, philosophically and therapeutically, without too much emphasis on the soteriological aspect.

[75:37]

We could discuss then how embryonic enlightenment comes into play anyway. Yeah, but that's a different discussion. I think that the greatest weakness of Western Buddhism is the unwillingness to recognize, the disinclination to recognize the tremendous degree that Buddhism is an intellectual, philosophical teaching. It always amuses me, actually. How people complain about the intellectual aspects of Buddhism. Well, they may study chemistry or physics or medicine or something, and they're tremendously involved in this, but they don't think they have to make the same kind of effort at Buddhism.

[77:18]

Somehow we have a deeply ingrained prejudice that religion should be grace or offered us in some kind of muse-like insight. The alternative is cold, hard, and a lot of shouting. If you don't want the intellectual part, you know, okay, then I'll put you in a cold room for months at a time and I'll shout at you. That probably works, but you get arrested in America. For abuse or assault or something.

[78:25]

I mean, maybe I've overstated the case, but I don't think so. Okay, what else? What else? And let me say that in regard to that, what I'm questioning myself now is into what level of detail shall I go into in this seminar. We've gone into a fair amount of detail, more detail than usual. But we can go into several more layers of detail than we've touched yet.

[79:25]

At some point, it gets hard to hold these distinctions. In fact, at some point, the distinctions can't be held unless you've already experienced them in meditation. So at some point, until you have certain yogic skills, there's no point talking about something. Okay, so what else from your discussion? We discussed the difference between a dharma therapist and a psychotherapist and the boundary between it.

[80:49]

And one difference we thought was maybe the dharma therapist is not interested in the content but in the structure of mind. Yeah, and there was also a question we had. Yeah, more or less I'd say that's true, but I don't know if I'd say content, I might say story or history or something. For example, if I knew as much about psychotherapy as I know about Buddhism, And I thought that it was a good way to work with people in a one-to-one therapeutic basis or small group or whatever.

[81:52]

At this moment, I think I would offer people the choice of Dharma therapy or psychotherapy. Or a mixture. And I would be as clear as I could about it. Say they presented a certain kind of problem to me. I'd say, well, okay, you've asked for a mixture. But this we have to work on with psychotherapy first. At some point I'd say, okay, now to get a hold on this point and clarify it, now let's switch and do Dharma therapy. And I'd say, let's work on this for a few months in this way.

[82:55]

Anyway, that's what I imagine at this moment. So please, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Yeah. Yeah, we talked about this point. Mm-hmm. A psychotherapist is determined to solve a problem, and the Dhamma therapist, or the attitude behind it, has the solution or liberation of this solution in his eyes. Could it be that a psychotherapist is mainly interested and involved in finding a solution with a client, and that the Dharma therapist more looks behind the solution, toward the attitude behind the solution, or tries to free the client from the attachment to the solution?

[84:21]

Let's say a solution, a second generation solution, second generation or a second order. Well, I think that I don't know, of course, quite what you mean by the words you've used through her. But I think that what you say could be the case. But I would certainly imagine, and when I see people in Doksan, etc., I'm trying to work toward a solution with people, though I'm working with Dharma. And I already do something like we just talked about in the sense that If somebody presents a problem to me, for instance, there is a very intelligent young person who I saw a year or so ago, who is in tremendous, almost incapacitating fear about entering university.

[85:38]

And I saw, you know, there were certainly psychological roots to her fear. But I saw that she could probably get behind, she had the capacity to get behind the fear and free herself from it. So I suggested some Dharma practices which would let her do that, and she came to me this year and was very successful in her first year at the university and completely free of the fear. And she said that it was what I had suggested to her that accomplished this for her. But if she'd... If I didn't think a Dharma therapy would work, I would have suggested she go see a psychotherapist.

[87:01]

And let me refine that comment a minute, a little bit. I know a moderate amount about psychotherapy. And I can certainly give people psychological advice. But my tendency almost always is not to. Because it's the craft of psychotherapy I think they need, not psychological advice. And the interactive craft of psychotherapy I don't know much about. So I resist the temptation of using psychological knowledge and suggest they see a psychotherapist because of the craft of psychotherapy.

[88:11]

Does that make sense? And also I'm reinforced in that because I clearly see the difference between someone who knows the... has even great knowledge about Buddhism and doesn't know much about the craft of Buddhism. I recently looked at several translations of Dogen. And clearly the most brilliant, I mean you have to say this person's a genius, Yeah, and who knows the most languages and so forth. Has the weakest translation of key points. Because he has no sense of how it's held together by practice itself. Nor does he translate key phrases into an English that you can practice with.

[89:39]

Anyway, yeah. So what else? What else? What else? I would like to start in German. Please, oh yeah, I... We got to a point in our group that concerned me further. And many others, but that's one point that concerns me further. We know, as we wanted, in our work with our clients, a situation where we... I don't know if I can say it like this, but it all adds up. When you translate it like this... I prefer you to do it. Go ahead. I prefer you to do it. Go ahead. I also know, at least from sitting, from the concrete practice of Zazen.

[90:58]

And there is somewhere, I ask, there is somewhere a key piece in between, for me, between psychotherapy and daumatherapy. And at the same time, of course, there is also the question, what actually happens at this point, where everything ends in this way? Peter was talking about that in his experience. in the work with his clients that in psychotherapy there's always a moment where something, you know, stops or something, you know, something really, you feel you leave the territory of psychotherapy. And he also has this experience, similar experience in his own practice. You know, you work on certain themes and you practice and all of a sudden there's a moment of stopping or a moment of turning inward and it's like the experience of a gap.

[92:10]

And the question now is, I mean, how are these gaps related? And how can we use the experience of these gaps more consciously in order to help somebody who is in psychotherapy or in one's own practice to change levels or to enter these different spaces? It's not so much.

[92:39]

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