So I'm grateful you take the time to come on a Sunday morning to talk like this. And I'm always interested if on an occasion like this if we can come into some feeling for the Dharma. We have this topic today. The alchemy of mindfulness. Now I'm going to assume that Many of you, some of you don't know too much about Buddhism.

[01:05]

And I'm going to assume that those of you who are adepts will not mind a review. Yeah. So the Diamond Sutra, one of the main teachings in Buddhism in general, particular Mahayana Buddhism, starts out in a very simple way. The Buddha, a human person, Buddha, a human person, goes into town and does the begging for his meal. He returns and eats his meal and washes his bowls and washes his feet

[02:06]

And sits down like this. Holding his body, lifting his body upright. And intently establishes his mindfulness. Mm-hmm. Now this is the kind of formula that occurs at the beginning of many of what purport to be the Buddhist teachings. But it's a formula that's meant to be performed. It's a formula, maybe an alchemical formula. So he goes to town, he eats, he washes his feet. And then he sits down lifting his body, holding his body upright and establishes his mindfulness.

[03:55]

Now we can understand from this line he establishes his mindfulness That he's not always blissed out. Traditionally we'd say transported by rapture. Sounds good. But blissed out, we'd say, in America today. But he's, again, not always blissed out. He establishes his mindfulness. And he does it by intention.

[05:12]

He has some participation in his state of mind. Mind and personality and so forth are not just givens. They're not something you're locked into. It's something you can establish, participate in. So this is the beginning of a considered one of the most profound teachings within Buddhism. But the source, the way the sutra begins, the source of the teaching is this upright sitting. and established mindfulness.

[06:34]

You can almost think of this posture, this mental and physical posture as a lens. So he goes to town, he eats, he washes his feet. These just represent the ordinary, normal things we do. But since in Buddhism, and one reason it fits in pretty well with other religions, is that... There's only this life we have here. So if there's some teaching, religious teaching, spiritual teaching, it has to be here in our ordinary life.

[07:36]

What turns our ordinary life, though, into teaching? Or turns it into rapture. Rapture? Any? Bliss? Joy? Everything good? Okay. And that's the alchemy of mindfulness. The transformative grounding of mindfulness. Yeah, how do we get there though? We already know something about mindfulness.

[08:39]

But what does this great figure, human figure of a Buddha mean by mindfulness? First of all, this posture itself is a form of mindfulness. Physical mindfulness. Mm-hmm. And this posture of mindfulness is not just this kind of cross-legged sitting. It can be any posture. It can be right now in your chair. What would make any posture we have a posture of mindfulness?

[09:42]

Was macht eine jede beliebige Haltung zu einer Haltung von Achtsamkeit? I don't know. Let's see. Maybe you say you're just about to go to a job interview. Nehmen wir mal an, Sie stehen kurz davor zu einem Bewerbungsgespräch zu gehen. Or perhaps you just heard a strange sound. Oder Sie haben ein merkwürdiges Geräusch gehört. And you want to be prepared or ready. What is that? So I'm trying to give you a feeling for what would be meant by a mindful posture. It would have a feeling of being ready. Of being alert. And also relaxed. and absorbing. You can include what happens.

[10:57]

There's a feeling of roundness to it. You feel what's around you. This particular meditative posture, cross-legged sitting posture, is a good way to get a feeling for this posture. Or a feeling for this physical mindfulness. And it's a posture which is not waking and Ordinary waking posture, not ordinary sleeping posture. It's in fact an intentional posture. And it also is a posture that absorbs attention, absorbs mindfulness. Okay, say you know this posture, say you know the feeling, this mindful posture.

[12:21]

And of course it's not always present. But you can feel it, you can approach it. You can feel close to it. So no matter what posture you're in, you can feel still a relationship to this alert, relaxed, mindful posture. And that's, it's that relationship to it that makes it transformative. Of course the posture, mindfulness itself is transformative. But also the approach to mindfulness is transformative.

[13:29]

Yeah, I mean, naturally you can lean back in your chair. You do not have to be, you know, super alert all the time. There's lots of Zen poems. Boy, I could stretch my leg out and lean back and look out the window. You know, wasn't this nice not to have to sit cross-legged? But still, even that relaxed posture is known through its mindfulness. So what this sutra starts with this formula that starts many of the sutras is again a formula that you're meant to perform in order to understand the teaching.

[14:49]

It's a kind of script maybe. It means if you're going to read it and understand it you have to read it established in mindfulness. And so again then after establishing the posture Yes, the Buddha establishes his or her mind in mindfulness. And then, from that, he or she is able to teach. Now I have a new little daughter. That's sitting right there. And she's ten weeks old. And I can't help but bring her into the talk. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to be 85 to see her into college.

[15:57]

Yeah, so... I'm enjoying being an elderly father. For the third time I'm a father. So I'm watching this little girl, Sophia, establish her own mindfulness. And it's very clear she's working at it. She still doesn't have real intention in her physical movements. She does help you change her, though.

[17:01]

She lifts her legs up. She's quite tolerant. But her hands are still, you know, like, moving around kind of. She doesn't really bring her arm... Intently to say your face. More so the last week or two. She does though touch your face. But you don't feel she's bringing real attention to your face. And she's not bringing much information back to her own consciousness.

[18:02]

But she's beginning to coordinate her body movement. We could say that she's beginning to establish a body. A body that she can and a body which she can bring attention to and get attention. So she's, first of all, it seems establishing the sense of a body. And organizing her senses so she begins to be able to relate to sounds, sights and things.

[19:07]

So this process is not completed in the womb. This process is an interactive process with the environment and with her parents. And her environment is mostly supplied by her parents. So through her parents primarily and the environment She's shaping a consciousness. Yeah, shaping a body within that consciousness. She seems to already have a personality. It seems that personality, some qualities of personality are more fundamental than self or ego. So she's going to establish a sense of body.

[20:21]

And she'll start shaping a consciousness. And the main dynamic of that shaping is attention. She gives attention and she gets attention. We don't want all of her attention satisfied by food or coziness, cuddling. Because her consciousness is being shaped. So like all parents do, I think we have to play with her, talk with her and so forth. Because Again, we're shaping her consciousness.

[21:31]

Yeah. You know, a baby supposedly can say, hear, repeat any sound up to about a year old, all Chinese sounds and so forth. Yeah. But after a year old, if they haven't heard Chinese regularly, they can't say those sounds anymore. Like I could never say the sounds of Swiss German. I'm sorry, I have trouble enough with German. But I think just as what she can, the sounds she can say are formed.

[22:32]

Her consciousness will take form at some point within a year or so. And the further tones or development of that consciousness are probably pretty much set. So I think the parents should bring as much of the complexity of their own consciousness and the world to the baby as possible. So what about the Buddha then? The Buddha is establishing mindfulness through attention pretty much as Sophia is establishing her world through attention what you bring attention to shapes you and how that attention

[23:46]

fills your body and mind and world makes a big difference in how you exist. Okay, so Sophia is now shaping a body within the field of mind and shaping a consciousness within the field of mind. There are other shapes of consciousness like other cultures have possible. I mean, the field of mind as the field of sound has almost infinite potentials. But she will by necessity, in order to function in the world, get her parents to feed her and things like that. She'll have to shape a particular kind of consciousness. And after a while she won't know much about any other possibility.

[25:20]

She'll know the consciousness she shapes. And everything will reinforce that. And then within that she'll develop thinking and language. And pretty soon she'll only know that part of her consciousness that is known through thinking and language. And through thinking and language she'll form a self. The interactions with the world. and she'll begin to have memories mostly language related and pretty soon she'll mostly know the world through self since we know there's so much more potential than that

[26:28]

How do you change that? Well, that's the topic of today, the alchemy of mindfulness. Okay, so again, Sophia is establishing right now a body and eventually a consciousness. she has a basic intention to be alive which is expressed through her intention and interest and then intention and consciousness etc she begins to have a body and a consciousness and a self Okay. Now the Buddha, or what we know as Buddhism, says, first of all, let's bring self, let's bring body and mind together.

[27:36]

Body and mind are but we experience them separately, usually. How can we bring that experience, weave body and mind together? Well, it's actually quite simple. Simple... It's quite simple.

[28:38]

The simple and the way to do it is simply to bring attention to your breath. I'm sorry to tell you it's so simple. You might want this to be some big deal. It's really simple. And bring attention to your breath. The thing is, for it to be alchemical, you have to bring it continuously to your breath. Now there's some problems in doing that. Yeah. You can do it for a few minutes, it's fairly easy. The main problem is we establish ourself through thinking.

[29:43]

All this development of a body and a self and so forth gets intimately connected with our thinking. And we establish our continuity in the world through thinking. If you do, for instance, if a person does lose touch with their thinking, or there's a break in their thinking, they feel maybe they're going crazy or something. We want to be able to think the world. But this formula, this alchemical formula of the Buddha establishing his posture and mindfulness If you perform this it's a way of not establishing continuity through thinking.

[30:54]

So if you do, if you decide to To as often as possible. Without criticizing yourself for not doing it. Bring attention to your breathing. You begin to develop a kind of physical confidence. You begin to find yourself nourished by your immediate situation. Because the more your sense of continuity is the immediate situation the immediate situation starts to nourish you. Because your thinking, your senses are rooted in the immediate situation.

[31:58]

So when your attention snaps back to your thinking through habit or anxiety or whatever and I start thinking about what kind of person we are you suddenly feel less nourished. Less grounded. It's okay, but you don't feel quite as deeply relaxed or at ease. So the taste of a kind of ease helps us develop the habit of coming back to our breathing. No, I say this quite often, but it's talking about mindfulness.

[33:15]

I think I have to say it again. Intention and attention are mental postures. They're aspects of mind. And you're bringing them to your breath and your body. So you're actually weaving body and mind together. Your body begins to be penetrated, permeated by mind or awareness. Little Sophia can't really even bring intention fully into her arms yet.

[34:19]

But she'll, more and more, will be able to bring intention and consciousness into her whole body. And as that gets more effective though, she will lose touch with the field of mind. So the practice of mindfulness is to bring you back in touch with the field of mind. Mind, awareness, a knowing that isn't just consciousness. I like the way you do it. I wonder, can she really say this? Yes, she can say it. And you're also working a very powerful dynamic in relationship to the self and the ego.

[35:43]

Because one of the main functions of the self is to establish continuity from moment to moment. and establish separateness and connectedness. When you begin to weave mind and body together, you begin to establish continuity in the body and the breath. So the functions of self and ego aren't just primarily in consciousness and thinking. So almost in a way you begin to reverse the process that Sophia is going through. She's establishing consciousness and now once she establishes it if she wants to practice mindfulness she'll rediscover the field of mind out of which her consciousness was established.

[36:55]

When you weave mind and body together again there's a kind of roundness that happens. A roundness of mind or field of mind that can be folded in, that can turn inward, and from inward can turn outward. Now this is a fact of mind. A dynamic of mind that can be changed, developed through mindfulness. You begin to weave together mind and body and you begin to weave together the minds of deep sleep, dreaming and waking.

[38:18]

And you simply begin to feel more whole. More maybe holy too. More wholly connected to everything. Now let me give you a reconstruction of a poem of Rilke's. Unfortunately I don't have the German or English original. So I'm going to have to give you my reconstruction of it. But that's how these sutras develop too. They're mostly constant reconstructions by the people practicing.

[39:27]

Perhaps this won't be too far from what Rilke intended. He says... The space outside ourselves invades things. The space outside ourselves defiles things. He says, if you want to know the existence of a tree, But also it's something like if you want to establish the existence of a tree. Or perform the existence of a tree.

[40:30]

Yeah. Invest the tree, invest it with that inner space, but ordain it perhaps with that inner space that arises from within you. that has its source or being within you surround it, surround the tree he says with constraints or something like constraints but I could say with intention and attention

[41:37]

In other words, take it out of the space outside of ourselves. And then he says, this space has no bounds, no boundaries. And only becomes a tree. Through your renunciation. And I think he means your renunciation of that space outside of ourselves. At least from my point of view and my experience he's speaking about that Space that arises from within you. This space that we can turn inward.

[42:47]

This field of mind we can turn inward. Or fold outward into a tree or into each of you. I mean, in fact, when I'm looking at you now, you're, excuse me for saying so, you may not want to be there, but you're all in my mind. you're in my sense field and I'm very pleasurably in your sense field there's light in this room established by the electric power company But there's also the light of my consciousness or awareness established in this room.

[43:51]

Now, I know you're out there in so-called outside space. But that outside space, Rilke says, defiles you. Invades you. If I forget that you're also actually in my own mind and senses. And to remind myself that you are all, the world is always in my sense field and mine. is the world as I know it is similar to reminding yourself to bring your attention to your breath in fact bringing your attention to your breath is the seed of this mind

[44:55]

Because as mind begins to be woven, mind and body are woven into one field, a mind arises that you don't experience so dualistically. a mind arises that you tangibly feel includes and opens up the world. And I think the renunciation Rilke is speaking about is also in the simple act of bringing attention to your breath.

[46:19]

In a way, renouncing your attachment to the self found in thoughts and through that gentle renunciation you rediscover the field of mind a now mature and articulated field of mind That is the present seed of little Sophia's discovering her consciousness and body. But interestingly enough, it's not a baby's mind. which opens you to the field of mind which we can again call the alchemy of mindfulness.

[47:35]

Okay, maybe that's enough. So what I'd like to do is have a break And if any of you come back after 10 or 15 minutes, I'll ring the bell. We can have some discussion if you like. I want you all to feel free to go though, so we'll see if anybody's left. Thank you very much. And thank you for translating. Thank you. Well, thank you for coming back.

[49:23]

While I know that what I'm talking about is quite simple and easy to understand, it's actually, I think, difficult to understand that such a simple change in attitude and habits can make such a big difference in our life. So do you have something you'd like to bring up? Or did you all come back to hear someone else bring something up? Oh. Please. Yes. What does sutra mean?

[50:42]

Sutra, it literally means the same, I mean, etymologically it's like suture, like sewing. Suture, do you have that? When a doctor sews up a suture. So suture just means a teaching or a scripture. And it means something stitched together so maybe it was because it was tied together by strings originally on palm leaves. But the teachings that are attributed to the historical Buddha are called sutras. But they're probably quite far from the historical Buddhas. They're compiled by many people. I don't think there was any writing even at the Buddha's time.

[51:59]

But some teachings are thought to be closer to the Buddha's actual words, and they're called sutras. Yes. You talked about mindfulness and mindfulness to the breath. Yes. And that can be possible while you're sitting in meditation posture, but I have the difficulty in daily life. How does it...

[53:01]

How does it work when you are like in the office and there is a telephone ringing and a fax comes and the secretary wants to talk to you and it's not like here where it's an undisturbed, focused, attentive space. Well, how does it work in... I understand the problem. But while you're speaking to me right now your breath is in your words. If you can have a feeling of a little wider attention so your attention isn't just in the words but feeling the breath in the words as well. Or feeling the body in the words. So really, it does mean you have to develop a kind of wider awareness. An awareness that's not just caught in things. It's not so hard, actually.

[54:35]

You have to intend to do it. There's a kind of... homeopathic alchemy here it works in small doses and it works through intention so say that you form right now today at this particular moment an intention to bring your attention to your breath Now, as I said earlier, you're not going to be upset if you fail.

[55:39]

But from this moment on, you somehow, with your body and mind, recognize... Yes, I should bring my attention to my breath. And first of all, you remind yourself of that intention. You hold that intention before you. Now, if you only do it occasionally, it still has a power, if that intention is there. Okay, so now you have this intention. I can see it's stuck in you. Now you have to find some, I'm sorry, find some time to act on it. So I suggest first of all staircases.

[56:54]

Every time you go up or down stairs, remind yourself to bring your attention to your breath as you go up and down stairs. Or as you're walking to work or something like that. If you find little times that you do remind yourself through your activity to do it, you suddenly realize begin to find your office in the field of mind. Find the phone ringing in your own body and breath. I know, it's true. The intention is the secret. I'm not fooling you.

[58:07]

Yeah, something else. Yes. A friend of mine who was here last year gave me this question for today. Oh! Yes. You talked last time, you gave the recommendation to sit 10 minutes in the morning. And now this friend of mine now has this habit, when she wakes up in the middle of the night and can't sleep, she gets up and sits for some time.

[59:22]

And then she goes to sleep again. And now the question is, is that as fruitful to do it in the middle of the night as early in the morning? Well, she'd have to try it both times to see. So let's see what her question is next year. But it's better than a sleeping pill. Usually if you can't sleep and you get up and sit, you fall asleep right away. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably more beneficial when it's more intentional.

[60:37]

But, you know, the time of sitting which affects us the most, is that time between the overlap of waking, of sleeping and waking. Because in this space you're beginning to weave the mind of sleeping and the mind of waking together. So she's doing something like that. And I'm glad I had this small effect on someone. Doesn't seem like a bad thing to do so. So would you thank her for her question? And do you have a question? Okay. Yes. Could you go over again those words invade, defile, and enunciate?

[62:08]

The thing about a good poem Is there an immensity, a vastness in the words? And you have to discover, I think, my feeling is, you have to discover the meaning of the words in the line of the poem. In the context of the poem. Somehow your own experience with the word resonating with the word in the line of the poem. Resonating with the words in the line of the poem. Yeah, because a good poet usually uses words in a way that's not found in the dictionary.

[63:37]

You have to re-find it through the poem. So let's take the first line of this poem. The space we find outside ourselves the space outside ourselves invades things or defiles things. So I think you just have to stop with that line. You can't really go on further in the poem until you really have a feeling for that line. What is the space outside of things? Or outside of yourself? Why would someone like Rilke say it invades, it defiles things? How is this flower defiled by the space? And what is the space inside the flower?

[64:52]

And is the space inside the flower defiling it or is that some different kind of space? So I think you have to spend some time with space outside ourselves that invades, defiles. You have to find out for yourself. It's just like the space of two people. Little Sophia is making a space. And her mother has a certain space and I have a certain space. And she's going to create her space from our space. But she's also going to create it from herself.

[65:53]

She doesn't want just our space. And if we demand that she just has our space, we kill her. I mean, in a sense, we kill her. I'd like us as parents to be a garden for her space to grow. There's some other poet said, every tree Every leaf, every blade of grass in the vastness of the sky seeks its soul. So somehow I think that we have to be a garden for this little girl to seek her soul.

[67:00]

So I think that two people living together have to be a garden for each other. Yes. It's nice to live in the same garden though. But to not demand that the garden be exactly the same for each person. So Rilke has given us a kind of garden in this poem. Which he has invited us into. He says in my garden I find that space outside myself invades things.

[68:02]

If I really want to restore a tree to its own space, I have to discover the tree through the space that arises through my own being. I have to discover the tree through the inner space that arises through my own being. which means I have to bring attention to the tree in a way that cuts off the idea of outside space in a way that cuts off the idea of outside space so I feel the space of the tree In the same way I feel my own inner space.

[69:15]

Yeah, something like that he means. Is that enough for now? Anybody else want to say something? Will you be back next year with a report? Yes. I sometimes stumble across the words and certain notions. My words or everyone's words? Yeah. Yeah. The word of mindfulness and awareness and the German translation. I don't quite understand.

[70:17]

Well, stumbling is good. Yeah, because then you realize that it's not in the words. It's again a word, the meaning has to come from within you. And the problem we have with geist and mind and so forth in the German-English translation shows us that neither word exactly covers the territory. So mind points at the territory. Geist points at the territory from a little different angle. And awareness points at the territory. But I think it's actually useful to sort it out in your own mind. Because we tend to conflate distinctions.

[71:32]

Do you understand that? Conflate means to put them together so they're not distinctions anymore. For example, in English, feeling and emotion have become almost the same word. And I feel angry. But feeling and emotion are quite different actually. And I make a distinction between awareness and consciousness. And in English I do at least. Because if I don't make such a distinction, I can't talk, speak clearly about many things in Buddhist practice.

[72:35]

Okay, so let me just make this distinction for you now, and then we can stop. Okay, consciousness in English comes from the root SCI, which means to cut. And so consciousness means that way of knowing that divides things into separate categories. You're there and I'm here. It doesn't emphasize the relationship. It emphasizes the separation.

[73:35]

And consciousness is really something that we have to be awake to participate in. But awareness is something wider than that. Now, for example, the example I give all the time, if you fall asleep at night, And you intend to get up, say at a particular time, 6.02. lots of people can get up at 6.02. Consciousness didn't do that. You weren't conscious. We can say awareness did that. So then when you notice that, you can start to say, okay, what's the difference between consciousness and awareness? Awareness doesn't make conceptual distinctions.

[74:43]

But you can intend to wake up, so intention will flow in awareness. Or you can dream of Dreaming sleep is a kind of function of awareness. So images work in awareness. But not conceptual sequential thought. So once you make a distinction like that, You can begin to know that while you're conscious, Awareness is also functioning.

[75:44]

But you're not conscious of it because it's not in the categories of consciousness. So awareness is there, but you're not conscious of it. but if you stumble and you fall and you're carrying a bunch of stuff your falling is faster than consciousness but it's not faster than awareness because you'll probably catch yourself and not break the glass So the awareness was there waiting until you fell. And that's why I said it's good to stumble sometimes. Because you stumble and discover awareness is working for you. Now when you practice mindfulness and bring your sense of continuity out of thinking and out of consciousness you begin to open yourself to awareness.

[76:57]

And you begin to function, even in consciousness, more through awareness than consciousness. The martial arts depend on this kind of distinction and knowing. Zen is a kind of martial art of compassion. Or something like that. Anyway, thank you very much for being here and coming back. It's fun to talk with you. Okay, thank you. Thank you again for counselling.

[78:16]

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