Who is willing to start? Who would like to start? Right now I feel a bit unstructured, so I try to get it together. So when you started talking yesterday and what you also said this morning, something has come up for me. Yesterday afternoon I lay down on my bed and I thought I was sleeping, but it was like I was awake at the same time and could notice that I am sleeping.

[01:02]

And then suddenly I noticed that I was thinking. And suddenly something, and I didn't know whether it came from the outside or from inside, the thoughts disappeared. There was a kind of perception that got wider and wider. and it was as if I had not intended to do it, I did not do it, but I have the feeling that it happened because there was a purpose, but I also have the feeling that it happened because there was some intention somewhere, and it was like one soap bubble had gone, but another was there,

[02:29]

But the image of the soap bubble doesn't quite fit because the one thing didn't disappear totally and the other already appeared and so they got tangled up and folded a little bit. And when I listened to you yesterday, I noticed that my mind is empty, that I don't understand anything, and I tried to notice what my experience was that I had at that time, And it was about when you mentioned the koan. And I noticed that separating out different experiences, that's something I cannot do well.

[03:54]

so when an experience is an image and a bodily feeling and there was a feeling of water and as if a very heavy drop plunged into the water, and it goes down, I mean it's heavy, so it goes down, but it also goes horizontal, and I have the feeling when I perceive something as if that perception and it is again and again like this and like this, and yesterday when I was falling asleep I experienced more and more of a sinking,

[05:26]

and before I've experienced falling asleep as something like sinking down, but yesterday I had the feeling as if my mind expanded horizontally and got wider and wider and wider. Well, I wish I'd had that experience. One thing, when one has experiences like that, which is actually quite, it increases our kind of inner vocabulary or inventory of experience. is to notice what unites all the different experiences.

[06:35]

In other words, they occur within a kind of field, and one bubble might change into another or overlap, but they're still in an overall field. A kind of gel. And if you can feel that, we could say that's a direct experience of mine. And if you can feel it, then you could say that this is a direct experience of the mind. Thank you. Yes? You said that dreams do not float in the waking mind. We differentiate between structured and unstructured mind.

[07:41]

To what degree does unstructured mind float within structured mind? When I, in my everyday consciousness, have certain habits that are useful, not useful, and I try to direct unstructured mind towards these areas, Then these habits seem to have a pace or a tempo like a reflex. They have a The experiences you don't like, when you direct a feeling of unstructured mind toward them, they have a reflex like what?

[09:08]

They're so fast that they seem to have the speed of a reflex. Can I hinder a reflex? Some responses are so quick that you really, to apply anything to them, it's not too To apply something like unstructured mind to that situation seems impossible within conscious mind. Okay. I'm talking about things which are really old. I know them very well. So one way is just to accept. It's just the way it is. And the other is the option, this claim of Buddhism, you can structure your mind and restructure your mind. It's like a doctrine. Should I give up or try it? I don't know if it's a doctrine of Buddhism, but it's something I say. Maybe you should say in Deutsch what you said. I can try it.

[10:11]

Because I also know the problem. It's about these everyday habits, which are also so deep-sitting habits that you somehow have from your childhood. Well, that... It's wonderful for me to sit and listen to what you said and then what you said.

[11:16]

In most contexts, if you said things like that, people would say, what? What were you taking? But here it's one kind of normal. Well, clearly you're participating in the structure of mind. But you can't expect to develop or change the structure of mind much while you're at the office working and the patients are waiting and some sort of, you know...

[12:18]

He's a medical doctor. But just to participate and notice the structuring of mind is a really big step. Now, I mean, these using floating and liquids, this is all just metaphors. Which may help us have a moving target for attention. But I think to make the metaphor something like unstructured mind floating in structured mind is probably not so useful.

[13:27]

From my point of view it's more useful to think of unstructured mind as surrounding and penetrating structured mind. But I do think we, probably all of us who are here, one of the reasons we're here, is we have popped bubbles of enlightenment and many unpopped bubbles of enlightenment floating around in our minds. extended bodily space. Where do they float? In our extended bodily space.

[14:46]

I don't know, somewhere. In other words, I think we have many, all of us have enlightening experiences that we either don't notice or we don't have any way to actualize them. We don't actualize them. And they float around and they say, when is this guy or gal going to start meditating? Oh, jeez, they're having all these problems, and if they just pop this bubble, the problems would lessen. Sometimes they start to pop you 2,000 or something. Sometimes they start to pop you. Something.

[15:58]

Now, the new people are going to be intimidated by all this. I was just wondering what mind is. Yes. Yes. I would like to hear more about dreaming mind. Waking mind is more structured through what one has to do that day. But what would you think, what structures dreaming mind? What kinds of feelings or is it the past or what does structure dreaming mind?

[17:08]

I want to say something that's fairly brief, because otherwise we can spend a whole seminar on this. Some people say we... I mean, there's a saying in English that we... something like we sleep in order to dream. And I would change that to say in addition maybe something like, we sleep in order to mind. Because at least if you are capable or happen to have lucid dreaming, and the more you practice, usually, especially sometimes it occurs in Sashin practice,

[18:46]

You find you are awake or with a kind of awareness throughout the night even though you're sleeping. A kind of awareness that penetrates the or fills the room like people have operation and they say, I observed the operation from the ceiling or something. So you feel like I made a distinction yesterday between awareness and consciousness. You feel awareness fills the room, but not consciousness.

[19:59]

And if somebody comes into the room, you can have a sort of conversation with them and stay asleep as long as it doesn't get too intricate and lead to consciousness. And that mind is related to the mind that also dreams lucidly. And so if you either by your the way you're alive, or through practice, lucid dreaming, lucid dreaming gives you a chance to observe the mind in a more pure way than consciousness. And as I said to Elizabeth, you can sometimes feel or see the field of mind in which the dreams occur.

[21:14]

Manchmal kann man das Feld des Meins sehen oder spüren, in dem die Träume stattfinden. Now to your question. Und zu deiner Frage. Basically you're asking what's the cause of the structure of dreaming. Ich verstehe die so, dass du fragst, was ist die Ursache der Struktur der Träume. Now, I don't want to assume that that everything has a cause. It's more fundamental just to say everything is. For example, even if you don't have a day that leads you to do things, causes the forms of consciousness. even if you don't have, causes for the forms of consciousness.

[22:33]

You can still be conscious. And consciousness can notice this, that, and the other thing, but just happens to be nearby. So dreaming seems to be just one modality of mind we have. But if we then try to say everything has a function and a reason for being, which I think is a dangerous way of thinking, Because it ends up with a kind of theology. Still, things do have a function and reason. Everything does function in a certain way. What was that word, humdinger? What was the word again? Haben die.

[23:49]

Haben die Dinge. Haben die Dinge. It sounded like that was a humdinger. In English, that means something. You can see how ignorant I am, but I enjoy myself. The mystery is fascinating of Germany. For you it means something, for me it's a mystery. This makes me very happy to be able to spend time with all of you initiates into the mystery. But certainly one of the functions of dreaming One of the things that happens in dreaming, let's put it that way, is our experience and our absence of experience.

[24:59]

happen to us consciously or non-consciously in a mind that is not configured spatially or temporally. Okay, one of the main structures of mind And time, we think space and time are just facts. No, they're mental configurations. We roll out space and then we act in it. And at night you roll it back up. And in the same mental space of a dream, you can have your grandmother and people you don't yet know.

[26:18]

And you can have a space which, when you dream it as... You can dream it as a road, and then you're at the top of the road and you park your car, and then it suddenly is a staircase and you're in an apartment building. So the same mental space in a dream can be configured in a number of simultaneous ways. All at once. Let's start in the middle and go back. When the space expands, like Elizabeth described, then potentially it feels infinite, unending.

[27:46]

But when I try to notice the different sense impressions a different image appears. Listening, it is an unending space. Smelling, I don't know. But seeing it's only to the front and to the sides but there are borders. And I've never dreamt from the back of my head. So the question is in which way Do the sense impressions define or limit the space that opens up? And can awareness be at the center and at the periphery at the same time? If I were a chameleon and had my eyes on the signs,

[28:51]

Would my zazen experience be different? Yes, probably. It would change colors, too. Those are good questions. When you have an experienced extended bodily space, when you have an experienced extended bodily space, And it doesn't feel like there are boundaries. But in fact there are.

[30:08]

I mean you cannot, Kant and others have talked about this, you cannot experience the totality. You can have the feeling that there's no boundaries to your experience. You can have the feeling that you're experiencing all at once. Which is kind of an experience of transcendence which doesn't transcend. But it's not an experience of everything, but it's an experience of the completeness of everything within the realm of your experience. Now, it is interesting.

[31:09]

I mean, you answered your own question. In fact, your senses are modalities of this kind of experience. Du hast schon deine eigene Frage beantwortet. Es stimmt, dass die Sinneseindrücke die Art und Weise der Erfahrung definieren. All I can basically say and all I should say is you can continue to explore these modalities. But I've often had the kind of, for me, amusing image, as you can be doing zazen, And you can feel this, again for the sake of having something to say, extended bodily space.

[32:18]

And it's not... It feels best when it's centered on the physical body. This is not what we usually present to people whose first time we've tried to practice. This is what we're doing. I'm sorry. You're stuck. So this experience is wider than the physical body. And you can move it around. So I've tried various times to move it all the way around so this body is going that direction and my physical body is going this direction.

[33:29]

I've tried that a lot and I can get it almost there but then it doesn't quite work. But I've imagined, the funny part is, I've imagined everybody in the Zen Dome with it switched, right? And then some emergency happens. Somebody faints or falls over or there's a fire. And we have platforms we sit on in Creston. They're pretty high. And everybody in the center jumps off backwards thinking they're What? Anyway, these are little problems that meditators have.

[34:30]

Okay, yes. One thing is that you work with terms or expressions like awareness and consciousness. And language implies borders, and sometimes solid borders. But living for me is something that floats, not floating, but... Moving and it's kind of continuous, so it's not borders, but more or less things, like more or less awareness.

[35:48]

What else as an example? Or non-voluntary... Arbitrary management. Arbitrary. Yes, okay. The idea of Buddhism is that it is more continuous as soon as you talk about it, And does the Buddhist teaching agree that it's all rather kind of floating and flowing rather than strict borders and it's only language that imposes borders? Language doesn't have to impose borders. The word for monk in Japanese is unsui. And un means cloud. And sui means water. So literally a monk is a cloud water person. Because it's all experienced as flow. But in order for you to tell me what you're talking about and experiencing, you just had to use words.

[37:08]

But my experience of your experience is not limited to the words you've used. Okay. Yeah. I have a question that you said yesterday about the relationship between thinking and awareness and you said something like thinking prepares the stage And that then you let awareness decide. I am interested in this kind of method because I sometimes have to make decisions where I am not sure which one is the right one.

[38:21]

So would you suggest that I collect everything around that problem or around the decision I have to make, like every thinking and every knowledge, get it all together and then go into awareness? Yeah, all right, sure. I would let awareness become dominant. And that's very commonly the way discoveries are made in science. And it's the only way a pure mathematician can work. Because pure mathematicians mainly are working on problems that can't be solved or have never been solved.

[39:59]

And I've talked with pure mathematicians about this. And they do exactly what you said. They get as much information about the problem as possible, and then they just forget about it, just let it function in the background. Unfortunately, I think it was Edward Teller sitting, waiting for his wife in front of the grocery store in Berkeley, in a car, thought up the hydrogen bomb. And Crick and Watson, Watson, the whole DNA chain appeared to him in a dream after. He saw it in a dream and then got up and wrote. happened to Watson?

[41:06]

Watson. I had a big argument with him at the party. But you know, if it's a big problem or something, you do that. But in general, it's more kind of you get enough information to... So, when there is such a big, important problem, then you proceed in this way, but with the small daily decisions we make it somehow faster and different. My experience is also that it is possible that I actually already feel in the being, My experience is that very often I already feel in awareness what should be done.

[42:11]

But somehow I can't quite believe it. And then it's the other way around. Well, the information gathering is going on all the time. It's just not all. Information gathering, most of it is not conscious. Yeah, so the lunch folks are going out and getting lunch, and we don't want to disappoint them, etc., etc. We are not in a rush. We're not in a rush because lunch is late? Well, I mean, we want to. Oh. Three? Maybe two. Yes. I am my question is could one see bodily awareness as a modality of mind.

[43:16]

Yes, for sure. And if there is a new mind, whatever that might be, a new mind, would that lead to a new bodily awareness? Yes, for sure. Okay, yes. I would like to tell what happened last night. Please. What I don't know what it is. So I thought I woke up. But it seemed I wasn't awake after all.

[44:23]

Then I thought, oh, then I have to be asleep. But I wasn't asleep either. Then I thought, maybe I'm going crazy. So it seems I was not awake, I was not asleep. These categories had dissolved. And it was not kind of terrifying, it was quite comfortable. I don't know, I must have fallen asleep and all that disappeared. Was this an unusual experience for you?

[45:48]

Yes. And last night was the first night you slept here? She put something over the door, a warning. You may, without... without wishing it, experienced the mutual mind of Zazen. Which is interesting. It's wonderful, I think, wonderful you had this experience. And it's great that you weren't frightened by it. Because to be outside of the usual categories of our experience for some people is very frightening. So I'm glad you weren't frightened by it. But it does bring up many interesting unsolvable questions.

[46:52]

Why would coming to this building where the kind of experience you're speaking about, it happens more commonly to meditators than to most people, be induced in you, partially, probably, or if there's a permission for the experience, while you're lying in your bed, Which is presumably separated from everyone else's bed. And you should have this experience. There's no scientific explanation for this. But clearly they happen. Someone else.

[48:03]

Thank you. Yeah. When the structured mind or if the structured mind is a determining mind and the unstructured mind is an unsharp, not sharp mind? Not sharp. Not precise maybe? How does this paradox dissolve? You mean is the cat dead or alive or something like that? Well, I wouldn't think of it that way.

[49:21]

I would say that in the way I'm using the metaphors, the structures of mind become really determinate when you don't see them. where they're just the way you function. Okay, and again, using the metaphor the way I do it, Unstructured mind is a field of awareness but not thinking. And it's, to various degrees, it's a field of knowing. And knowing more accurately usually than one knows things through a more structured mind.

[50:31]

Okay. But we can follow up on it if you want. If you have more thoughts about it. Maybe you can help me. I'm having some difficulty differentiating between the structure of mind and the structure of the categories of the contents of mind. Say that again. I'm having difficulties differentiating between the structure of mind and the structure of the categories of the contents of mind. You just define the unstructured mind as awareness, the lack of thought.

[51:33]

But that's more like a lack of content rather than structure, and I'm having difficulties getting my hands around it. I can't believe this is how it works. You have to have the guidance of the guidance of the structure of the mind. and the structure, the categories, the content of the spirit. And especially when we talk about being as an unstructured spirit, for me it is more the absence, the content, i.e. thoughts, and I find it difficult to find the reference to the structure of the spirit. Just an observation that I think you are now more fluent in Deutsch than you are in English. I was. No, but that's not a criticism.

[52:36]

And you have to write in German, Deutsch a lot. You don't have to write in English much. I only write in English. You only write in English? Well, you don't write in English. Anyway, you're very fluent in Deutsch, at least. But the way you make sounds is still Irish. So the way you make sounds is more structured than the way you speak the language. Yeah. The way I'm using structure includes contents, categories, etc. And how the contents precede each other or beside each other or something, that's all structure.

[53:45]

Its form and the form immediately structures the mind. And when you bring certain forms into mind, it causes certain kinds of structures. You bring a dream into mind, and it causes dreaming. If you can bring non-conceptualized intention into mind, it produces a particular kind of mind, which would be more Zen mind. It causes what? It creates more what we would call Zen mind.

[54:48]

Okay. You know, I'm surprised that I can respond to all these questions. Really, I thought about it. What are you doing? But I've been doing this for 50 years. I have the impression not only in this seminar but also in other seminars that the thoughts and questions of men and women are completely different. But the thoughts and questions of women and men are quite different. They were a lot different. So that I'm thinking there is not only a mutual, sorry.

[55:51]

Did you also speak German or English? I spoke German. So I think there is not only a mutual mind, but also maybe a male and a female mind. Yes, that's true. And when I hear which answers come and which... When I listen to your teachings and which instructions you give, then you do not seem to differentiate between men and women. And I ask myself whether that is right. That I don't distinguish or I do? That you don't. Well, I try.

[57:13]

I'm always trying to realize my feminine nature. People say I'm not so successful at it. But a good Zen teacher is called... The best compliment a good Zen teacher can have is he's grand... He, in this case, is grandmotherly. I try to... Because I do notice the difference between men and women's minds. And let me say, in general, women understand practice quicker than men do. And it seems to be closer to the way they usually think. And they accept the changes that come with practice more easily than men do.

[58:34]

No, I don't know. What I'm going to say next is probably primarily a cultural difference, but not necessarily... As men usually make more sustained decisions about practice than women do. The male is more likely to say, oh, I'm going to do this all my life. A woman is more likely to say, no, I might do this all my life. Any case, I don't know. This is just me observing things in my limited circumstances. But when I present a teaching I expect the women to understand it faster than the men.

[59:41]

But I expect the men to do it more consistently. And Those of us who are both, we try to be both. Okay, and also, of course, all of us are both. We're all in the same boat. Okay, next. I would like to connect something from yesterday to today.

[60:49]

The experience Elizabeth talked about. What Anna said about her experience at night. And your experience or your picture And your image that you mentioned with the soap bubbles of enlightenment that are floating around and maybe we hit them and maybe not? My idea is that you came up with the intention to use it now, how can I use my intention to ask myself these questions, so that I am aware of when this bubble will open, where am I?

[61:51]

How can I maybe use my intention, what can I do so that I notice better when there are these soap bubbles around or that they are around at all? Or can I through intention get to burst the bubbles of the night? Well, first of all, don't base your future out. It's an old maxim. Don't base your future on soap bubbles. but it is the case that if you practice these things that didn't make sense earlier in life sometimes suddenly start making sense and we don't know it but that's one reason we're probably practicing

[63:06]

Let me just say, and then we, despite the permission I've had from Uli to go until 3 o'clock, or at least 2, I think we should stop. Thank you for making such good meals. I would say that awareness is gathering experience about the world all the time. And just to give a kind of correlation example, If a person sees a car accident and they're asked to describe the situation, most people don't notice, have noticed much of anything.

[64:07]

But sometimes if you hypnotize the person, They can tell you the names of the license plates on the street, things like that. So the fact that that kind of thing happens, let's say that that's awareness which is noticing a great deal all the time. that doesn't necessarily enter the memory process. nor enter the selective process of consciousness which needs to function by selecting.

[65:15]

But it does seem that the gathering, that awareness not only notices but also gathers, And that gathering functions within mind and body. And is more apparent sometimes in the content of dreams than apparent in the content of consciousness. and becomes apparent in zazen mind often.

[66:22]

One of the skandhas is the associational mind. And what I would say that what Freud tapped into that transformed the Western world, at least thinking, he discovered, noticed, that the associational mind, I'm calling it, knows things that the conscious mind doesn't. Yeah, and out of that he established the metaphor of the unconscious. One of the things about Zazen is, let's just say that I've mentioned dreaming mind. We all no dreaming mind but the term dreaming mind is part of a systematic way of looking at beingness which is there's non-dreaming deep sleep dreaming mind

[67:55]

And waking mind. And a fourth mind that can be generated through meditation practice. And that fourth mind you generate by your human choice. No, you're not born with it. It becomes a mind that functions differently than waking, sleeping and non-dreaming deep sleep. So it's not only additive, it's also inclusive. In other words, it adds a way of being in the world and it also, to a remarkable degree, is inclusive of the other three.

[69:12]

And I think we can say, with as much accuracy as I'm capable of, is that part of what Zazen does is develop non-dreaming deep sleep and make it a mind and presence and function. It's not just buried at the bottom of sleep or intermittent with dream sleep. But becomes a mind through zazen which allows awareness to function. mind, which can work by being true.

[70:23]

Okay. Thanks.

[70:27]

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