Next year, I mean, you wouldn't know, but anyway, next year I may not do much teaching. We'll see, anyway, what happens outside of our center in There's a number of reasons for this which you don't need to know. I mean, there's no reason you couldn't, but why talk about it? So maybe I'll do one. seminar in Austria and one in northern Germany. That's it, maybe. Otherwise, I'll just teach at our center. And, of course, the center in Colorado, in the United States, too. So, yeah, so this is interesting for me to be here with you. Partly because I may not do this much anymore.

[01:15]

I'm getting so old. And also, It's interesting for me to be here with you because there's so many people I don't know. I've never practiced with before. Yeah, so I wonder what... use what I'm doing can be to you. And what have I been doing? I've been sitting around doing nothing for 45 years. That's kind of a zenny way to say it, but you know, something like that. But during that time I tried to explain why I'm sitting around doing nothing.

[02:31]

So some of these explanations, or how I kept doing this with others for such a long time, fairly long time, In the process I found aspects of the traditional teaching that particularly I find in a way are helpful for us practicing in the West. Yeah, so I can try to share some of those with you. And since we're speaking, again, the title we have is Basic Teachings. I'm trying to stay as basic as I can.

[03:44]

But I'd also, you know, this was an introduction to asking you anything you would like or What we talked about last night, is there anything you'd like to comment on? Because your participation is why I'm here. So everything I said last night was completely clear, raised no questions.

[04:47]

There was somebody else. Oh, okay. Okay, so I think I remember, but not very clearly, that you said something like that I have to be modest, but my view of the possibilities of reality, in other words, do not have to be modest. Yeah. Did I get this right? Yeah, do it again. I think I remember what you said yesterday. Yes, that's what I said. And if you can do that without a feeling of comparing yourself to others, then there's power in it. If you do it with comparing yourself to others, then there's... then you're back in the same boat. Yesterday you said something about if I can trust myself, I can trust the consequences.

[05:50]

So my question is how do I know if I can really trust myself? Well, you start out with an intention to trust yourself. Because you don't want to live without trusting yourself. You don't want to live without trusting yourself. So then you have to discover how to trust yourself. And that actually takes, you know, it's a kind of important dialogue with yourself.

[07:26]

I think without turning that question into a whole seminar, The more your body is part of your thinking and acting, the more you can trust yourself. Let's just say something very simple as a kind of way to give a... sense of accuracy to that. Lie detectors work a large percentage of the time.

[08:27]

Because it's very difficult for the body to lie. So the more your body, mind, breath, etc. can feel together, you can begin to trust yourself more. Somebody told me in Berlin, about a woman who's a British, I think, neurobiologist. And she's very interested in Buddhism, too, this person told me. So there's a place where she drives home from her laboratory. Where there's a choice to take one road to the left or one to the right.

[09:48]

And one is beautiful and goes to the countryside and is longer and the other is quicker. And every year, I mean every day, coming home from work, for years, she says, well, should I take the beautiful road or should I take the quicker road? And one day it occurred to her, I'm not going to make a decision. She pushed the accelerator and she went one of the ways. She was thrilled. Something made the decision. That's something like trusting yourself. We have a saying in Zen, when you come to a fork in the road, take it.

[10:51]

Someone else. Is there a practice like the practice of mindfulness in the Zen tradition, which is a bit like the lie detector for me? It's listening to my body, sensing where the feelings are, how big they are, how they develop, how they come and go. It's for me the crucial basis of my practice, and I came to trust it more and more completely and just go with it. What kind of role does the practice of mindfulness play in the Zen tradition? I have realized that this is something like this lie detector.

[11:56]

If I am always with what my body shows, also feelings are shown through it and I go with it and notice how things come and go and feelings, perceptions, and voices. Of course, Zen is also Buddhism, you know. Zen is also Buddhism. So the four foundations of mindfulness are a basic practice for it. And when I spoke last night about the four noble postures, that's actually a traditional part of what the targets for attention are. in the Four Noble Foundations of Mindfulness. And I just did a three full day seminar on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Austria about a week, two weeks ago or so.

[12:57]

So all of, they're presented, you know, sometimes the Zen koan, like number 20 in the Shoyoroku. Yeah, it says, you know, Someone's going on a pilgrimage. And he says, where are you going? The monk says, I don't know. And the teacher says, not knowing is nearest. Now, we would in Zen practice use that as an incubating gate phrase. No, I could come back to you if you want, later or whenever, of what I mean by incubation.

[14:18]

Or a gate phrase. But in any case, we in Zen... use phrases like not knowing is nearest, which in a sense this British neurobiologist Which road should I take, not knowing his nearest? Okay, so we practice with a phrase like that. But this call in the commentary says, If you don't fully know the four foundations of mindfulness and the practice of the five skandhas and the vijnanas, you can't begin to work with this phrase.

[15:22]

So it's assumed that's the basis for Zen practice. Now, do you have here in the center somewhere a flip chart? No. Well, I need several pieces of paper. Okay. How can I be a teacher if I don't have a blackboard? about trust and decision. You told something about going to a fork, make a decision.

[16:24]

Going. Going to a fork, making a decision, takes an accelerator, or makes a decision. Many times I have the experience after the decision, after making the decision, now I took So, the right or the left route, yeah. When I'm on the right or the left route, I ask myself more time... Was that the right decision? What was the right decision, yeah? German, please. German, please. So, I... We just talked about this... This problem of a decisive case. And so I often make, so to speak, so I also have this problem to make decisions and then make, so to speak, after the decision, the experience, am I on the right path now, so that I then also mistrust myself again, so how can you deal with something like that?

[17:36]

Yeah, well, sometimes it will be the wrong decision. But you have to kind of like decide what you're going to do with your life. And I prefer to make mistakes than to think my way through life. It drives my wife crazy sometimes, but you know. So, you do get better at it. I mean, one of my practices now is back in the 60s for starting. I worked for the University of California and I was quite busy. And I had a policy of never looking up a phone number.

[18:38]

I mean, a phone number I might know. And in those days, wrong numbers, phones were expensive in those days. But I would dial it until I got it right without looking it up. Oh, I'm sorry, I have a wrong number. In restaurants, if I didn't know right away what I wanted to eat, if I had to think about it, I'd just put my finger down and order whatever my finger touched. I would usually aim for the left side of the menu because it's cheaper. But I found I had to practice in these tiny things, like dialing, phone, ordering your restaurant.

[19:59]

So I'd get out of thinking, do I want this, do I want... I'll eat anything. And if you commit yourself to this, eventually you'll get... I probably... I mean, I knew... A thousand phone numbers in my hand. But much like a calligrapher in Japan, they say, what's that number? Your hand has more memory than your mind. But if you start thinking, it doesn't work. No, it has to be practical. But it's a choice. It's a choice about how you want to function. And responding again to what you said last night, I think one does need a sangha and some kind of interaction we call teaching.

[21:16]

And the relationship is really the teacher. But it's a relationship also which ideally lets us teach ourselves. And then we call it mind-to-mind transmission. It's a kind of situation which allows teaching to happen. Okay, someone else? Yes. I often ask myself whether I really have a decision. When I have made a decision, I ask myself afterwards, I asked myself if I can make a decision at all, and if I've made it, was there really actually anything I could decide?

[22:39]

Well, sometimes there is something you can decide. And sometimes we make a decision and we say, gee, I had no choice. It was such a big decision. You say, oh, I had no choice. But again, this is a kind of craft. You kind of feel your way into how you tell yourself what you're doing and what you let happen and how big the context is and which things happen. And this is all the, you know, fruit of maturing your mindfulness practice. Okay. So maybe I should... And I want to, during the seminar, be open all the time to whatever you would like to say or discussion.

[23:54]

Yeah, let's make use of this time the best we can until tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow. And we have to decide at what time we're going to have lunch. But we don't have to have a break yet. Okay. May I have a question? The translator? Please. I understood that his question was something like... His question. His question. Is there ever a restarting question, is there something like a free will? And that's about decision making too.

[24:57]

So I understood the question a bit from you. Is there a free will and can we really make a decision at all? What do you mean by, or either of you mean by free will? For me it's just a sort of rekindling discussion, but for me more and more I tend to move in the direction that It's probably an illusion that there's really something like a free will, and so that probably I'd rather follow, like the example you gave, just let doing happen. Have trust in that what? And the doing, but not in the personal decision-making so much.

[26:04]

It's a process. Okay. But it's a process in a context. And you can choose the context. You can let the context... which in fact is informing your decisions at a subtle level all the time. But you can choose the context. So, I mean, if you try to say... There's no free will, we're kind of some sort of robots. This is clearly nonsense. I think anyway. But when you try to say then what's free will, that's a much more complicated discussion.

[27:12]

Heidegger and other people already try to answer that one. But so, we can easily say we're not robots. You can speak for yourself, but I... But... What exactly is free will? This is something else. I think it's helpful to think of intelligence and even... to think of the world as all inside. There's no outside. It's all inside. And if you think of it that way, you more think of intelligence or functioning as a kind of... Why not body limited event?

[28:21]

just something that's useful to know, a man named Benjamin Libet in the 70s in San Francisco. He did some work which showed that if you're going to move your arm, And the person is wired up, you know. The body has already decided to move the arm about 500 milliseconds before you move the arm. Yeah. But so consciousness then is an editor and publisher but not originator. But consciousness can originate the context, though it might not originate the moment-by-moment decision.

[29:47]

But of course the process of editing is a decision you decide, oh, I'm not going to move my arm. I had a funny experience which I told some of you about when I was in Italy last year. I was at a friend's house who had a swimming pool. And it was not heated. It was the end of the summer and it was freezing cold. But my daughter, who was three at the time, said, Papa, will you go swimming with me? She seems to be immune to hot and cold. And I thought, do I have to go in that cold? So I went up and I knew, this is going to be terrible.

[31:14]

So they had a board, there's two levels, you know, so I climbed up to kind of show off to my daughter to the second height. But it was really to create a context where I had no choice. This was free will. And I stood there and I looked down at this water which practically had ice on it. And my daughter said, Papa, jump! My Leavitt face was saying, No, no! And I... All the way down, I was thinking, no. It took four laps before I got warm. Okay. So what I think... I have to introduce at this point.

[32:38]

Again, I'm thinking about the most basic teachings. The most basic in my sense of how we get a feeling for this Buddhist practice. And I said last night, The mind which arises from intentions is different from the mind which arises from discursive thought. And I think for most of you it makes sense. Okay. But I don't know if, although it may make sense to us, we really have a feeling for the difference it really makes.

[33:55]

And that we have a choice about What kind of mind we want to live in. A free will choice. By coming to this seminar or by coming to practice, you're creating a context for what you do. So now, where teaching comes in here, is to really get a feeling for the difference between a mind that arises from intentions and a mind that arises from discursive thoughts. And to really have enough meditation and mindfulness experience, And to feel the difference sufficiently, you know you can make a choice between the two.

[35:06]

And a choice that is possible to make. I mean, you can choose this mind over that mind and stay in one mind or the other and not just go back and forth. We could say all of this is part of the decision to practice. The decision to practice subtly held In such a way that you can actualize the decision. Okay, so I think it takes a little while to really get a feeling for it.

[36:07]

experience, not just know about, experience the difference between a mind that arises from attention and a mind that arises from discursive thinking. And it's very helpful to have this as a A question held in the mind. Or held in the mind body. So that when you go to bed at night or wake up in the morning or take a nap, you actually see this happening. Okay, now what is this about? Zen is really a combination of Yogacara and Madhyamaka teaching. And why in? teaching.

[37:38]

But the basis is Yogacara teaching. And one of the truisms of Yogacara teaching, truisms, is that all Mental phenomena have a physical component. And all human physical phenomena have a mental component. Okay, I can say that. But practice is to feel the precise physical component which goes with every mode of mind. Through mindfulness practice, we get a general feeling for that.

[38:39]

But the adept practitioner really gets so you can tune it. So you can go into meditation very quickly because you can bring into your body the mind you want. But you don't want to just I'm responding to what you said. Don't want to just want it for some kind of like reason you thought of. You have to be sensitive to the various depths of What's that statement of the famous teacher Mick Jagger?

[39:48]

You don't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. Okay, so how do you make this, how do you discover this sensitivity of the mental component of physical and the physical component of mental life. Now, I'm presenting that first as a question. Because the question... is much more powerful than the answer.

[41:11]

Now after the break I'll try to give you some kind of answer. But it would be better to just leave the question. Okay, now I want to present a specific teaching which I think is useful. But I don't really want to present it just as a kind of information. Now, yeah, but I can't say I can't just present it as information. And you can just do it, if you want to. It's probably already familiar to some of you. But the problem with that is, when you do it... I love seeing that picture of Ayakema. Makes me want to stop talking and just sit here. I'm sorry we're talking so much. Um... But if I just present it and you, yeah, say you try it, you'll find out that it works or doesn't work.

[42:37]

But then maybe later you'll say, geez, was that, you'll begin to have doubts about it. But so I'd rather start with the doubts I'd rather start with the questions embedded in the teaching. Because these teachings arose, you know, Buddhism is a lot like a science. It's not a revealed teaching from a book of the truth. And the teachings have developed and accumulated over the centuries, like science, somewhat similar to science. And, you know, when you think of it that way, it's also, we may experience things the Buddha never experienced. So, from the Zen point of view, the Buddha got us started, but we are discovering this practice.

[43:57]

If you think of the Buddha as having it all, and he did it all, well, he wasn't a woman, that was a problem, but he did it all, Then you might as well have a Bible. Because then it would in effect be a revealed teaching. But in fact we're revealing it in ourselves all the time. If really everything's changing, then even realization has its own subtleties. So what I'm trying to do is present this very simple teaching, you'll see, in the context of some of the questions which have led to it.

[45:08]

in the context of why this simple teaching was considered a solution and what this simple teaching can open up. That's a kind of big introduction, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta, to nothing. But if you've probably noticed, Buddhism is full of either this or that. And the most form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. So we're dealing with a distinction here.

[46:27]

Difference, as Gregory Bateson says, difference is information. The cell, the embryo, the cell divides and divides and divides and divides. So what is this difference? So you can look at all of Buddhist teaching in that way. As I said last night, the primary metaphor in Buddhism is motion and stillness. And more subtly, that's form and emptiness. And Nagarjuna, who's often called the second Buddha, presents, says that Buddhism rests in understanding the two truths.

[47:44]

And that's absolute and relative. And absolute and relative, what's that? The word in English is useful because it means separate from separateness. And that's not the same as saying oneness. No. Okay, so we have form and emptiness. Absolute and relative. Motion and stillness. And I always speak about consciousness and awareness. What is this distinction? And why do we talk about this? Is it the same distinction in each of these pairs? Yeah, and And you could look at our discussion last night and today, really revolving around this kind of distinction, free will or not free will.

[49:09]

So what I think I should start with in looking at... Trying to give us an entry into the minds that arise, the different minds that arise. Is the so-called, what I call, rather, the three minds of daily consciousness. And I think that's the... I discovered it's the most useful teaching to give us a feeling for the potential of different minds.

[50:12]

Okay. And I've heard the Dalai Lama give this teaching. So this is very basic, I think, to Tibetan teaching, to Zen teaching, and I'm sure to your practice too. The question was how to make this not intellectual, but to get some kind of entry into practice. Yes. Practice is experiential. And a craft. And it's also conceptual. And... And the conceptual is one of the harder parts to understand.

[51:33]

But the conceptual is how you bring a practice into your activity. Sometimes a practice which arises through... through wisdom, through thinking, through discrimination. That wouldn't necessarily arise through our experience. Or arises through the experience of 15 generations over two centuries. But you bring that conception into your practice. See if it works. Form and emptiness is basically conceptual practice brought into your daily activity.

[52:42]

Okay, now that's just a kind of riff, which may be useful or may not. It may come up later. Okay, what are the three minds of daily consciousness? So I have to give you an example. Okay, I'm sitting here. What is your name? Eduardo. Eduardo. Are you Spanish or Portuguese? Colombian. Colombian, okay. My daughter lives in Portugal, so my people named Eduardo there. So I can, without knowing Eduardo's name, and what is your name again? Romy. Romy. R-O-M-Y. R-O-M-Y.

[53:42]

Romy. Okay, isn't there a movie star named Romy? Schneider? Schneider. He's dead? Yeah. Oh, that's too bad. Okay. Okay. So I don't have to know your names. And I clearly have to ask you your names. But I have a feeling you're sitting right here in front of me, so I use you as an example, I'm sorry. I have a feeling about you without knowing your name. And that's Yeah, there's a presence each of you have. In fact, there's a presence the whole group has. And the presence the whole group has is particular to this group. So if I'm sitting here practicing with this distinction, already I have two aspects of it.

[54:48]

I have a feeling for this particular presence of this group of people. And I have the particular feeling of the presence of the not yet named Eduardo. Okay, now this is a basic... Yogic practice. To develop the habit of going from the particular to the field. Field to the particular. Now this is without thinking here. I feel the presence of you.

[55:49]

And an aspect of that is this unnamed person. And yet the presence of this unnamed person is not the same as the group, but not separate from the group. Yeah, so that I can, in my free will, in my feeling, allow a movement from the field to the particular, from the field to the particular. Yeah, Dogen was asked what is discriminating thinking for. And he gave several kinds of consciousness. And he says, what is discriminating thinking for?

[57:01]

And he said, it's the way we decide to practice. Decide on the teaching. And it's useful for all kinds of things, but from the point of view of practice, it's about entering into practice. Thinking and discriminating has many uses. But from the point of view of practice, it's... this decision to practice. So I've made a decision to work with field in particular as a mode of perception. So in sitting here, it's been a long habit of mine, but it arises from my decision to practice this mode of perception.

[58:08]

But once I made this decision, the actual rhythm of pace of field and In particular, now that I've established the habit, I let happen by itself. And I think habit in English is a good word because it means this is the mode I inhabit, where I'm living. Okay, so this mode of perception is what we can call immediate consciousness. We can even say there's a horizon of immediacy.

[59:18]

Makes sense? A horizon of immediacy here. And to stay within that horizon of immediacy, we can call immediate consciousness. Now, what are the characteristics of this immediate consciousness. Well, one is, all the information comes from this situation. I don't know his name in this immediate consciousness. But what's the experience of this immediate consciousness too? It's very nourishing. I feel engaged. And another quality of it, it's a kind of gathering in knowing. The more I can feel this immediate consciousness, this horizon of immediacy, I do feel nourished by it because it's all feeding me.

[60:39]

And it's a gathering in. As a field and as a particular. And a gathering in from each of you. And that gathering in also is an outfolding too. Which informs my speaking. Okay, so that's called, in this teaching, immediate consciousness. Now, the example that the Dalai Lama used when I heard him give this teaching was, for example, Your birth date. I didn't know either of your names. I definitely don't know your birth date. Yeah, I'd like to know. If I was autistic and... I might be able to guess.

[61:56]

Um... Okay, so say that I, you know, I know you're Eduardo and you're Romy, and say that I know your birth dates. What I do know, when I look at you, is that I can tell you're younger than me. Yeah, a little bigger beard, but, you know, you're younger. Okay. So I don't know exactly, but I do know you're younger than I'm older. And that's part of immediate consciousness. It arises from the situation. And that again, when you... Find yourself in this immediate consciousness.

[63:04]

You find out that you feel nourished by it. Okay. Now let's say I switch. And you're Eduardo and your birthday is March 23rd or something like that. See, I told you I didn't know. Now, you didn't know your birthday till your parents told you. You were born and said, this is September 21. I'm happy to be here. The whole system of birthdates, calendars, etc. was a big deal, cultural creation. And this whole system of calendars, birthdays and so on is really a huge thing and it's a cultural creation. Okay, so now I know your two names and I maybe know your birth dates.

[64:08]

Maybe I can find out your professions. So let's use another joke. This is called borrowed consciousness. Because it's borrowed from the society. I can't derive it from this situation. I have to borrow it from society. what your parents told you and stuff like that. Now, borrowed consciousness can be very fruitful. I think about a lot of things, organized libraries, cataloging, you know. Sometimes I try to get my books a little bit organized. But I usually just prefer to reach out. And the one I get is often interesting. I think I wanted that one, but I got this one.

[65:12]

Okay, so let's take another imagination. Let's imagine you're walking through the forest. You're walking along with a friend. And there's just a feeling of the presence between you. You don't talk much. You know, I was startled when I lived in Japan continuously for about four years. And I went back to Japan for, you know, 30 years regularly. So I know Japan pretty well. But occasionally, and not too often actually, I would just spend the day with a Japanese person, not in the context of doing anything particularly.

[66:19]

And I can remember the first time this happened. I was with this person going somewhere and we were on a train from 8 o'clock in the morning till 6 in the afternoon. And maybe we had 10 or 15 sentences. And I thought, what's wrong with this guy? And I thought, what's wrong with this guy? Doesn't he have anything to talk about? And I've tried a few things like, you know, Otmar is like that. You know, I spend time with Otmar and you say several things. But I thought, you know, it's not been interesting for this guy, this Japanese guy. And around six o'clock I would party. And he said, what a wonderful day this has been.

[67:37]

Let's spend another day together. But this is really the difference between a yogic culture and a thinking culture. For him, 90% of the experience was just sitting beside each other. And we might have that with a lover, but we don't have it with just some guy you're riding a train with. Wir haben das vielleicht mit unserem Geliebten oder sowas, aber nicht mit irgendjemandem, mit dem wir im Zug zusammenfahren. Und was ich heute vorschlagen würde, um damit zu praktizieren, ist, wenn man also in einen Gemüseladen geht, Edeka? Edeka, ja. Choose the longest line. Why do you need to think you have to get out in a hurry? This is my chance to just stand beside some nice people.

[68:46]

Maybe they're not even nice, but this is also information. So sometimes I pick the longest line, I just stand there. Hey, this is a nice guy. I mean, you know, most people aren't used to this funny American saying, Hi, how are you? But it's actually quite interesting just to be in line and have nowhere to go. But in more immediate consciousness this is easy to do. It's such a pleasure to feel the presence of another person. Now, borrowed consciousness, so you're walking along in the forest again. You're with your friend.

[69:50]

Most of the time you're just walking along and enjoying the trees, the path, etc. You feel the difference between one tree and three trees which somehow decide to grow beside each other. And there's a different presence to the one tree and the three trees. You feel more like a companion. Companion in English means to break bread with. You feel like you're breaking bread with or sharing the same food or substance with the world. You feel you're the same stuff. It feels good, actually. We have so much in our culture that we're separate creations.

[71:10]

Somehow we're different from the stuff of the world. Yeah, I mean, this horrible... I mean, this is an exaggeration, but this horrible war in Iraq... It's possible mostly because of this disastrous American president Bush or Shrub. And his position His constituency is based on people who don't want to think this stuff is also them. From the point of view of Buddhism, we're just different arrangements of all this same stuff. So I say we're subjective objects.

[72:25]

We're all objects, but we're subjective objects. And somehow this kind of constituency wants to think that horses are a different creation from us. Horses are just a version of us. So there's a different worldview behind locating yourself in immediate consciousness. And really feeling, and this is the practice of the four elements in Four Foundations of Mindfulness, which is really based on practicing with what you are, not who you are. And you can experiment with this.

[73:34]

Just ask yourself, what is breathing? Then ask yourself, who is breathing? You can use the way... Language, words, gathers attention. You can think of words and sentences as the kind of wiring of attention. So at least in English, if you direct your attention through the word who, it's a different feeling than if you direct your attention through the word what. And most of us, I think, feel when we say who, we feel who. And we say what, it feels wider.

[74:35]

And if you study the four foundations of mindfulness, it's entirely about what we are. So you're walking alone. So you're walking alone. And you feel the four elements, earth, water, air, fire. Fluidity, solidity. And I feel this solidity and I feel your solidity. And I feel the solidity of this. It's all not so different. So the practice of the four elements in the four foundations of mindfulness is to feel the shared what-ness of the world.

[75:52]

Okay, so you're feeling the one tree, the three trees, the path. Then you notice something. Over there somebody has cut some trees, some bushes or something. And You notice it and you say, oh, gee, somebody's been along here trimming the path, clearing up the path. And your friend notices that. That's called secondary consciousness. It's now you're speaking about something, pointing something out.

[77:01]

But it's secondary in relationship to immediate consciousness. You don't really lose your nourishing location in immediate consciousness. Because this noticing, like my noticing that you're younger than I am, arises from the situation. Now, after a while, Another 10 or 20 minutes you're walking. And your friend looks at his watch or her watch. And says, oh my gosh, it's nearly noontime. I have to make a phone call at 12 o'clock to Antarctica. And also, my God, if you... And you say, oh yeah, me too, let's go back.

[78:18]

That's part of consciousness. It didn't arise from the immediate situation. It doesn't feel so nourishing, it's just things you have to do. And what does it do? And what does it do? It calls up a different mind. It calls up a mind in which you identify yourself temporarily in terms of the past and future. And that's called borrowed consciousness. No, most of our educational system is in borrowed consciousness. You get involved with how much information you have and so forth. This is normal and natural, nothing wrong with it. But if you identify with it as you, it's something of a problem. And you're not nourished throughout the day if your mind is always in this temporally located state.

[79:34]

borrowed consciousness. So you can begin to feel this difference. So there's several points to this teaching. The first point is to really get to feel the difference between so-called borrowed consciousness and so-called immediate consciousness. And to see if you can stay in one or the other. Now, if I had a flip chart here, which I'm not complaining, I'm just saying I want you to... It's helpful to be able to visualize it. So let's put immediate consciousness, I mean the borrowed consciousness at the top. And secondary consciousness in the middle. And immediate consciousness at the bottom. So you're walking along the path. Enjoying walking without thinking too much.

[81:03]

That's immediate consciousness. And so then you notice that the path has been trimmed, so you're in secondary consciousness. And it goes back down then, as soon as you finish talking about it. This line returns to immediate consciousness. So really the line is immediate consciousness. There's not so much territory as in experience. Now, say that you start thinking about what the phone calls you have to make and so forth. Then you're in borrowed consciousness. But even if you're in borrowed consciousness, then you also notice the, oh look, they trimmed the path and we're on your way home.

[82:10]

as you're walking home. Probably you don't go back, you don't go into immediate consciousness. Now secondary consciousness brings you back to borrowed consciousness. See, you have two curves. One goes from borrowed through secondary and back, I mean, one goes from immediate through secondary back to immediate. Then one goes from The other curve goes from borrowed to secondary to borrowed. Secondary looks sort of the same, but it returns differently. Now, since, and it's been many years ago, but since I saw His Holiness, the Dalai Lama demonstrate this...

[83:16]

I think here in Munchen, many years ago, was anybody with me when they went? You two were with me? So I arrived in Munich, and they said, we have tickets or something to some Protestant revival with the Dalai Lama. What was this? I think it was Protestant. And they had the Dalai Lama speak. And it was at some big Olympic stadium or something. So I said to beautiful young women asking me to go to see the Dalai Lama, why not? I know the Dalai Lama pretty well.

[84:29]

The first time he was in America, he spent eight days at our temple. And he wasn't a big deal then. Nobody much knew about him. There was no entourage, and we just hung out for the week or so. So... But, you know, by this time he was already this... But since they got tickets or whatever it was, I went. And as I say, His Holiness is not just a monk, he's also a kind of chipmunk. And he looks around, you know, and he scratches his head.

[85:37]

And at some point, because I have this shaved head, he saw me. He's like, wait. And then he gave a talk. And also Weizsäcker was there, right? And he gave a very intelligent talk. interesting talk about the environment, if I remember. And his talk was good, it was very intelligent. It was almost entirely in borrowed consciousness. And everyone just sat there listening and thinking this is intelligent and good. But then the Dalai Lama I don't know who was first.

[86:45]

And the Dalai Lama didn't say anything, really. He said, don't we all want to be happy? Isn't it nice to be happy? Let's all be happy. And practice is to be happy. Now I'm exaggerating, but basically there was almost no content. But we all started just beaming. Because he almost never went into borrowed consciousness. Except once or twice when he mentioned the Chinese. But then that curve went back down into immediate consciousness. And So here's all of this gathering of, I don't know, how many thousand people?

[87:56]

Lots. Okay, 10,000 Protestants. With this new Pope, some people say, the Catholics should reform itself. Then somebody else said, the Catholics don't reform themselves, the Protestants already did that. So you have this stadium full of reformed Catholics, or Protestants. Now look, Catholics have some feeling for practice that Protestants usually don't. But somehow, He's speaking from immediate consciousness. Speaking from the horizon of immediacy which included all of these young people.

[88:59]

It's almost like you throw a line out and pull the person in. And then afterwards we We all streamed out of the stadium. Then we went into the subway. That people were singing, weren't they? It was like after a peace march. If you went in the 60s and 70s to these big peace marches, people just felt good all the time. So here... our subway started singing. And strangely enough, a subway coming the other direction came by and it was singing. And if I remember, there was a couple grouchy Bavarians who kind of wanted to get out of there.

[90:02]

But this is a city... A city? Yeah. A charism in charisma or charism. In Catholicism they're called charisms, in Buddhism they're called cities. And charisma means, literally charisma means touched by God. So here's this guy who gives a talk with no content. And you have a big portion of the city of Munich singing in the subway. This is a kind of magic. And it's the magic of immediate consciousness.

[91:02]

Okay, so what's the point of this teaching here? Is to notice the difference between the mind that arises from borrowed consciousness and immediate consciousness. In our daily life, not just in meditation practice, but in our daily life. And to notice the dynamic of the movement from immediate to secondary to immediate, and vice versa. And to get a feeling for that dynamic. And to really get familiar with your own experience of The mind of borrowed consciousness and how you feel at the end of the day full of borrowed consciousness.

[92:22]

And how you feel after a day or a walk or something. in immediate consciousness. And discovering that during your day of work, etc., which may require primarily borrowed consciousness, how in that day of borrowed consciousness you can actually bring immediate consciousness into it. So, now you can bring your mindfulness practice into this teaching of noticing This dynamic of borrowed and immediate consciousness.

[93:34]

And more and more getting familiar with both. And the experience of both. And recognizing you can stay in one or the other. You can have some influence on the presence of either. And now you're closer to understanding this, having a feel for this, all mental phenomena have a physical component and all human physical phenomena have a mental component. Now the third aspect of this teaching is by getting familiar with it you realize you have a choice of whether you live in borrowed consciousness or immediate consciousness.

[94:54]

Okay, then you... Yeah, you can... Oh, geez, it might be nice to live in immediate consciousness all the time. But that's difficult. I've got a family to support, I have a job, I like my job, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I could go to a Zen monastery, but it's high and expensive and far away. You have to fly there, blah, blah, blah, if you go to our center. So it's not possible. But is it possible? How can we Maybe you can not identify with one, but identify with the other.

[95:59]

What would it mean to not identify with the borrowed, not to find your identity in borrowed consciousness, but find your identity in immediate consciousness? What would that mean? That question has to be asked. Okay. Well, another possibility, maybe it could be your initial mind. What does the word Dharma mean? Well, it means that which holds in contrast to that which changes. But it also means that which appears. In fact, life is momentary appearances. The appearance of the field of all of you.

[97:12]

The appearance of the particularity of each of you. So there's an... If I... in immediate consciousness bring my attention to this not yet named, oh no, already named person, Eduardo. He appears as presence, as information, and you know, also a name. I can have a choice to primarily locate myself my experience in the unnamed experience of this person. Or I can make that my initial mind. At each moment, what appears, I'm located in immediate consciousness, not in borrowed consciousness.

[98:13]

So I may be thinking about things, but I keep returning, this curve keeps returning to immediate consciousness. I could locate myself at least at each moment's mind of appearance. My initial mind can be immediate consciousness. Gathering in consciousness. If that's the case, How do we practice that? Now, if you get the feeling for that, then the teaching of the two truths, the teaching of form as the beginning of the five skandhas, I mean, this is form.

[99:37]

Is it Permanence? Is it impermanence? It's impermanence. How do I practice with it as impermanence? Is it appearance? Is it mind? Because mind is perceiving it. These questions have to be asked and experienced if you understand impermanence. as the first of the five skandhas? Nagarjuna again, the second Buddha, said, if you don't understand absolute and relative, you really have no basis for real practice. So we can start with this immediate consciousness and borrowed consciousness.

[100:48]

And exploring it sufficiently that you can make a decision, hey, I'd rather live or identify my life through one rather than the other. and seeing the possibility of that decision and having mature enough mindfulness practice to be able to make that decision and the making of that decision And the making of that decision is entering the path. And this is another way to speak about the decision to practice. Now you could have a decision to go to lunch. Well, I hope you're all well fed, but not too full. Yeah, now is there anything we talked about before lunch that particularly interested you or led somewhere for you or whatever?

[102:08]

Yes. to the immediate consciousness. I would like to know, if you are in a state in which you concentrate strongly, for example reading a book, whether you are quite focused, are you also in the immediate consciousness, or how would you estimate that? Concerning immediate consciousness, when you're highly concentrated, for example, reading a book, concentrating upon it, are you then also in immediate consciousness or can you... Yeah, that's a good question.

[103:08]

But, you know, immediate consciousness and bar consciousness, these are not entities. The point of such a teaching is to get yourself the feeling of the difference between these two. Whether something falls into this category or not is really not very important. I mean, it's not the same as directly when you're reading a book, am I sleepy or am I awake? You might be you might be falling asleep in the middle of the paragraph. And it might be quite interesting because of that.

[104:15]

The paragraph makes you fall asleep. Now, I'm told the Catholic monastics have a practice of reading a line or a phrase at a time. And just letting it, you know, you read a line and then you throw your head back and bliss out, or let it send you. I would say this is something like immediate consciousness. And then the reading, the sentences are some kind of secondary consciousness. But if you're caught up in the book, And, you know, the Proust has a... He starts some essay or a little short... No, it wasn't his main book.

[105:29]

Yeah, with this little episode. He remembers... Years ago when he was reading and a maid came in with some food for lunch. And he was rather irritated that she interrupted him because he was really engaged in this reading. But she, yeah, brought lunch. But she brought lunch. And when he looks back now he said, I can't remember at all what I was reading. But I remember the look of the living room. I remember my irritation with the maid. And I remember what the afternoon light was like in the window.

[106:42]

So that's, while he was reading, there was also immediate consciousness. Yeah, but really, this is just an exercise. It's not meant to be a category where everything falls into. If you're reading at a pace with the text and the physicality of the text, maybe it's kind of like immediate consciousness. And reading can be quite physical. There's a physicality to immediate consciousness. When I write, I always read everything aloud that I write. Yeah, I don't know if that responds fully to what you wanted.

[107:58]

I don't know if that answers what you wanted. Someone else? Yeah, go ahead. Just a quick question. Does the content have to be positive? Some people read criminal novels and the content is actually negative. Does it have anything to do with it or is it just about concentration? Has it to do also with the contents of what you're reading? Has this to be positive or negative like some people reading other fictions or criminal fiction things, or is it rather the concentration itself? Well, I think it's more useful just to look at the different kinds of concentration or attention that are engaged in reading. We read some things and we read them to disappear into the story. We read poetry often to disappear into ourselves or look. We come out of the text into our own experience.

[109:15]

So that's a different kind of... I'd look at it that way, not in terms of... But is, in the general sense, is the... reading of words necessarily discursive consciousness? Not necessarily. But I can remember when I was in, and I hate to say this in front of those of you who are involved in movies, But, you know, when I was during the five, seven or so years where I was practicing most intensely, I was unable to go to movies. I mean, I could go to movies, but, you know, I would sit there I wondered what all this flickering was on the screen.

[110:33]

The seat was more real to me than the film. I was unable to get caught up in the film. And in those days, part of that time was when I was in Japan. I liked going to the worst movies I could find. Run in Kyoto summers, it's often air-conditioned. And if it's a completely stupid movie, the cameraman doesn't even know what he's filming. The camera wanders around. So you see funny things that you just don't see in a good movie. And you see funny things like the objects on the table are suddenly different than they were a moment ago. You know, things like that.

[111:48]

So there is, you know, there is a point which it's hard to get caught up in something except what's right here. But right now, if the movie's good, I don't mind going to the movie. But right now, if the movie's good, I don't mind going to the movie. Now, maybe I should take the opportunity to say something about the gestural aspect of language. Something I've decided to point out recently. Again, like I said, like a Chinese-Japanese person, you know... A scholar in Japan knows 20,000, even 30,000 different characters. That's a memory feat that most of us think, whoa, that's a lot.

[112:53]

But their body remembers. And remember I said last night the difference between nature and nurture. Our culture assumes sort of more or less that we're mostly already formed. And life should be simple. And predictable. And Sukhirishi, you know, I remember shortly before he died he said something quite simple. I mean in the same year, nothing to do with his death, just something he said. It was not anything to do with his death, it just happened to him the year he died.

[114:03]

He said the nature of consciousness, the nature of mind, is to simplify things, to make reality simpler. So we can understand things. The nature of thinking is to simplify things. So we're living in a shadow of reality. So to not depend on thinking, if you can find a way to not depend on thinking mind, you'll come closer to things as they are. Okay. Okay. Now, in a culture which emphasizes nurture and not nature, what do you suppose the implicit cultural...

[115:03]

emphasis is. To make things as complicated as possible. Make the language as complicated as possible. Because it trains the mind, it shakes the mind. So when the Americans came into Japan and said, You guys got all these characters, let's simplify it into an alphabet. And at that time they reduced the number of characters, partly through MacArthur, the number of characters you need to read the newspaper to 2,000. And the Japanese, the smart Japanese said, this is America's secret weapon. They're trying to simplify us. And the average Japanese has a much higher IQ than the average Westerner.

[116:25]

Are they genetically different? Well, you know, somewhat. But it's probably not so much genetics as it is the emphasis on creating a complex culture that makes you intelligent. That's the view, to make... So you can see a slight shift in your worldview where you emphasize nurture more than nature changes the whole way you develop your culture. I think of English and German and other Western languages at the time before they divided things into words.

[117:28]

They were just one line of letters And unless you sounded it, you didn't know where the words ended. And some of the long German words make me think of this. Now, going back. In the English dictionary, however, nevertheless, nonetheless, but, are conjunctions basically all defined the same way. The distinction between them, you can't verbalize easily. But an actor might know the differences.

[118:38]

For instance, if I say to Neil, but, that's but. However, Nevertheless, there's a different gesture for all of our English words, really. You can feel it if you get into the physicality of language. So if when you read, you feel the physicality and you're present, that's a different concentration than just... Sometimes I try to read with a sense of physicality the back of a cornflakes box. I'm just joking. Ingredients. Sugar. A friend of mine sued Kellogg's once because he noticed in the back of the cereal box it was more than 50% sugar.

[119:58]

So he sued Kellogg's and said you can't call it cereal unless it's under 50% sugar. He won the case and they lowered the sugar to 49%. Not much difference. Okay, what else? Nothing was particularly unrescued by Julio. I thought that Julio had saved me. Could you talk about how then you... I think what's interesting is if you have poor consciousness, this, you can, I think you can put it down into immediate consciousness.

[121:17]

For example, if I learn a song, and it's really complex, I would say when I learn it, it's poor consciousness. and you can work on it so much that at a certain point, it will be pulled into immediate consciousness, once you actually hold it properly. Or like a doctor, you know, creates all different kind of baroconscience information about something, and then when he meets a patient, he can immediately consciousness to actually... Diagnose it. Diagnose it, and it doesn't go into baroconscience. Good for you. I think, to me, right now, that's more interesting than just... viewing it as a different kind of entity or being. It's more interesting because the world I live in is complex, so it's more interesting how to get it down into that immediate context. George, please. I don't mean to say it, but when I was in the Balkans, in Russia, in the past, I needed it.

[122:22]

I'm a doctor. No, of course that's right. This is naturally so, yeah. Naturally so, yeah. I don't know if it was... I know, but suddenly it's naturally... Okay. Yeah, and that's what an actor has to do. You learn your lines, and then eventually you have to say them as if they arose from the immediate situation.

[123:31]

And they do eventually arise in the immediate situation, even though you've learned them. And I'm sure it's similar for a good doctor by diagnosing a patient. The most simple example of the difference is that between reading sutra when you're in morning service and chanting the sutra and if you mostly know the chant for example but you're not so sure so you read it and it's not so easy to go from reading to chanting because you kind of lose this You have to kind of let go and then let the chanting happen.

[124:38]

And the chanting comes from something like immediate consciousness. But what's interesting to notice then... When you're chanting, you can't do it so easily when you're reading. But when you're chanting, you can think about something else. And that tells you something about the mind. That the mind can observe itself. That's an important point in practice. Eduardo? I would like to ask you to repeat, maybe if it's possible, in a short form. I'm never able to repeat it. In a short form.

[125:39]

The three things that you said that can be derived from the image that you gave us about the levels of... consciousness. And I think I remember that you said there can be three things derived from that. And I think I remember the third thing that was like we have the choice in which consciousness we want to be. And I forgot the other two things. It's not important. Okay. Maybe it will come back. But One is, in any case, and I don't know if it's the same list, I'll make up a new list right now. One is the recognition we can make a choice. That's a big thing to recognize. Another thing is to have the sense of a horizon of immediacy. And to recognize also that you can locate yourself in it.

[126:42]

That it can be also, in addition, your initial mind. And that it has a spatial quality. Yeah, something like that. Thank you. You're welcome. Yes. Could this immediate consciousness be compared with collected consciousness and the secondary or superconsciousness with scattered consciousness? And is there a choice to be collected or scattered, or can we actually choose that? Could you say that immediate consciousness, could one talk about it in terms of being sort of gathered or collected, and at secondary or borrowed, more of distracted or spread, so to say, and that you have a choice of being more collected or more distracted, spread?

[128:04]

Yes. I don't know, that's important to... Because that's our experience. But the implications for that, for practice, are not so important. So I would put it this way. That the immediate consciousness is consciousness where there's more a sense of gathering, and complexity in your way of knowing things. Borrowed consciousness might be more distracted but also might be extremely concentrated in its own way. And so the difference is which you identify with.

[129:13]

not so much about what's the difference between them. Does that make sense? In other words, the importance is the difference that allows you to shift your identity. So... your borrowed, so-called borrowed consciousness might be extremely concentrated in the usual sense of concentration. But if you identify with it, you're going to find yourself more anxious, more various things. It's a much more fragile, vulnerable state of mind. But as Giulio pointed out, physicists and pure mathematicians and other scientists I know who are trying to do research or have to kind of try to extend themselves where understanding hasn't gone yet,

[130:52]

They learn everything possible they can about something. We could call that borrowed consciousness. And then they try to just let that kind of cook itself, percolate. Because they can't think themselves to something new. Yeah. And there's a word, what's it called? Irufuto in Japanese. Which means the... the... the... the path you can't think yourself to. And what I said earlier in the day about incubation, yoga culture assumes this incubating process is more, is what real thinking is, not...

[132:17]

our usual sequential thinking, logical thinking. So an example would be if you think that way, Is that your view? You would have incubated the title Basic Teachings before you came. You would have What could be the basic teachings? What do I think are basic teachings? What's the basic views in my life? And other, etc. The more you've done that, that's the assumption of how you would best then be fruitful in this seminar. It's a little bit like the Chinese or Japanese view is that a phrase is a time release capsule.

[133:39]

You can't understand it or get all the benefit from this pill just licking it. You have to take it and let it open up over hours or days in your body. So Buddhist commentaries often have a title which is meant to contain the entire text if you could fully incubate the title. Okay. Now, I'm bringing these examples up just to show you what a difference, what a big difference small differences in view make. Yeah, and we can learn something from a yogic culture.

[135:03]

But I don't mean we should do the same thing they do. I mean, we should, but we should loosen the whole our own views have on us. Okay. Anyone else before? Watch into something? Yes. Do you know the difference between the experience and the observation, for example in meditation, the experience or observation of the breath. To say something about that?

[136:03]

Can you say something about experiencing and observing something in meditation, for example, breath? And how you get from observing to experiencing? Well, of course, I'd like to know what you really mean by experiencing and observing. But let me try this out and see if it makes sense. Okay, I said earlier, and I'm just doing this to develop a vocabulary which we can think about practice. Did you think of language as a kind of conduits or wires, wiring that carries attention?

[137:07]

Or, but also an image or metaphor can carry attention, like wiring. If you are sitting meditation and you have an image of your body or an image of your backbone and you have an image of lifting your backbone That image will carry attention along your backbone. Okay, so say you're but language or an image can be the wiring, and it can also be the switch.

[138:30]

Okay, so let's say you want to do Zazen. You can bring your Let's just say, okay, you sit and you bring your attention to your posture. That's what most of us do. And let's say, in addition, you bring attention to the breath. Now, that's like holding a switch down. It's a slow switch sometimes, maybe a year or sometimes a month. You hold it down and after a while the light comes on. So you get in the habit of bringing attention to the breath and to the posture.

[139:36]

Sometimes one, sometimes the other. You let Leavitt decide that. And... You learn more and more how to hold that switch now. And eventually you suddenly switch into a kind of spatial feel. Where the boundaries of the body have more or less disappeared. And you feel you're in a big space. And before, you weren't able to hold the switch down and also think about things. It was fairly difficult to think about something and hold the switch. But now you suddenly are in this space

[140:37]

spatial feeling, somatic body. Yeah, and now you can take your attention off the switch. And now attention can explore this spatial boundaryless body. So this is observing mind, not observing self. This is the capacity of mind to observe itself but not interfering with this spatial awareness. So here there's a simultaneity of the observing and the experience. And you can let You can let one merge into the other or you can play with it.

[141:57]

Various things like that. You have to sit there for hours. You might as well do something like that. Okay. It's getting time to... Have a break. So let me bring up one more thing. And maybe you can see the dimensions within a simple teaching. So I'm going to say basic teachings. So I did the decision to teach, the vision of the world in which we practice, the decision to practice, the vision in the world in which we practice, and now more mental and physical postures. Okay, so let's look at the most common instructions Suki Roshi used to give us for Zazen.

[143:14]

Don't invite your thoughts to tea. Just let your thoughts come and go. Okay, so what's in that? I think we can now, from this morning, understand this teaching better. We all think we can do this pretty easily. At least for a while we have the sense, I don't have to invite my thoughts to tea. Yeah. But after a while, as you get into the practice with more thoroughness, you sort of wonder why the thought to not invite your thoughts to tea is allowed to stay home. So...

[144:16]

Why don't you not invite that thought to tea as well as etc.? Well, this is just an example of the meagerness of the words we have for thought processes. For the thought to not invite your thoughts to tea is not a thought. It's a mental formation, but it's a mistake to call it a thought. Because in Buddhism, thoughts are discursive thoughts primarily. All mental formations are not thoughts. And the distinction I made last night, some mental formations, very importantly, are intentions, not discursive thoughts.

[145:41]

So if we reframe this teaching We'd say we have an intentional mental formation to not invite discursive thoughts to tea. So when you practice this simple instruction, you're not only noticing discursive thoughts, and you're not only noticing the mind, that arises through discursive thoughts. But you're also noticing the mind that arises through an intention or an intentional mental formation.

[146:42]

And an intentional mental formation stays in place without thinking about it. So if a dharma is what holds, which is what the word literally means, then when you are holding an intention, you're in the territory of recognizing what our Dharma is. Then you're developing the awareness and ability to hold mind in an intention, you're developing the ability, the capacity to generate a mind that arises from an intention.

[147:58]

And this is, we could also call awareness, As we could call the mind in the horizon of immediacy. More awareness than consciousness. So you're discovering a way to generate awareness. which is actually prior to and surrounding and permeating consciousness. And most importantly, this awareness is prior to perception. Perception fills awareness, but perception is But awareness is prior to perception.

[149:06]

So awareness and intentional mind give us the ability to change our views. our cultural, personal, familial, and psychological views. And there's a reason why the Eightfold Path starts with Right Views. Right Views, which is the beginning of the Buddhist Path, Does not mean the views you've gotten from your family, from your culture, your psychology, your personal history. It means the views rooted in wisdom. How do you discover that?

[150:17]

Well, the teaching of it is in a simple thing, right? Don't invite your thoughts to tea. But what does it mean that one part of the mind cannot invite the other part of the mind If you understand that. you understand much of what Buddhism is about. Okay, now we have a break. And after the break on Saturday afternoon, I always like to break into small groups. And see if each of you can bring something vivid to the group. Don't let the group bore you. Make the group vivid. And make sure some experienced people are in each group. And I'll let you guys who know each other decide on how to divide into what?

[151:20]

Four, five groups. And what should you discuss? Anything you want. I don't care. But I can make a suggestion. Maybe what are your... What are the most common minds you notice differences? The most obvious would be like between sleeping and waking. And what's maybe some of the most unusual different minds you've noticed? And what does that tell you about the potential you have for transformation.

[152:28]

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for translating.

[152:33]

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