Since it's Sunday afternoon and always some people have to leave a little early. Since we took a shorter lunch. So let's start seeing how we can make some sense of this topic in the time remaining. Sure. Is there a dimmer on it?

[01:18]

No, that's just what it is. Okay, fine. So before I, you know, say something, is there anybody else want to say something in relationship to your meeting together or whatever for now. Before I speak now, is there something you want to talk about, also in relation to the groups or so? We have worked on the difference between a normal friendship and the spirit of a So we slowly work towards a regular friendship.

[02:24]

Towards the mind of a regular friendship in contrast to friendship in the Sangha. In your group you did. If I want to try to sum it up. Okay, so the regular friendship is characterized through self and... the reflection of my own self through the other person. The regular friendship is more characterized through karma.

[03:27]

And the friendship in the Dharma is more characterized through the big mind, to work towards big mind. Sometimes. And often that doesn't work together, that doesn't fit together. There are other examples. You mentioned, for example, that people are together in great need and fear of death, that is, a plane crash, or that simply other relationships in a group are shaped by a joint activity, a joint goal. I did not understand the thing with the sangha and the plane crash.

[04:51]

In when I was 10 he was talking about Sangha friendship and the possibility that you sit in the airplane and you have a crash. And I didn't realize the relationship that Sangha sits in the airplane or so. Like friendship in the Sangha, there are other relationships in terms of friendship. They are characterized through things you do together. And the basic element in those groups is that the energy is parallel, concentrated towards. Okay. Yeah, anyway, let's notice things in that way.

[06:14]

And anyone else want to add something or say something? I would like to know in which case Regular friendship and dhamma friendship are part of the teacher-student relationship. Okay? Something else. Now we've discussed long friendship. Friendship with difficult people. And the last slide was, yeah, how we define the relationship with our teacher. what kind of space we leave him to be himself with us, and to give ourselves the space to be the really outside people.

[07:19]

This took a lot of time, and we found it very difficult to figure out how to deal with certain difficult people, not to establish a friendship, and never the same approach of every single self. There are only imagined people, difficult persons, like deep birds, Little birds? Yeah. And you hope they fly away? No. No, he said sometimes he imagines different people as little birds. Before he starts listening to the talk, he sees them in a kind of emotional space, and then he starts. Mm-hmm. He saw them when they were little children. Mm-hmm. So we have this kind of approach. Yeah, it's good. Easy one was friends with old friends. Friends with old friends. Yeah. Deutsche Bitte. Yeah. Friendship with good friends was relatively easy for us, because we also had a lot of peace of mind.

[08:28]

We also talked about the fact that friendship is difficult to establish with people. And there was the idea of violence. Difficult for people to imagine themselves as a bird, which you don't evaluate, but which you first try and evaluate. And then it becomes a children's topic, why they are now so agitated, what the reasons could be. And then we discussed, that would be a school relationship. So how do we involve the teacher? Okay. Someone else? We don't have to have a full report from all the groups, just I want to get a feeling of your conversations. Do you want to say something? I couldn't really answer. Two questions left.

[09:40]

One was we like to address to when we are in an emergency, any kind of emergency. Do we prefer a personal friend? Do we prefer a spiritual friend? That's the one question we discussed. When you turn to someone in an emergency situation, a spiritual one or a personal one, or from the, let's say, normal life, And the second question that was already brought was, is there a difference in relationship with a common experience? Either it is a meditative experience, spiritual common experience, or it is experience of let's say, emotions that are forced from outside. This was made by this airplane crash. In which, for the second image, it was a group of people along a road, let's say, climbing a mountain, crossing a glacier or whatever.

[10:49]

Is there not in consciousness, but in the relationship, is there a difference? People are active in spiritual constructive sense or just as even if it's only fear that is in common. Yeah, I understand. A difference, whether you are actively or constructively, constructively in meditation, in connection with each other, or is the community both a passive experience, even if the fear is a plane crash, or if you are together concentrating on a rope or a work, is what connects you something fundamentally different. Okay. So I will, yeah, I'll say some things.

[12:39]

And perhaps, yeah, I hope I can say some things which will... participate with your own thinking. So one of the ideas I'd like to bring up is that we in practice interrupt our usual state of mind. Okay, so let's just use that as a concept to interrupt our usual state of mind. And let's look at the teachings in that context. in that way.

[14:00]

Okay. So when we practice Zazen, you can understand Zazen as simply an interruption to your usual state of mind. And as I said to somebody a little while ago, It's quite important to do it regularly. Because it's much better to interrupt your usual state of mind by the clock than to interrupt it when the ego wants to. One of the reasons we get up so early in Sashin before dawn is because we want to interrupt our sleeping mind with zazen mind and not with waking mind.

[15:27]

Yeah. Okay, so you another way to interrupt your usual state of mind. You know, I'm just presenting things I happen to think of. One is to practice with the four or five elements. What do we mean by the usual mind that we're trying to interrupt? Well, at least we mean the mind of personal, social and cultural conditioning. ...

[16:28]

Social and cultural conditioning. And that has to characterize, that's an essential aspect of the relationship with the teacher. you know that what you mentioned about climbing the mountains and things like that there's a quality to the relationship with the teacher perhaps or even the bodhisattva mind at practice there's a quality or similarity of the relationship with the teacher or even bodhisattva practice It's like two people meeting on the edge of a cliff.

[17:45]

One's lost and going this way. The other's lost and going this way and they meet on the face of a cliff. And neither knows which way to go. But you don't want ordinary social mind at that time. And that's a little bit like the mind of the bodhisattva. And perhaps wartime friendships, for example, have the quality of bodhisattva relationships. And actual real Dharma relationships or Sangha relationships are characterized by a truthfulness that takes precedence over personal feelings.

[19:20]

Like somebody you could depend on in a war time or something. If your life is in danger, you don't want someone who kind of So Dharma and Sangha relationships don't follow the usual convenience of social relationships. But how to take your relationships out of social space, personal space is not easy. I mean, I was, you know, I don't know if I'm a particularly bad case But I think I've told you this before, but Tsukiroshi had to cut me off for one year.

[20:40]

For... He just stopped smiling at me, stopped saying hello to me, stopped giving me any reassurance at all. Without explanation or anything, just one day he stopped looking at me. So naturally the next day I kind of tried to say hello. The third day I, is this going to happen again? And then a week and then months. At some point, I think I told you, I guessed After about three months I guessed this is going to last for a year.

[21:46]

And at the end of the year I walked into his office and he smiled at me. And Yeah, at some point, after about a week actually, I just said, he can do what he wants. I'm going to relate to him as my teacher. That's it. So, anyway, the relationship to a teacher is one in which there's... As much as possible complete trust. And complete openness. And no need for social reassurance.

[22:54]

No need to feel, well, am I noticed or am I not noticed and things like that. It's really a different kind of relationship than most of our relationships. And eventually what happens is or happens quickly or slowly or develops, strengthens, is an underlying feeling of connectedness. That's always present. Has a kind of unwavering quality. But doesn't need ordinary reassurance. The reassurance is that you can feel it, the relationship. This feeling is also what helps continue the lineage.

[24:07]

Because when this feeling is deep and clear, you don't have to see the teacher. There's a feeling of being in contact. But there's also the feeling, if it's possible to be in contact, we'll have as much contact as possible. Because you know your teacher is going to die. And while he or she is alive, you might as well create every opportunity possible to spend time with him or her. And while he or she is alive, you might as well

[25:08]

But if circumstances, really real circumstances don't make that possible, not just a matter of arbitrary choice, I could do this, I could do that. But if real circumstances make it possible, Impossible to spend much time together. Then that doesn't affect the relationship. When arbitrary circumstances make it difficult, it does affect the relationship. When you have that feeling, The death of the teacher doesn't change the relationship.

[26:22]

Of course there are some changes, but basic feeling doesn't change it. It's as fresh the day you die as it was the day your teacher died. So I think that if I describe the teacher-disciple relationship that way, where the relationship is really the teacher, I think you can understand more what a bodhisattva relationship is. Now, as I said, practicing with the elements. This is a strange thing, really kind of strange thing to practice with. But let's just take it as an example.

[27:33]

No, so what, let's take, let's say the elements are earth, fire, air. Water. I'm letting you translate. And I haven't, I haven't forgotten water. Yes. He's always ready to help me. Water, space. So you, through the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, you practice feeling these elements as your own basis. And this is a kind of, I mean it's true, but it's also just a kind of exercise. A surprisingly refreshing exercise.

[28:35]

And you just feel, you know, your solidity. And you feel your liquidity, your fluidity. You feel change and energy and so forth. We say fire. If you can feel your breathing. You can feel the space. In and outer space. That seems to be also your body. And when you do pay attention to the space of the body, inevitably you begin to feel the space around the body.

[29:54]

You can also practice breathing in the four or five elements. Like you breathe in sound as space. And you know how space has this quality, particularly at night of having no distance, you just hear a fire engine. And it doesn't seem to be distant, it's just here. So you breathe in sound as space. Yeah. And you breathe in the earth as sight.

[31:10]

Yeah, just again, a kind of exercise. Here's this... And you feel it in your seeing. You breathe in water as taste. And form as fire. Or some, you can try various things. But what happens if you have this kind of, I mean, you are, you and the world share the same elements. So it immediately begins to make, you feel a contact with your with your own elements.

[32:12]

I can't say your own self, your own elements. And I feel contact with his elements. And the world's elements. The flower. Yeah. This is a definite interruption of social, personal, and cultural space. So you're standing in front of somebody. And if you really have established this kind of relationship to the elements of yourself and the world and others, And when you have really established this relationship to these elements within you, to others and to the world, then you are no longer in this, you are already outside this space, this personal and social space, where you could, for example, become angry.

[33:26]

And of course sometimes we're in social, personal or cultural space. Most of the time in fact. But we feel this parallel space of just the elements. So you Anyway, this is a kind of interruption of or addition to our social, personal, cultural space. And you can practice with something like phrase, like Each thing complete. To take yourself out of the, yeah, the space of, of, I mean, if you keep tying your awareness...

[34:57]

to objects in terms of their specificity. And to feeling your relationship to each object in terms of completeness. And feeling your relationship to each perception or each object in terms of completeness. Now, some practice like the Oryoki practice in eating with the three bowls in a Zen monastery. It's interesting that one of the most characteristic photographs which tells you the most about what a Zen monk is.

[36:21]

The photograph of a monk holding up his Oryoki, his Buddha bowls. It tells you as much about what Zen practice is about as a picture of a Catholic monk in his robes or something like that. It's a different feeling if you're just holding up like this. Holding up like this is different. And the Oryoki is specifically designed so it only works well when you feel each aspect of it complete before you start the next aspect.

[37:28]

Now, so I would suggest you try something. Take this phrase I'm suggesting, each thing complete. As I say, you never ring a bell twice, you always ring it once and once. You can tell somebody hits the bell. They were told to hit it twice. But that's not the mind of practice. The mind of practice is you hit it once. And then you wait for the bell to tell you to hit it again. And you feel, oh... That feels complete now.

[38:41]

Now if you follow some feeling like that, and how you're with another person, how you walk up and down stairs, et cetera, you're coming out of ordinary mental and social space, Into a space, pace, pulse. This. This. always in resonance with the phenomenal world. And this is also, when you find this territory, this feeling, it's also the time in which people spontaneously smile at you. So the paramitas are a similar kind of interruption of our usual state of mind.

[40:25]

And I think you ought to see the paramitas as an overall stance or one interrelated practice. And I've spoken about this fairly often. But generosity basically means simply to not feel boundaries between yourself and others. And to feel yourself ready to move across those boundaries in each occasion with another person. So there's just the feeling of you're not going to force the person, you're just there ready to go across the boundary.

[41:46]

And just like it's good if I, even though I'm doing an inner bow when I meet people, It also helps to externalize that bow and actually physically do it. So in that spirit we also give alms, give physical things to other people. Like when we go to dinner, we bring something to the person. So you find some way, you know, To give something.

[42:53]

If it's possible, you do it. Yeah, and it's not about really how generous you are. It's really about going across the boundaries. But it's also about letting people across into your boundaries. So you're willing to receive as well as give. You're willing to learn. So the practice of the paramitas would be a feeling of openness to learning from each person you meet. And the third is patience.

[43:53]

Yes. And that may be the most difficult for us. It's probably easier to be generous than it is to be patient. And Samantabhadra is the bodhisattva of patience. The kind of patience you need in the midst of a very painful period of zazen in a sushim. There's a certain patience and pace that comes with suffering. And you know, it's again, just let's use the example of a painful period of Zazen since we just talked about this in Sashin.

[45:01]

Even if it's only a few minutes longer than you'd like. You can't think, well, the next minute will be just like this one, so the bell will ring. I didn't understand that. You can't just think, well, this minute, the next one will be just like this one, so it's okay, they can be as many as you want. Each minute is its own minute. And you think there cannot be another one. Then there's another one. And so eventually you just become patient. And strangely, if you can really completely relax into this patience, the pain almost completely disappears.

[46:24]

This is something good to learn because often we have pain. And a lot of social space is to make the other person comfortable. And that certainly would be generosity on the part of the bodhisattva to make the other person feel comfortable. Das wäre auch im Rahmen dieser Gebefreudigkeit. But inside that or more basic than that is this patience of just waiting. Aber darin oder vielleicht noch darunter liegend als Basis ist diese Geduld des einfach Wartens.

[47:44]

Waiting for yourself to show yourself and waiting for the other person to show him or herself. So what we're talking about here, once you look at this closely, is a... a mind of sustained awareness. So I don't want to, at this point, don't want to describe it as a calm or still mind. because that although that's true it's not approached through trying to be more calm it's nice to be undistracted that's nice we may like that but the path

[49:04]

is not through having less and less distraction. Because we're talking about a stillness of mind that's not disturbed by distraction. Yeah, so you can't approach it through having better conditions or less distractions. It's realized through changing almost the substance of mind itself. Okay, so let's go back to this practice of what I call double perception. Okay, you notice the person, the object, the...

[50:21]

tree, the sky. And you also notice at the same time the mind of the sky, the mind of the tree. Your own mind or awareness Noticing, knowing the sky. Okay, so let's, you know, we don't have all the time in the world this afternoon. So let's imagine, try to think of it as simply, we have a mind That has content. We can even say content driven.

[51:36]

It's the content which makes the mind. Actually we want to interrupt that mind. And a mind that is, as I've said, always self-referencing. and self-reflecting emotions. So those things are going to happen. You can try to lessen them. That's quite a good thing to do. But it's a tricky thing to do. And you can make some improvement.

[52:53]

But the basic effort in Zen practice is to realize a mind in which self-reflecting emotions don't occur. It's like you're changing the... You're not just being nice, as we talked about earlier. You're coming into a mind that can include love, but is wider than love. So if you practice this double perception of simultaneously noticing the mind that's perceiving, as I said earlier, you can begin to shift your emphasis to the awareness

[54:20]

Shift it away from the externalizing perceptions. And you find there's a gathering of mind through this. Now as mind begins to be less associated with its contents, when you can feel the field of mind, which at first you felt, usually we feel the contents of mind, But now you have shifted so you feel the field of mind in which the contents appear.

[55:32]

Now The more you can feel this field of mind, And you can unhook it, so to speak, from your social, personal and cultural conditioning. You can unhook it from self-reflecting emotions. and the self-constructed structure of mind, you can begin to feel a kind of, what shall I say, pure mind.

[56:35]

And this mind feels very clear. And another way to kind of move toward this is to notice on each perception the vividness of each object. And you can slide into a kind of delicious, field of mind. It's almost like a vacation or being asleep while you're awake. But it's not very alert. And that's in Buddhism that you're warned to beware of a certain looseness or laxity of mind.

[58:16]

And one antidote to that is to keep emphasizing the vividness of mind. mind of perception. So if I look at any one of you, I don't just look at you. I feel a vividness when I see you, real preciseness. And that's related to the sense of feeling a completeness on each perception. So if I feel, you know, looking at Manuel, I feel a kind of vividness looking at you.

[59:20]

It's a nice feeling actually. It makes me feel quite close to you, Manuel. For some reason, it's like a practice of generosity. Or a practice of learning from you. All that's in this little space of vividness which happens. Now, vividness is A mental phenomena. It's not just... It's not that the bell is vivid or not vivid. It's not that the bell is vivid.

[60:31]

It's that my perception, my way of perceiving makes it vivid. So the vividness is an aspect of mind, not of the object. So ist diese Lebendigkeit ein Aspekt des Geistes und kein Aspekt des Objekts. It's a little entryway. Es ist ein kleiner Zugang. So then if I look at Martin and I feel a vividness with Martin. Und wenn ich dann Martin anschaue und habe auch dieses Gefühl von Lebendigkeit. Ich kann diese Lebendigkeit fast ein- und ausatmen. And when I do that with each thing, there's a kind of rhythm to that actually. I can rest not only in the particularity of each thing, I can rest in the vividness of each thing.

[61:40]

And that changes the way memory works. It's almost like a different kind of memory process. Yeah. So now I'm noticing on each object more than the object, I'm noticing vividness. When I notice vividness, I'm actually more noticing mind itself. Then I actually notice And I begin to notice the light of mind.

[62:53]

Or there's even a quality, along with vividness, of a kind of Awareness brings a kind of light to things. At first it's kind of slight. Slight, yeah. And then you begin to notice it a little bit more and a little bit more. It's a kind of brightness around objects as well as vividness. Now you can discover this yourself. And it won't have much meaning unless you discover it yourself.

[63:58]

But it's also a very traditional way going back into Buddhism for a thousand years or more of the process of noticing mind itself rather than the contents of mind. And strangely, I think strangely and wonderfully, It's kind of hard to believe. But this quality of mind itself, free of contents, free of being identified or shaped through contents, a kind of process-free mind, even a non-conceptual mind, a mind which not only doesn't name, but knows without conceptualizing.

[65:15]

That knowing has the characteristic of vividness of some kind of brightness and a quality of bliss or joy. Or gratefulness. It's a little bit like falling in love. Things have that kind of quality they have when you fall in love. Or we could say ease or gratefulness. somehow when perceptions arise not through self-constructed consciousness,

[67:00]

you feel mind itself. And there's a feeling of some kind of joy and brightness. Now that's the mind that a bodhisattva offers. and receives, on each occasion, on each moment. Now, even if we only feel this a little bit or occasionally, the knowing of it alone changes all our relationships. And the knowing of it begins to make the space for it to happen more.

[68:19]

And it more and more becomes our continuous experience. Now this mind is also rooted in voluntary sustained awareness. Okay. I think I should stop now. In a moment I should stop. I don't know how long the moment will be, but we'll see.

[69:20]

I think it's completely amazing. That we can have a taste or experience of mind free of contents. It's so direct that we don't need observing mind anymore. Or awareness is observation itself without a separate observer. Okay. So let's just try to stay with this at a conceptual level.

[70:33]

It's possible to have a content free mind. Or there may be contents, but you feel the field of mind. Now when Dogen says again in Samay, O Samay, when you first sit down, or any time, is the mind which appears vertical or horizontal? A leaping dancer or a darting fish? What he's talking about is noticing a mind free of contents of such things as up and down.

[71:35]

And to stabilize that mind. And you can actually stabilize it. That stabilized mind in which contents arise without destabilizing it. Without? Destabilizing it. Yeah, it's easy to lose. this content free mind we stabilize so that even when contents arise the arising of contents doesn't destabilize Strictly speaking, that's what's meant by the mind of the Bodhisattva.

[72:52]

And it right now is present in all of you. And it's only obscured by your mind. identification with your contents of mind. So we want to interrupt that identification. We don't necessarily need to get rid of the identification altogether. We want to find ways to interrupt it. sufficiently so we can really know it and feel it. And non-graspable feeling is very close to it. But we stabilize it not as non-graspable feeling, we stabilize it as the field of mind.

[74:06]

So we can then speak about an imperturbable mind or something like that. So I think it's important for us each to have the confidence that we already know this mind. And if you deeply know, have faith in the presence of this mind, you don't look for it elsewhere. It's always right here.

[75:12]

Where else could it be? It's never in the future. It will never be in the future unless you know it right here. Knowing it's part of your particular everyday life. And just the decision to accept the presence of this mind. Just the decision to accept the presence of this mind. And the decision, the deep intention, to awaken this mind in your life. That decision and faith begins the process of awakening.

[76:28]

Is that okay? So I would like to keep talking because I'd like to keep hanging out with you for another few hours. I enjoy being with myself or with something I call myself. But I enjoy being with you a little bit more. But let's sit for a few minutes. um so

[78:01]

entering the pace of the world. Opens the door of the mind. the ability to stabilize this big mind, is rooted in developing sustained awareness. A sustained awareness of awareness itself.

[80:21]

So this is called the practice of mind-to-mind transmission. To know this with a few people.

[81:26]

To know this with your teacher. To know this with your Sangha friend, your Dharma brother or sister. Somehow this mutual knowing deepens our individual knowing. So Bodhisattva practice is to deepen this mutual knowing. This mutual knowing we can call love.

[82:35]

Or some non-describable intimacy. or a mind we can describe as perhaps nearness. Any description, however, is just a door or a hint and never a container.

[84:10]

This mind, this feeling contains us. This mind, this feeling contains us. Breathe in these sounds as space.

[85:56]

Thank you for letting me practice with you here in this big city of Berlin. I especially like being here with you. Even if you didn't live in Berlin, I would like being here with you. You're my Berlin. That's true. So reluctantly I say, Oh, Wiedersehen, sweetheart. This lovely day has flown away. The time has come to part. Yes. Thanks for translating.

[87:56]

You're welcome.

[87:57]

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