If we look at Paloma's little statements again, she's looking and she says, thinking. And as I pointed out, it may be that, you know, she's heard the word thinking. So she says thinking. But again, as I said this morning, she's living in the midst of only partially painted canvas. And my guess is that she could have equally well said feeling. And I think she could have said feeling as well.

[01:02]

And for you who came here today, I want to mention again this word which I spoke of yesterday afternoon. Which means noticing without thinking, without elaboration, without thinking about Now, we could call that a beginning practice and a practice that we have to kind of come back to regularly, particularly for us in the West. Because our main way of shaping the world is to think about it, name it, feel that we have it somehow within our functional grasp.

[02:27]

So for those of you who I don't see, but sometimes some of you even once a year here in Hanover, As a basic practice, I would like to suggest you see if you can notice or a kind of knowing, kind of noticing. I sometimes, as you've heard me say before, some of you, I spell noticing with a K, like in German, noticing. So you just have to refresh yourself with allowing noticing to occur without elaborating on it, without thinking about it.

[04:08]

And that's a habit you really have to develop. And it's a habit you have to develop in contrast to your usual habit. Like quite a few of you brought up from years and years and years ago when I spoke about, including Gerald, my practice of no place to go and nothing to do. It's just a practice I kind of hit upon on my own because it was such a busy time of my life in graduate school and full-time job and full-time family.

[05:33]

So every time I Literally programmed to myself, every time I thought I had someplace to go, I said, no place to go. And every time I had something to do, I said to myself, no place, nothing to do. And as I think you will remember it took me about a year and a quarter before it really happened. And maybe you remember that, as I said, it took me about a quarter of a year until it really happened.

[06:38]

And I don't know what kind of strange trust I had in it that allowed me to just repeat it over and over again without any success. It just was some kind of intuitive sense that there has to be some kind of life on the other side of doing and going. Yeah, so I would say that every time I did say it, which was, you know, like... over and over again in any single day. It created a tiny little feeling of space. It must have been a relief. And that must have been a relief.

[07:57]

It makes me think of Dasu Hueke and Bodhidharma. Supposedly one of the anecdotes or stories is that they were climbing a mountain called Few Houses Mountain, probably a lot of them, Few Houses Mountain. And supposedly Bodhidharma, that idea of Bodhidharma, somebody chatting, I mean, it was sort of a very funny thing. I'll get such an icon, just chat with somebody. But supposedly Bodhidharma said, where are we going? Up this path, up this mountain. And Dasu Hueke said, go right ahead.

[09:18]

And Bodhidharma said something like, will you go right ahead? And if you do, you will stop, you will go nowhere. And again, this was one of Dasa Uyghur's enlightenment experiences. Because he felt himself, we can assume, stopped in some place where there was neither going nor not going. er sich wie angehalten gefühlt hat an einem Ort, wo es kein Tun und kein Gehen gab. This is a strong experience, a vivid experience of this sense that your location remains the same, it doesn't go anywhere.

[10:25]

Das ist eine lebhafte Vorstellung, dass dein Ort And this is related to something we can imagine with Paloma saying, looking and thinking. And as I said, we can imagine again trying to feel ourselves in her little tiny human being situation. That her looking is, as we imagine, a visual looking. Maybe it's just looking and maybe it's looking for as well as just looking.

[11:39]

But when she says thinking, there's some reflection here. Reflection of some, as I said yesterday, an attentional stream. Now all of us are in the midst of an attentional stream. As we are in the midst of a field of everything changing. And we can use these various terms, concepts I've mentioned of an attentional stream to notice the presence of mind or feeling or feeling or thinking.

[13:03]

And this becomes, I think, what we could call a basic practice to make a shift between or feel a shift between thinking within this attentional stream and just feeling. within or through this attentional stream. Now what she's not doing we can be pretty sure her reflective looking into this attentional stream, she's actually seeing mind itself. But she doesn't know she's seeing mind itself. Probably the sensorial dimensions of this attentional stream.

[14:24]

In other words, within her attentional stream there are various appearances. And she perhaps feels those appearances. Or she perhaps thinks those experiences. And wants to, perhaps she wants to name them. Probably, maybe there's an, as some person suggested, within attention itself, there's an intention and even a fear pushing one to try to know, grasp, understand, etc. Now, my experience of... My experience, and I'm just using this as a kind of observational...

[15:32]

case. My experience when she kept asking me, Dick, what are you doing? First they had to find a name for me. Am I Grandfather Dick or whatever, you know? I told her nonsense words for a while to see if she'd call me some nonsense word. But finally, we somehow, others helped settle her on Dick. So pretty soon after the first part of the first morning she began calling me Dick. And she seemed to relish calling me Dick. As if that she She had a location for this funny object in front of her that was rather big and no hair.

[17:09]

She had a little bit of control over this funny object. Because when she said, Dick, I like a dog, my... Shep. Shep looks up. Shep is a standard name for a dog. Like when I forget people's names, people say to me, just call me Shep. So when you say to a dog, Shep, the dog responds, you feel, hey, I've got some relationship with this dog. And when she said to me, Dick, I would sometimes actually get down on the floor and look up at her, you know, like a dog might.

[18:15]

And when she said to me, Dick, I would sometimes actually get down on the floor and look up at her, you know, like a dog might. Anyway, so this whole sequence of, Dick, what are you doing, Dick? And making the bed. And over and over again, what are you doing, Dick? Making the bed. As I said yesterday, it seems to me she was, you know, like some of you said earlier, what happens when these fields overlap? And vielleicht so wie einige von euch gestern gesagt haben, und so scheint es mir, was geschieht, wenn diese Felder überlappen? Sie hat diese Worte verwendet.

[19:22]

Was machst du da, Dick? To find the edge between the overlapping fields of myself and her. Um to find what? the overlapping fields where they kind of zipped together. She was zipping them together with, what are you doing Dick? feeling she was doing the same thing when she is just looking thinking maybe she's trying to find the names for things but perhaps I would say from my point of view more fundamentally She was just trying to feel her way into the textures of the world.

[20:34]

And using the language she keeps being given by everybody around her. To give some topography to the textures of the world. And if I relate to her, assuming what she's responding to, these textures of gesture, presence, leaning forward, leaning back, things like that. If in my mind I feel, first by imagination but then by experiential feel, If I feel that there is between Paloma and myself, there are overlapping fields which have texture or some palpable quality.

[21:58]

die sowas wie eine Textur, ein Gewebe oder eine greifbare Eigenschaft, Qualität haben. Sobald ich diese Art von Vorstellung in Beziehung zu ihr habe, dann reagiert sie darauf, als ob sie dieselbe Erfahrung hat. As if there was some kind of space around her that she herself experiences. And if I feel, I'm feeling her space from some distance. I can almost feel when it begins to overlap with her presence as a sphere. My own opinion and experience is we're living in some kind of not a universal space that's just a container.

[23:36]

But a space that's being generated by everything in it, particularly the living beings in it. And it almost has at some point a kind of elasticity. And with adults I find that some adults respond if I have that feeling and some adults don't. But I find with infants who can walk, usually at that age, but still don't define the world fully through talking.

[24:48]

They tend to respond when I had that view, they tend to respond as if they had that view too. So I guess what I'm saying here is a kind of advanced aspect of practice. I'm bringing back into the immediacy of playing with a child with for me a recognition that that is a fundamental way of being that we lose through cultural deformations. No, if I... I suppose I might.

[25:58]

Generally, I don't try to influence children at all, except to play with them. Well, that's not true. I can think of times where I'd say obscure things to see if my daughter would get that it's not obscure, it just sounds obscure. But I guess I could say to Paloma, Paloma, do you see mind or the contents of mind? Yeah, Paloma. But if I said it every now and then, it sows a divisive seed to bring up the dual appearance of object and mind.

[27:18]

Because the practitioner looking into the looking, thinking, feeling, looking into the attentional stream, doesn't just see the sensorial appearances, sensorial and adjunct mental appearances that come up. They see the field of mind itself as the basis for the arising of mental and sensorial appearances.

[28:23]

Now this is a basic but advanced teaching, let's call it advanced. But it's like any of the teachings. Like no place to go and nothing to do. Since it's counterintuitive, or at least countercultural, weil der kontrakulturell, sagen wir kontra oder sagen wir counter, kontrakulturell, kontrakulturell, kontraintuitiv ist, zumindest ist das nicht unsere Gewohnheit. that you have to find a practical way to remind yourself.

[29:46]

And one of the traditional ways is to think of it as a dual appearance. So when I look at these flowers, and I look at these flowers with any dharmic attention, I simultaneously feel and see the mind seeing the flowers. It's almost there's like a kind of clear liquid in which the flowers are appearing. And that's why space, the word space, is often identified with the experience of mind as a contentless field. I would guess that if I did hang out with Paloma enough, I probably won't because my life doesn't let me do that.

[31:00]

But if I sit off and do it enough just to kind of throw a line out, like speaking to the lamp or something, well, what about mind and the contents of mind? Since it is a fact that appearances, mental and sensorial, do occur through and within the field of mind. Even though our thinking is programmed, our noticing is programmed, to notice the contents and not the field. Once you know the possibility of the facticity of it and you decide that given its obvious facticity

[32:24]

Aufgrund dieser offensichtlichen Tatsächlichkeit It must be possible to realize it. Dass es möglich sein muss, es zu verwirklichen. To realize it means to make it your way without The way the body and mind experience things without any hesitation. Es zu verwirklichen bedeutet, das zu der Art und Weise zu machen, wie Körper und Geist es erfahren, ohne jedes Zögern. We could say it is a process of embodiment and maybe inmindment. So it's a computer like the default position. Without any fault. Okay. Now, if I'm almost done.

[34:05]

I don't know. Is it possible to be done? Roasted maybe? Well done? If I could get Paloma to sort of start noticing, yes, the field of mind includes is inclusive of includes the contents of mind And once you really have a tactile palpable experience of the field of mind as the condition for the contents of mind, And when you die, there will be no more contents of mind.

[35:16]

And there will be no more field of mind. But while the... Field of mind is making the contents of mind and sensorium possible. You can, once you really tangibly notice this, So shift your sense of location. Almost shift your sense of identity. From the sensorial and mental contents to the field of mind.

[36:31]

And when that happens with an absolute thoroughness, that's what we call enlightenment. I'm feeling my fingers as the contents of mind. My hands as the field of mind. Once you... even start as practice is also incremental as well as sudden. Once you feel that and find yourself primarily located in this field of mind, then it's much more commonplace or natural or easy to sense the field of everything changing, the field of another person and so forth.

[37:50]

I'm responding partly to Nicole saying to me earlier, why do we have a problem with immersing ourselves in a field of mind or a field of changing? Ich antworte da zum Teil auf etwas, was Nicole mich zuvor gefragt hat. Warum haben wir da so eine Schwierigkeit, uns in einem Feld des Geistes da hineinzutauben? Well, when it's the primary way you function, It's called enlightenment or buddhahood or something like that. Yeah. But still, so from that point of view, you know, Rather, not so easy to reach.

[39:07]

Although, of course, it's nowhere else than here. And you might take as a kind of turning word. In English, something like, no other where. Yeah, no other where. It doesn't quite stick together, no other where, or it sticks together extremely well. It's one of those strange answers to a fundamental question. No other where. And no other where can perhaps remind us that whatever enlightenment is, it's not anywhere else than here. So it's like Volcker's practice to keep bringing himself back into the immediacy is to find yourself, maybe use a phrase, nowhere else than here.

[40:24]

One of the basic practices, like basic practice of no place to go, nothing to do. A basic practice of... of creating the... likelihood of enlightenment is to never think of enlightenment as in the future. never think of your practice as not good enough. But to always respond to every thought you have, oh, enlightenment, I'm not very good at practice, and I really lost contact with my breath, and oh, that's terrible. You respond to all such useful clues.

[41:48]

There are cues and clues. Yeah, clues to where enlightenment is located. And you can use your self-deprecating thoughts To create the possibility of enlightenment. Hey, that's better than self-deprecating thoughts. So you can welcome every self-deprecating thought. As a chance to remind your non-self.

[42:53]

That if enlightenment is anywhere, it's nowhere else but here. So it's nowhere else but here. nowhere else but here. This can be the very air you breathe, nowhere else but here. You'll greatly increase the Potentiality of enlightenment. Particularly if you don't think of enlightenment as some kind of special thing. It's the most natural way to be in the world.

[43:55]

Okay? Oh dear. All right. So I think we can have a break. And when we return after the break, I would like to have us all turn more or less, I can't circle, but more or less in maybe two halves. So when we have a discussion, we're more obviously talking to each other. So just turn your seats more toward each other. That means you turn this way and not that way. We have to keep track of each other. That's fine. You can come up here. All right.

[44:55]

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