Well, I'd like to continue our discussion if anyone has anything else, anything they'd like to bring up. Yeah. When I was sitting here, I thought of something that has been with me for a long time. Because the sentence by Agatha impressed me so much. Welcome, we are invited guests. I didn't think about it at all. But suddenly I thought, that was also a sentence that impressed me a lot back then. Welcome, the uninvited guest. This was a phrase I just remembered doing. I was sitting and it also reminded me of what Agatha said this morning. He has to hear, too. Okay.

[01:01]

Okay, sorry. Next time. And Agatha, what were you ...? That's also similar to what Agatha said this morning. Okay. Yes, I have a question. Luis, can you translate it maybe? In advertising you often see Buddhist messages. For example, this morning in Säckingen I saw someone who was lying on the floor for a meter in a meditation posture. My question is in the commercials you often see now that they use Buddhist philosophy or Buddhist phrases like In Sakinga I saw someone in a meditation seat somehow above the crown and also there's an MP3 player, it's called Zen.

[02:10]

Do you know the meaning of that? Why do they use these Buddhist phrases and terms? I try not to know the meaning of that. Ich versuche das also nicht zu wissen. What happens then? with our society. What happens when you read it? No, not with me. I want to buy it. We should get Zen. Apple Zen. Well, there used to be a Zen shaving lotion or something like that in the States. I never used it, but I don't know. I don't like it. I have a kind of negative reaction when I see it, but I don't know.

[03:10]

Yes, me too. What can we do about it? No, what shall it do? What does these ads and these commercials, what do they try to do with us? What's the result or what's supposed the result will be? Well, you know, The abstract painting of the 40s and 50s in New York. In general, the popular reaction to it was, oh, a kid could do this or anyone can do this, et cetera. But by the 50s and the 60s you began to see the basic ideas in that painting in the advertisements. The drama of the space of an ad was really related to the paintings of the five or ten years earlier.

[04:31]

And then, in one way, it forces the painters to do something else. But, I don't know, it's like I always think of the Buddhas in the jewelry shops. You look in a shop and there's a window and there's a bunch of watches and there's a Buddha. But they're seldom as a statue of Christ. Even when the name of the store is Christ. So, I don't know, it's a kind of acceptance and dilution at the same time.

[05:55]

Das ist eine Art von akzeptieren und dilution? Verblendung, ja. To dilute. Verdünnung, ja. And, I mean, popular culture goes to where the energy is. And it often goes there in the media before people are ready, before people know what's going on. But I think it's also good to resist it. For instance, there's pressure on me always with Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. To let Suzuki Roshi's words be on calendars, on a card a day, reminders and things like that.

[07:09]

They made a calendar. I know. I was kind of forced into it. Yeah, and then people get the sense of, oh, I like that, it's nice, I understand it. You can look at it as, yeah, well, why shouldn't Zukershi's words be all over the place? But Suzuki Roshi, for the first five years or more he was in the States, he wouldn't let his lectures even be recorded. So he'd appreciate more his book being passed by word of mouth.

[08:10]

You have to have an effort to buy it and not just have it everywhere. But it's a very hard argument to make to the publisher. They say, look how much money the calendar will make and everyone will like Suzuki Roshin. I say no and then they get upset. And as his literary executor, I only have a certain amount of power, so if I say no too much, they just ignore me, and then what do I do, sue them? So even in a situation where I have some legal say about it, it's very easy to ignore me. So that's just the way it is.

[09:29]

I've seen a poster, advertisement, with a monk's head from the back side. It's really similar to the back side of the book of Sufokyurashi. You can't do anything to it. Of course, it's... Anyway, so it's the way it is. Someone else, yeah? I think last year there's a new translation of Suzuki's Anfingergeist in Germany. Do you know about it? And is it a better translation? It's the same publisher? Yes. I believe it's the translation that Neil, who will translate from tomorrow... Tonight. Tonight? Yeah, maybe tonight. He went over the translation and I think improved it, but I can't read it in either German. I'm told the first translation was rather inaccurate or awkward and this new one is supposedly better.

[10:39]

Man hat mir gesagt, die erste Übersetzung war nicht so ganz akkurat und nicht so ganz genau und dass jetzt die folgende besser ist. And I authorized the new translation because I trusted the people who told me it was better. Sorry, you? I authorized. I approved. Ja, und ich habe das genehmigt, weil man mir gesagt hat, das ist jetzt besser. Okay, someone else? It's quite off our topic, but that's all right. So I think I ought to come back to the sense of Consciousness being a construct.

[12:03]

Yeah, and this is something you have to kind of sense for yourself. And I think what Agatha brought up illustrates a shift in in uh... really in how consciousness is put together. But if this is going to be meaningful for you, you've got to really feel it, feel the possibility, accept the possibility in yourself. And even slight differences make a big difference.

[13:09]

Nakamura-sensei, the Japanese woman who lived with my family for a couple of decades, used to say something like, we human beings are so weak. If it's a cloudy day already, our mind is different. Yeah, and if you get good news, your mind is different. Now, practice is really, first of all, just to notice this. There's a kind of topography or texture to consciousness. Now, consciousness isn't like a photograph. I can photograph a house. And the house looks like the house.

[14:11]

Like a house. But if it's your family's house, let's say there's your family's house, the one you grew up in. There's a new house or a house you're... planning to buy or rent. And then there's just a house you have no associations with. And in a photograph, they all look the same. But when you look at your family's house, you feel Yeah, no, I know, you know, I had two houses in Japan for many years. For, I don't know how many years, I didn't count, but 30 years or so I kept a house in Japan. And when I went back to the first house, the one that Gary Schneider, the poet, had passed on to me, we resisted it being torn down for several years.

[15:48]

They kept wanting to tear it down, but... We refused to move out. And finally what had been farmer's fields around and was now shops and so forth. There's a certain limit that you can prevent them from taking the house. And because we resisted so long, the buildings were built around it and then it just became a parking lot. And Nakamura Sensei, this Japanese woman who lived with us, was a big help because they can't throw an old Japanese woman out of her house.

[16:54]

I went back after it was And there was a golf shop. A golf shop. And then a parking lot for the golf shop. And it wasn't. There was nothing there. But for me, it was very clear. There was Sally's room when she was little. And there was the kitchen and so forth. It was all very clear in my mind. If you took a photograph, you wouldn't see anything. Consciousness is haunted. Like a house is haunted.

[17:58]

Like a ghost haunts a house. A house is haunted, can be haunted. And consciousness can be haunted. In the sense that If you look at your family's house or a house you plan to build or buy, there's all kinds of anticipations in the house you want to buy or build. feelings and memories from the house you used to live in. So then there's these ingredients of consciousness, which is the teaching of the five skandhas. And as I said, there's a big difference between a wooden house, a brick house, and a stone house. For example, brick houses are very dangerous in fires.

[19:13]

And in America you can't have a school in a brick house. Because they have a wooden frame and bricks on the outside and it's just like a kiln. if a fire starts, it's so hot, you know, everything melts inside. So it may be if you construct your consciousness one way, or if your consciousness is constructed one way, It's more fragile than another way. Yeah, more prone to anxiety or whatever.

[20:15]

And I think that the more your consciousness supports thinking, the more prone you are to anxiety. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't. We shouldn't think. Yeah, there's another. I'll just bring it up now because I think it's interesting. There's quite a movement going on in Japan now about a sort of anti-Zen movement. And because, you know, in a way, I think they tried to make Zen into a philosophy, some people. And so then, not speaking from experience, but saying non-thinking is better than thinking or something.

[21:33]

Now there's this movement of the scholars who say Japanese scholars say, thinking is what makes us human and Zen is some sort of, you know, weirdness. Thinking is something that makes us... It's a kind of weirdness or... Thinking is what makes us human. Yeah. And this is a problem, somewhat similar to what you brought up, when Buddhism is divorced from the experience it's rooted in. That is a problem when Buddhism separates itself from what is rooted in it. That is also what you said, Manuel. The more Buddhism is a popular idea, the more it will be replaced by a new popular idea.

[22:42]

Now, if let's say that our contemporary consciousness emphasizes thinking a lot. Yeah, and with some idea that thinking is the territory of rationality, of reason. although most of our thinking is not particularly rational, at least the territory of reasoning and so forth. So it's given a lot of validity for a number of reasons.

[23:45]

I won't discuss all of them because we've discussed it so often. And if we give preference or priority to visual consciousness, we're going to have a particular kind of consciousness. But I would imagine, I'm guessing, I don't know, I didn't live in the Middle Ages in Europe. The sound was more important. And it does seem like, you know, if you go to Zurich, as I pointed out before, you see all these big clocks. And I think the big clocks came on to the churches when Protestantism came along.

[24:50]

In the more Catholic earlier times. It was the bells that told you the time, not the clock. And the Protestant clocks, yeah, it's a shift in culture. and the way the world is perceived as well as a shift into a different kind of Christianity. So I think when sound and images, tableaus, like paintings as stories, Our emphases within the five skandhas.

[25:56]

I think probably in the Middle Ages we could say there was, I'm pretty sure, there was a different kind of consciousness. Now what happens when you meditate? No, I'm not saying we go back to the Catholic consciousness of the Middle Ages. But there might be some similarities. And Ivan Illich definitely thought there were some similarities. that there was a big change in the 12th century. No, I'm saying we can look in our own culture for a difference in consciousness. And when you begin practicing meditation, you start shifting the emphasis within the skandhas. And you begin to have a different kind of consciousness.

[27:35]

I'm not saying it's the same as a Japanese or Chinese Zen Buddhist consciousness. Because even if we're both practicing the five skandhas, The ingredients we bring into the skandhas are somewhat different. But certainly my experience is an experience of my own. my understanding of your experience in practicing, is through practice, real practice rooted in practice. in the experience of meditation and mindfulness, brings us much closer to the teachings of our Dharma ancestors.

[28:40]

They begin to make, you know, they begin to feel familiar. Someone just told me today that they want to continue practicing here because somehow they've feel at home here. And Christian Dillow, who's the head monk at Crestone right now. So he gives the shuso or head monk lectures during this practice period. Talked about how he didn't feel at home living here in Europe.

[29:42]

hat darüber gesprochen, wie er sich hier in Europa nicht zu Hause fühlte. And didn't feel at home particularly in America. Und hat sich auch in Amerika nicht zu Hause gefühlt. And he, you know, has families from Eastern, I think Eastern, what's now Lithuania originally. Und seine Familie ist aus dem Osten, was jetzt ist, I think it's Lithuan or so, ne? Litau, is that what it's called now in German? And then they scattered his father's ashes there, I believe. And at some point they lived in Bavaria, and because they were Christians in a Catholic village, they had to move to another village or something like that. Because they were Protestants in the... Anyway, he describes feeling quite dislocated through most of his life.

[31:04]

Until one day a woman friend of his He said, let's go to Green Gulch for the heck of it. We're all feeling kind of lousy today. Let's go to Green Gulch. And supposedly he knew nothing about Zen. And Green Gulch is this meditation center where we both practiced, Paul and I. And... So he went. She said she goes there sometimes. So he said, OK, I'll come with you. And they walked in the Zendo. And he suddenly felt completely at home for the first time in his life. Oh, why is that? What's going on in his consciousness?

[32:19]

He studied rhetoric. I think he has a PhD in rhetoric and stuff like that. Language. Yeah, so what made him... Why does he walk into a meditation hall that I happened to have designed. Yeah, but I didn't make it up from nothing. I followed tradition I learned in Japan. It's an old barn that we made into a meditation hall. So how did I... You know, I speak about, and I think it's in the new Zen, the material stream of Buddhism.

[33:19]

Isn't there something like that in Zen? Isn't that what I wrote? Yes. Yeah, okay, thank you. So just the way this room in is also part of a material stream. But what is it that is in the way we change a barn from things we learned by practicing together. It gives somebody, a couple of people, a feeling of being at home. It must mean that somehow our own consciousness is changing or looking for something, looking for something that's rooted in our Western culture.

[34:31]

Since he wasn't involved in Zen and Buddhism, something in his own culture made him look for something that wasn't in his own culture. What is the experience of finding yourself at home? Or at ease, or alive in some kind of... Especially alive. Now, if you do practice meditation, And we sit still.

[35:38]

And one of the main rules in the Zen Do and in practice is you don't look around. And you can really feel when somebody in the Zen Do Crestone or here, tends to look around, what's going on. You know they're not in the dimension of the Zendo. I'm just trying to say something. I don't know if it's clear. But the idea is that the emphasis is cutting down on the thinking visual mind And that's part of the behavior of a expected behavior in a zendo.

[36:50]

And at the same time, when you meditate and you're just sitting there and your eyes are nearly closed. What you're doing is emphasizing the vijnana of hearing of sound more than the visual vijnana. So the expected behavior, which is hard to explain to anyone, stop looking around, they feel like you're treating them like a kid. And the fact of just sitting there with not much light actually is part of a shift from a visually based consciousness to more of a sound based consciousness.

[38:07]

And the more you do that, the more you're shifting the emphasis and the ingredients of consciousness. Because the five skandhas are teaching about how consciousness is constructed. Okay, so now the question is, does that shift in the construction or ingredients in consciousness happen primarily through the practice of meditation? Or does it also happen through the practice of mindfulness? I'm not answering that question, I'm just presenting that question. Now one aspect of mindfulness practice is you begin to have a continuous attention to attention.

[40:20]

Because if you bring your attention to your, say, walking, your attention is not on your thinking so much. It's on the activity of walking. Or it's on the activity of breathing. Or it's on the activity of speaking. So when you practice mindfulness in this way, this is one aspect of mindfulness. You're developing a continuous attention to what you're doing. and in a way the continuous attention to what you're doing is a continuous attention to not to thinking.

[41:49]

So say that you practice a continuous attention to what you're doing. Which you have to just say that you're a surgeon. You have to have a, I hope, if I'm under the knife, I hope you have a continuous attention to what you're doing. I was thinking about, well, let's see, what will I do? And I suspect actually surgeons are people who get a thrill out of the necessity of a continuous attention to what they're doing. Just like this woman I know who used to climb glaciers and coming down in the morning when the sun is starting to melt the surface.

[43:00]

She liked the continuous attention to what she's doing. It was such a high for her. But we don't need a melting glacier to give us continuous attention to attention. Camino's a famous remark of Austria's most famous California governor. You know the famous saying of the governor from California. He makes a big deal in America of mispronouncing words and things. And he has posters with California spelled the way he says it in Austrian accent.

[44:04]

But he said, as I've repeated to you often, one pump. with the mind in it is worth ten without the mind in it. But I'm sure that's his own discovery. That's a lot for an Austrian. We have some Austrians here. But that kind of insight is probably why he became the most famous bodybuilder in the world. I know somebody who talked with him years and years ago when he first was in America. And he said he took over this party. He was so smart. It was a party full of real smart people. And he just came in and just took over the room and talked about everything and knew a lot, knew everything.

[45:41]

It's hard to believe sometimes, but you know. And he said to this person, I'm going to become the most famous bodybuilder in the world. And this is back in, I don't know, in the late 50s or something. He said, and then I'm going to become the richest movie star in the world. And then I'm going into politics. And this guy just laughed, you know. But... What kind of will power is that? So I suppose if you're a musician too, since we have several here.

[46:51]

You need to bring your attention to exactly what you're doing if the music's going to be full. Isn't that true? You can't be thinking about something else. And I ask you also, when you're chanting, notice the difference between reading the chant and saying the chant from... bodily memory. And what happens when you're chanting bodily and you Think about what the syllable is, what happens. So we can see in our experience what happens when we have... the consciousness of reading the chant and the consciousness that bodily chants the chant.

[47:57]

Now, I'm interested in what practices, what teachings, What experiences make enlightenment more likely? Now, there are certainly Zen teachers and certainly it's a part of the Zen tradition, that certain practices make enlightenment more likely. Now, Rajneesh used to say, and I can't remember, he got the quote from somewhere else, though, that enlightenment is an accident.

[49:10]

But practice makes you accident-prone. But the practice makes the accident more possible. But many Zen teachers think it doesn't just make you more accident-prone, it actually creates the conditions for enlightenment. Okay, so then I have to ask myself, since this is my job to practice with you and teach, are there practices that make us more prone to or likely to realize enlightenment? And are the teachings that might make enlightenment more likely in Asia

[50:23]

The same in America? Actually, I don't think so. And I think that's why, say, Kamakura Buddhism is different from Heian period Buddhism. But here we're not talking about a difference between the West and Asia, but a difference of a few hundred years in Japan. It's the people's experience The way they were rooted in experience changed, so the teaching had to be different. So one of the things I've noticed It's such a kind of loaded topic, enlightenment.

[52:01]

And for the most part, I don't... think it's necessary to emphasize it. Because there's something more subtle in our practice than whether you have enlightenment or not. And all of us have, usually, if you're practicing, enlightenment. noticed or unnoticed enlightenment experience is sufficient to make your practice work. But some people, clearly, people I practice with, have quite a lot of different kinds of enlightenment experiences and some don't have almost none. So I ask myself, what is

[53:04]

The difference is that people who have this kind of experience tend to be people who are able to have a continuous attention to attention. They may not have it all the time. But every now and then for a few hours they lock into attention to attention and often it results in some kind of insight. Okay, so attention to attention is... basic of mindfulness practice. And when you are able to have attention to attention, and attention to what you're doing.

[54:19]

This is, we could call it, percept-only attention. Now that's emphasizing the third skanda, the skanda perception or percept-only. Now, not... not a skanda of perception as an ingredient of consciousness, or not only that, but a discrete way of knowing in itself, separate from ordinary consciousness. This also happens often.

[55:23]

You notice this discreet area in physical meditation practice. Again, you hear a sound in zazen. And you may hear yourself hearing, as I always say. You don't so much hear the bird, you hear your own hearing of the bird. This is percept-only consciousness. And it's often accompanied by blissful feelings. So here we have a shift to sound more than visual consciousness.

[56:27]

And we also have a shift to percept-only consciousness. Because we can shift to just seeing as well as just hearing. Now, I'll just say right now that this is a basic psychological condition, stabilizing condition for Zen practitioners. If you look at somebody who... is a mature practitioner. How they stabilize their consciousness as a whole is always this reference to percept only.

[57:27]

And not to think. They give preference to percept only consciousness to thinking. So it becomes a kind of reference line. They keep returning to, oh, just see, just hearing. Are we supposed to stop at four o'clock? Is that right? You laugh at me. You have to go with it. Oh, then we can have a break. Oh, that's okay. Let's have a break. Because usually I stop on a prologue day at four, but...

[58:29]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.17