Just sit down in the middle of that, not knowing what's going on. That's most basic. You should have as little recipe as possible when you sit down. You should interfere as little as possible. And perhaps the teaching of zazen should be to profoundly leave yourself alone. That's particularly true. I think I'll do more than answer your question, all right? I think I'll do more than just answer her question. I think that's particularly true for us in the West because so much of our sense of self is based on restraint and constraint and even repression and suppression.

[01:20]

Because so much of our idea of ourselves is that we somehow hold back and hold on, if not even suppress. And we think that our society has developed the idea, which I'm not saying these ideas are wrong, I'm just saying they develop a particular way of doing things. And to speak about it, shall we say critically, is not to say it's not necessary. And every society has a kind of organic hole to it, so it's very hard to change items within it, although individuals are free to be different. But basically our sense of individual freedom and the kind of social freedom we have and the kind of social democracy we have

[02:32]

depends on individuals policing themselves. In other words, the government can control us less if we control ourselves more. So what basically has been created in the West is a scrutinizing public. And I talked about this a bit in Sashin. And we've internalized that. And it's been done in one of the main ways it's been done is in the idea of Catholic confession. This idea makes all of us examine our thoughts. Are some of our thoughts bad? Are some of our thoughts the work of the devil? Are some of our thoughts crazy? So we become very suspicious of our own thoughts.

[04:10]

And Dostoevsky is full of it. So you're not suspicious of your hand, particularly. Or you may not like your nose, but you're not suspicious of it. But we are suspicious of our thoughts. We don't trust them. And this is anyway reinforced in many ways in the way our society is put together. So in Zazen practice, you need to have a space. It's a space that's offered to us where you can be completely unrestrained. So you don't want to bring a lot of rules into your Zazen.

[05:14]

If you need to murder your parents, do it in zazen. If you need to go crazy, do it in zazen. But you see, in the Christian world, even having the thought of murdering the parents is guilt. Now, I'm taking an extreme example of murdering the parents. I happen to be a parent. But we don't dare have certain thoughts because we think they're either crazy or we're guilty for having them. It's a tremendous inhibition in exploring yourself to find out who you are, which includes all kinds of things. You can assume that any person who's done anything on the planet is also you.

[06:39]

It's also partly you. And we get scared of these parts when we think they might become wholly you. But that's based on a belief that there's something that's wholly you. The more you realize there's nothing that's wholly you, Whatever appears as a part, you must say, I don't like this part. But you don't feel, this part is going to take me over and I'll become a dangerous person or something. And believe it or not this all arises out of the simple instruction don't scratch.

[07:57]

Because if you really learn how not to scratch and just sit still you suddenly realize you can sit through anything. And then you're not scared of what comes up. then you can sit through it. It's a tremendous power in your life. So this is why Zen emphasizes the posture and learning to sit still. It doesn't tell you much about what to do while you're sitting still. Count your breath if you feel like it. Like that. Now, if your practice becomes more developed and the topography or territory of your inner life

[08:58]

which more and more can't be distinguished from your outer life, becomes more defined, then some suggestions and interaction with your teacher is helpful. But I would say the best instruction I can give you Each of you, just see if you can have an uncorrected state of mind. And allow whatever happens. You may at some point develop a kind of actual taking hold of a kind of openness. Or having a sense of a kind of openness that stretches through, reaches into the structure of being. An openness that in itself does not become structured. but allows you to see the structure of yourself and allows that structure to become more flexible.

[10:49]

So basically just sit down once a day and have a good time. Zazen is called the Dharma gate of ease and joy. And Dogen says the essence of Zazen, the key to Zazen, is self-enjoyment samadhi. But usually you have a little psychological stuff to go through first. If you can give yourself permission for a little self-enjoyment early on, the psychological stuff goes a lot faster. But enjoyment is connected in our society with the lack of restraint.

[12:06]

Now, I read, I don't know how true it is, I'm not a scholar of this, but Dionysian religions say We're the major religions of the Near East and everywhere from the 13th century BC, I believe, 12th century, 13th, 14th century BC till about the 5th or 6th century BC. And Dionysius you know is the god of wine. Not of drunkenness, but of wine. The Greeks turned him into Bacchus, the god of drunkenness. So he represented disorder and joy and freedom.

[13:11]

And late Greek religion and then Christianity banished him. I think Rajneesh tried to bring him back. More or less unsuccessfully in general, but successfully for some people. I think you could understand Rajneesh as a Dionysian phenomenon in contemporary society. He appealed to that side of us. And although he probably did himself in in lots of ways, society also contributed to doing him in.

[14:19]

He probably didn't keep enough Star Wars content in his teaching. Or content of the usual society. So much of our... way of being is based on restraining and constraining ourselves. And usually around sexuality. And then sexuality gets connected with all kinds of psychological disturbance, murder, etc. Because it's the main handle and the most obvious handle society is used to tell us to restrain ourselves. So, anyway, in zazen you need to have, we need in our life some territory of unrestrained thinking, feeling, etc.

[15:55]

And that's the tantric side of Buddhism. Some other question? Yes. I have a question about that. And that is, how far is action important? That this uncorrected state of the mind lives, or is it a pure spiritual game within meditation? Or how far is it important to live this uncorrected state actively? And of course, if you do this in all consistency, you simply break the limits. An example that many may have already experienced, if you stand on a tower, I always want to jump down, I want to fly. And there are simply limits, you have to correct your mind. Is this just a mental phenomenon, this uncorrected state of mind, or how much can I...

[17:05]

do that also in my conduct. I mean, there's a certain... There's a certain limit, I suppose. Like, for example, when I'm standing on a tower, I always feel like jumping because I like to fly. But do I have to correct my state of mind? I would. I would. Flying is great, but you have to know when to do it. Yeah, I mean the point is, the boundary is don't scratch. Does that mean conduct is scratching?

[18:25]

Conduct is scratching, yes. All conduct is considered in Buddhism scratching and leaking. Doesn't mean we don't redo it. I think the more you can fly in the feeling skanda, the less you want to jump off the East Berlin Tower. In general, the sense in Buddhism is that the rules of society and of individual conduct are not really in the realm of right or wrong. The basic overall precept is don't hurt others.

[19:29]

And others includes you. But other than that sort of precept, the only rule is you learn how to go along with your society. Castaneda has a great phrase in one of his books. Called controlled folly. You know, he carries this whole idea of controlled folly to extremes, which stretches the imagination. But the phrase itself, controlled folly, is great. You could call it from one point of view, controlled folly. Does that expression have any meaning in German? Controlled folly? Yeah. Folly.

[20:55]

You mean you can translate it? I don't know if it's... I tried. Was it craziness or something? Folly means... A folly would be to try to build the tallest building in the world on the salary of a secretary. In Castellini, as you said, it's Controlli di Torheit. Ah, ja. The Controlli di Torheit. Ah, ja. In the German translation. Yes. But you could also say following the rules of society is loving other people. We all need a consensual reality. In order to just love each other. We're all part of one great being. Compassion means to recognize and feel this great being, which includes everything you see.

[22:04]

Whether your consensual reality is six centuries of Dionysian culture, Or your social reality is Europe today, or, you know... It's our way of... You know, it's a kind of language, a meta-language, more than just German. It's a meta-language. And a smart bodhisattva learns the meta-language of culture. Which doesn't usually include jumping off towers. And sometimes. It would be the last communication. And then it's such a mess. Yeah, well that's... What else?

[23:19]

Yes. I would like to know how the difference between vision and visualization as a desired presentation or presentation of the appropriate conditions is in connection with the same thing. Is it helpful? Or, as I would like to say now, it actually makes little sense. Whereas visualization is also a technique that I personally consider very valuable in bringing my goals closer. I think I didn't quite understand what you meant. Vision as an image, a visualization of a state that I aspire to as a goal within my essence. It is desired, it is feasible, but it does not fit at all. I tend to say it does not fit, as I have learned in the past, because it is also The idea of visualizing something that I want to achieve, should I try to do that in my sasen or rather not?

[24:38]

First let me comment that I like this group. Partly because you're the most talkative group I've had in Germany so far. You're willing to talk about things without my hand to sort of kind of try to... Okay. Why not visualize everything? Why not? Visualize everything. Why just the things you really want? Visualization is a way of thinking. And one of the practices that if I had more time I would try to give you is how to enter an imaginal reality as a way of thinking. Okay, but I'll just say a little bit.

[25:53]

Whenever you see anything, visualize it. In other words, again, if I hold up the stick, you just don't see the stick. You feel yourself visualizing it while you're looking at it. So when I come into this room, I step in and visualize the room that I'm stepping into. And in that sense, I'm stepping into my own perception. And when I sit here talking with you, The first thing I do is I visualize all of you. Now, I can't exactly explain what I mean by that.

[26:56]

I know I do it. With open eyes? No, with open eyes. But if I close my eyes, I completely see you all here. It'd be a new chant, right? But this is available with practices of direct perception and so forth. But if you do do that, your thinking about whatever it is has a power of visualization, which is different than the power of thinking in words. And I would, if you're very clear about something and you want it, fine, visualize it.

[27:57]

If you're very clear about something and you want it, fine, visualize it. But Buddhist practice, strictly speaking, would mean to visualize more processes rather than products. or attitudes rather than some gaining idea. You might try to visualize your innermost request. So instead of visualizing what you want, visualize just the feeling of wanting or what is your deepest desire. General religious Buddhist practice is to move upstream. So the goal is downstream.

[29:30]

Upstream is the desire. And low upstream is probably spiritual desire. Does that make sense? What is then a vision? [...] A vision, for example, Padmasambhava. He also had the vision that when the iron birds fly, that then Buddhism will go to the West. I'm not surprised. But isn't visualization something that can become or can happen?

[30:37]

Like when Padmasambhava had this vision about these iron birds flying, and then it later became true that Buddhism went to the West. Well, interpretation became true. do you mean like do you mean do visions just come to people or visions that predict the future which do you mean Sometimes I know things before they happen. Well, if you practice seeing as visualizing, Your thinking is more visions.

[31:51]

So it's more common. It's an immediate way of thinking. So having a vision is less of a noticeable event. But there's ways of practice which you can feel things starting to happen. Before they happen. Maybe you feel little threads from them. And His Holiness the Dalai Lama has an oracle that travels with him as well as a doctor.

[32:56]

But in general Buddhism doesn't emphasize such things. But if something occurred to you, all right. But in general Buddhists are warned, adepts, not to see signs in things. Because if you're rich, no, no, a little different. Don't see that, oh, this means such and such is going to happen. And that's why in general astrology is discouraged in Buddhism. If you have any trace of ego left, you're always trying to make the shoe of the future fit. Does this have anything to do with Machiavelli? By makyo, well, you should say it in German and translate makyo.

[34:38]

Makyo has nothing to do with pictures and images that appear. I don't see it as a single theme. I think it's more about the people who are busy, the citizens or not. I think Mark used kind of these rising pictures and the things that come up in Zazen, and I remembered this when we talked about visualization. That's okay. Whatever comes up in your uncorrected state of mind is great. If you start believing it, that's different. My question is how much are projections part of this visualization? That's something you have to start being able to discover.

[35:45]

And that's part of holding the five skandhas in view. You can begin to see a visualization arising. You can see the projection coming in. You can see the energy coming in. You can see associations coming in, etc. It's very difficult for me to distinguish between a projection and just a clear undistorted perception. It shouldn't be. If it's clear, it's... Usually the more you practice, the more you can trust whatever you think is possible. And the more you sit regularly, the less you have projections.

[36:49]

But it's very hard to sustain and nourish projections in the state of mind that Zazen creates. But after the break, I'll try to come back to the role of, to a little more sort of feeling of what the mind is. So after a break we'll start from scratch again. Yes. or to leave my fantasies uncontrolled.

[37:52]

I always had the feeling that I could move around in one room. But I always had the difficulty of leaving this room in the real world and then doing what I might like to do. That means I didn't dare to live what I fantasized. I never had a difficulty in my meditation to just let all these fantasies and all this go and not correct it. But then my difficulty is coming out of it and then in the outer world to somehow trust these fantasies and actually do what I really want to do, which I got in touch with in satsang or in meditation. So this is why I would like you to come back to this point number five about karma, how to access things I believe.

[38:53]

Okay. I'll do that too. Thanks. So it's now ten to, about ten to five to ten. Five to eleven. Five to eleven. Should we come back at eleven twenty? Please sit comfortably. Put on the cream, he said. Eckhart, how are you doing over there in your corner? I'm fine. You're fine? Okay.

[39:55]

And the machineries are working all right? The machine is fine, too. Yeah, yeah. And how's the machine working in your corner? You know, it's a very rainy day, isn't it? a rather darkish day. Don't think it's a bad day, though. It's what we got, right? So as I say, often the practice begins with bringing into yourself the mood of the day. Or music of the day. And if the day starts out sunny and then it gets dark around 10 o'clock and you start resisting it, you actually do yourself some damage. And it makes you gloomy.

[40:56]

Loomy? Gusta. Gusta. It makes you gusta. But if you actually kind of feel the grayness and brownness of the day, It's actually kind of nourishing. And likewise, again, a basic practice is to find, locate your own mood, your own music. And that you should start out with in the first thing in the morning when you first wake up. And our life sort of lives, funny, strangely, our life sort of lives below the surface of self.

[42:32]

In that sense, Jung's image of a quirk of the self afloat in the sea is not too bad. But I would more think of it as a surface of self with your existence actually just below that. You brought up the question of makyo. I hear your words. But if I could answer your question, I don't know if I could, I'd actually have to know you better.

[43:37]

I have to see you during several days walking around and doing things. Because other skandhas need more information. These things are pretty subtle. And there's no kind of formula for understanding. When you're Say that when you're practicing mindfulness of the body in the body.

[45:04]

Now I'm trying to look for an example that can give you some feeling of what I want to say. So you can practice, as I said yesterday, feelingfulness of the feelings in feelings. But I think it's okay, and I would try to give you a different sense of interpretation, if I say mindfulness of feelings in feelings. So now I would say, I'm going to use the example though, because I think it's clearer, of mindfulness of the body in the body. There's an English, a word that's used in English for this is proprioceptive.

[46:17]

And it's originally a medical term, which means the ability of the body to know it's upright. So that the body... The body doesn't know it's upright through thinking. The body knows it's upright through the body. So there's no intermediary. So poets and... Psychologists have, in recent decades, adopted the word proprioceptive, I think out of the medical vocabulary, to mean the body knowing the body or knowing something without the intermediary.

[47:18]

Now, say that you practice bodyfulness. Like stepping through the door with the hinge foot. Or if it's a large opening with no door, you step through with the foot nearest the side where you're stepping through. And if you go right to the middle, you have your own free choice. If you practice in this way, and as much as possible moving your location out of your thoughts into your body,

[48:29]

So, for example, you may doing zazen feel suddenly that your breath breathes your breath. There's no you breathing your breath. Your breath breathes itself. And you might feel, I'm sure that any of you who do a sport, you feel at a certain time playing tennis, suddenly your body just starts playing tennis. So if that feeling that you might have during a sport is when you walk down the streets, go up and down stairs, standing in front of your body is doing it.

[49:38]

Okay, a kind of sensation of knowledge or intelligence begins to arise on the body. Do you understand? At least intellectually do you understand? That a kind of intelligence or feeling arises in the body. A palpable feeling. That's called mind. So maybe when you're potting, say, or Gisela is potting, maybe when you're potting, a certain kind of feeling arises when you're doing it.

[50:41]

You might call it the mind of a potter. You might say, I didn't make this pot. Potter's mind made this pot. I think when musicians play, and often when they play together, something happens between the musician and the instrument, and the musician and other musicians, which takes over and makes the music. That, what takes over, that feeling, is called mind in Buddhism. It doesn't mean the brain or consciousness. Do you understand? I've just defined the mind for you, or one dimension of mind.

[51:43]

Yes. In the art of archery, it says, it is shooting. Is that the same? Yeah, same thing. In fact, that's the best... For a description of that dimension of Zen, that's certainly the classic book. Okay. Now I want you to know that this is a palpable experience. sensation. So then from that point of view we can say mindfulness, we don't have to say bodyfulness of the body in the body, we can say mindfulness of the body in the body.

[52:56]

But in that sense it means through practicing the body in the body, a full feeling of mind arises. So then that would be an understanding of mindfulness of the body in the body. Mindfulness of the body in the body. Do you see why you need a little help in reading the text? Or translating these things. It's very difficult to know actually what it means, the in or etc., the pronouns, unless you have some real experience with this. And reading the text of yourself and reading the texts of Buddhism is a skill, an art. And we've almost lost the sense of reading the text.

[54:12]

We just... We want everything to be simple and clear. Let me just repeat what I mean. I've said it a number of times in other seminars, but repeat what I mean by reading the text. When you read a poem that really moves you, Say Hölderlin or Rilke or something. You feel the poem reading you. That's reading the text. You read the text, the text reads you. So be here now also means reading the text of the present.

[55:15]

Also in Hier und Jetzt heißt auch, dass man den Text der Gegenwart liest. Is that what you describe, this state, or what keeps you from always being in this state? What is perhaps not excluded from the scandals, or what is excluded from your consciousness, or why is one not always, if one has the need, in this state? So I would take it as a state. That's the text. I want to know. What inhibits us not to be in this state all the time which you described that the text reads me? Most basically it's because we're not really open to cooperation from others.

[56:22]

Because much of wisdom being arises from the larger being of many people. And the challenge of individualism is how to find a way to keep our individualism and our process of individuation without losing this sense of the larger text of being. And every culture, any culture, any definition will have its blind spots. And it's the job of wisdom traditions to create texts that help people read in the blind spots.

[57:40]

So the three refuges of Buddhism to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha can also mean Buddha is that you have to completely do it by yourself. All alone. And Sangha means you have to completely do it with others. And those things are only contradictory in a sequential chronological reality. In a simultaneous reality, they're not contradictory. They don't interfere with each other. And to take breath.

[58:49]

So first you have to do it completely by yourself. You have to do it completely with others. And dharma is you have to know how to do it. So that's reading the text. So I'm trying to give you some sense of reading the text. But the questions, you know, you can ask me questions and I really appreciate it because it's part of the practice. But also you have to pervade your own consciousness with the question. Let them penetrate through you. And let the question start reading your text. Okay. I want to go out and play.

[60:20]

Okay. So when you are taking the walk of, as I suggested, said yesterday, taking a walk along the Neckar Canal here, and you begin to feel the presence of the trees, and the walk and the path and the atmosphere of water coming up off the canal. Or yesterday or a few days ago in Freiburg I was sitting in the sun in the balcony overlooking the edge of the black forest at the edge of the city.

[61:30]

And there were these beautiful little blue flowers in a pot sitting on this little table I was having my breakfast. And this incredible little bee came up and started buzzing around the flowers. And I'd been doing my direct perception practice on these flowers. And while I was having breakfast, I was completely merging my state of mind with the flowers. And letting each aspect of the leaf and each petal and the bend of each petal do whatever it did. And I could feel the space of the whole plant as well as the individual branches and things. And it awakened a sense of space in me and the live space between me and the plant.

[62:42]

And I could feel the impermanence, of course, of the plant, and yet it's also its vitality in standing up there. And it was really better than breakfast. And a little bee came into this. And he was quite teeny and he flew like a hummingbird, he or she. She, I guess. And... She was about one-third eye. So there's this wonderful little stationary eye standing right in front of me. So I had the whole plant inside me. And I could feel the pollen and more pollen and suddenly plant flowers and others.

[64:11]

And I was right with the bee, which flower did it go to. Like a chess move, you know. Oh, that's the move I would make. In such situations or walking along the path here in the Neckar Canal, a feeling of mind arises. That comes out of the flying eye of the bee. This amazing little eye sort of looking at me and the flower. And coming out of the trees and the forest stretching up beside the house. And that's mind arising in the form-scan. So you can begin to tell when you are living in the presence of mind. Sometimes you walk down the path and there's no mind at all. Yeah, or as Horst thought, the way I was eating breakfast this morning, just like that.

[65:59]

I was, in a little bit, for me, it was a pretty slow, fast breakfast. But, of course, saying, your stomach won't like it if you eat so fast. And she says, okay, okay, Horst. So I ate my yogurt and things. And after I get up, Horst said, the five skandhas don't even know what you ate. And even if he translated what he just said to the other German speakers at breakfast, they would not have understood. Now, when you first practice this sense of mind arising on the form skandha, It's rather subtle that you're going to have to sort of see when it arises and when it doesn't.

[67:08]

It's more likely to arise taking kind of slow meditative walks. Sitting on a bench which has the right cosmic perturbations. Any bench will do. Yeah. But eventually it can be pretty much present all the time. Now, if you want to practice these kind of things, you have to find this dharma system. You have to find little ways to do it.

[68:09]

What is the feeling that consciousness arises on each perception? Mind arises on each perception. So mind arises here. And you can practice as you step, mind arising on each step. Mind arising when you lift something up. Where are you lifting up? I'm lifting this up in mind. Put it down that way. And it's a different feeling when you put things down that way than when you just move it from this point to this point. And any adept Buddhist monk practitioner, you can see this in them.

[69:11]

And part of this Dharma system is you do each thing completely. A simple rule. Would you like to be complete? Do each thing completely. How can you expect to be complete if each thing you do, each part, is incomplete? It means you haven't grown up. You're still expecting your parents to make your bed. Clean your room. Yeah, Zimmer putzen. There's a koan. Have you finished? Have you had your breakfast? Yes. Better wash your bowls and So try to do each thing completely with a feeling of completeness on each thing.

[70:48]

And part of the teaching of the five khandhas is there's an immediacy and uniqueness to each event that will never be repeated. This is an absolutely unique moment right now that will never be repeated. Are you here or not? That's the teaching of the five skandhas. That's the reading of the text of the present. If you're going to pay attention to the mood or music of the day and the mood or music of yourself,

[71:52]

There's also the mood or music or muse of this absolute, unique, immediate moment. And is that in you or not? Or is the surface of self keeping it from penetrating? That's the challenge, the simple challenge. It makes practice always quite interesting. And you'll never reach the end of it. You'll always be on the edge of it. And we always forget.

[72:56]

I forget. And I would guess that you forget. But sometimes we remember. And if you keep remembering, And not criticizing yourself for not remembering a few moments ago. But rather always an appreciative observation, oh, I remember. You know, we tend to say, oh, geez, it took me a long time to remember, I mostly forgot. This critical state of mind is really shitty. I mean, really, Buddhism says appreciative discernment, not critical discernment, is the key to spiritual life. Doesn't mean critical discernment isn't useful, but appreciative discernment opens things.

[74:06]

So you remember. And you feel for a moment the immediacy of this. The immediacy of this. This. This. And that's called dustness. And the main word for reality in Buddhism is dustness. Thus. [...] That's the Dharma system. Right now. Complete. Unique. Immediate. We forget. We remember.

[75:31]

Sometimes we feel for a moment the whole of us. And a shiver will go through you. Because to remember, to feel, to have the whole of you arise for a moment is also death. Because the details of situations feel permanent. The details of our life are impermanent, or feel permanent. Of course they're not, but they feel permanent. But the whole of us that appears for a moment occasionally doesn't feel permanent.

[76:38]

You might make a case for it being non-permanent. But it definitely feels impermanent. And you can't grasp it. You can't hold on to it. To try to hold on to it, you end it, you kill it. It's a kind of weird gift. An uncanny gift that we seldom even notice. So the whole of us appears sometimes. And the zero in practice Sometimes I say practice is one, zero, two, zero, three, zero.

[77:42]

So you go from the skandha. That's one. And then you throw it all away. That's emptiness. You're free. So instead of your life going from one, two, three, four, it goes one, zero, two, zero, like that. And you begin more and more to live in that zero. That's way upstream at the source. Where the source of thoughts and emptiness are just a little bit of a... So down here you're counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc. And up here is 0, 0, 0, 0. But also 0 means the whole of you. So there's also this sense of going from one or various parts of you to the whole of you for a moment, being zero.

[79:09]

So maybe we shouldn't call it the mathematical zero, we should just call it a circle. We feel the circle of us. Then we slip into the parts. And sometimes we feel the circle of us again. And slip into the parts. And as I said, there's a kind of shiver of recognition that goes through you. As you recognize your life in some way, this is also mind. And you have to feel also the whole Not just the whole of you, you feel the whole being of us in its momentary existence in time.

[80:25]

Maybe I could tell you one other thing before lunch. And the easiest example I can use, which I've mentioned before, is the fact that sometimes people, before they have a sudden death, an accident, their whole life appears before them. Now the people I've talked to who have had this happen to them, It wasn't five or six events or some important events. It felt like every event appeared. That doesn't mean that these people are seeing things very fast, sequentially. It means they're seeing simultaneously.

[82:12]

And like that. So instead of seeing five fingers this way, you're seeing them that way. Okay. This is what I mean by putting in here liquid just after matured and accessed. I put liquid in there. This is my own list. You won't find that in Buddhism anywhere. Because, and as I said, consciousness is very slow and awareness is very fast. Awareness perceives things in simultaneity. And the form world, the whole earth, Gaia, exists in simultaneity. So I guess it's maybe a little bit like that scientific thing of...

[83:14]

If you affect one particle, you separate two particles, and you affect this one instantaneously, this one's affected faster than the speed of light can get across between them. You may know the research somebody did by chance. He took a film clip of a meeting like this. And he slowed it down and watched it something like 38,000 times. For about two years he watched this little eight-minute strip over and over again, watching details.

[84:29]

And I forget what he was looking for. But what he discovered suddenly is that things were happening to everyone simultaneously with no time lag. Some kind of rhythm got established in the room where people were all doing things simultaneously. It wasn't just that they were following the speaker, they were anticipating the speaker. For a moment, a single being was established. And that's the world of simultaneity, which is also the world of awareness. It's the world that when you wake up in the morning, somehow you knew what your clock said, or you knew you could get up without setting your alarm.

[85:34]

And we're not much in touch with that. And it's like all of our history is in one level of us liquid. And You could call it simultaneity or liquid, maybe. And the more you practice Zazen... No, I don't mean just any old sitting, but real Zen practice. Don't ask me to define that. the more multiple levels of consciousness surface into your ordinary consciousness. It doesn't occur like the dreaming and feeling skanda doesn't occur just at night time.

[86:36]

All this maturing process, And the images are floating just below the surface of your usual consciousness. And while I'm talking to you, an image may just pop up and float in front of me about something that's related, but it's from my past or what might be called my past. It's sort of like you dip into it, float out of it, dip into it. This also is mine. This sense of awareness and the simultaneity of your being present at each moment.

[87:54]

Sometimes you may have a feeling of like you'd like to die. And I think Arnold Mundell says that every time you have such a feeling, you're practicing dying. And I think that's a good observation. But I would say that if you have the confidence, if that feeling comes up, stay with the feeling. You can almost do it as if one foot was walking in death and one foot was walking in life. You can really feel the edge, so you're not always just stuck on the life side.

[88:58]

Because the death side is always present with us. And sometimes you can walk right on the edge of it. It's not suicidal or it's not wanting to die. It's just an awareness of the death side being present with us. And for two or three minutes, you're staying with that feeling. It's very healing and very cleans you out. And when you have the courage to do that without any fear of dying, completely willing to stay alive and completely willing to die, and with that utter willingness to live or die, You can work on both sides.

[90:16]

Usually not for more than a few moments. At least that's my experience, or a few minutes, maybe ten. But at that point also, this simultaneity of mind and awareness is very present. And my own opinion is that the reason this flash of the past comes up when people are faced with sudden death, is that my guess is it occurs in cases almost primarily of premature death. It means something has to be completed before you die, which is an immersion in your history. That immersion has to occur for the death to be complete.

[91:35]

So part of this practice and the purpose of Zazen is to keep you immersed in your history as the immediacy of the present Your karma arising in the uniqueness and completeness of each moment. This is possible, you can do it. Only for a moment, maybe sometimes.

[92:07]

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