Ich erinnere mich daran, dass einmal dieses etwas schwierige Kind in der Nähe meiner Familie wohnte. He was a... He was a... I don't know what you would say in English, a kind of pisser of a little kid. He was... You know, he wasn't very old. He was maybe five or six or five or five about. And you'd come out, he'd throw stones at you for no reason. And I mean, he was just a nuisance. And if you saw him very often, you'd say, oh, that kid, you know. And we could make psychological excuses for him. You know, unfortunately, his little brother or sister, I don't remember, at around one years old, was killed from the light socket on the wall.

[01:13]

She stuck her finger in her toy into the light socket and was electrocuted. And clearly this little kid's family life wasn't so great, but still he was a nuisance. And I was walking with a friend of mine who was visiting, meeting my family. And this friend of mine has a tendency to... to see beyond appearances or to sense people particularly as bright jewels.

[02:15]

So we came out of the house and we're going to take a walk in the morning down to the water. And this little kid started shouting at us and throwing stones at us. So I said to my friend Earl, just the way he is, let's just ignore him. So we walked on little ways. And then Earl turned around and got down on his knees and looked back at this kid who was about 15 or 20 feet away and simply held his arms open. He didn't say anything.

[03:16]

And the kid looked at him and... The kid looked at him and... The boy looked at him and... And then started crying and just ran into his arms. I was impressed. I tried it later, it didn't work. But... It may be just in your mind, but if you see the world as one bright jewel, things are not just different in your mind. So I'm trying to give you other examples of this possibility, what I'm calling an unstructured mind.

[04:37]

As a possibility you can discover and know the possibility of in your own psychology. And you don't have to become a Buddhist, but you can perhaps use some of the understandings of Buddhism or practices to discover this possibility in yourself. So let me use another example. When you're doing zazen, and as we discussed in the Sashin, if, as is fairly common, your body disappears,

[05:42]

You can't feel where your hands are. If you've meditated much at all, you'll have this experience sometimes you don't know quite where anything is. And when you feel that way, usually you don't want the bell to ring. And we can say... He wants to build a room. We can say that what's happened is you entered a state of mind which has an own organizing or self-organizing dynamic. It's understanding everything in terms of itself. And it has a homeostatic quality. In other words, it wants to stay in this state. And this is another

[06:57]

aspect of how Buddhism defines mind is that mind in general is that minds in particular tend to have homeostasis and own organizing properties. So when you really enter zazen mind, It just wants to continue. And one of the specific qualities of zazen mind is if I'm treating this as something that is reachable and understandable, Is that what you've realized or what you're experiencing is a non-object-bearing continuum? Now, you might object to my using such technical, almost rather scientific-sounding terms.

[08:44]

But one problem with the way Buddhism has been taught in the West is that it's taught as if enlightenment was Protestant conversion. And that's not just the fault of Westerners, it's also the fault of the way Zen is taught in Japan. I think Zen has become so institutionalized and part of ordinary Japanese village life and urban life, is that it doesn't, there's not much enlightenment in it anymore. It says in this koan, the first words of this koan are, if you know how to take action on the road, on the road means on the path,

[10:06]

It also means in unstructured situations where there aren't rules. If you know how to take action on the road, you are like a tiger, freely roaming tiger in its territory, in its lair. And such images, I'm afraid, are politically incorrect and make Zen sound a little macho. And I apologize for that, but female tigers are usually more dangerous than male tigers. Well, this was, I'm sure, a female tiger. But then it says, but if you are caught in worldly affairs, You are like a monkey in a cage.

[11:32]

And with all due apologies to Japanese Zen Buddhism, I'm afraid it's a bit like monkeys in a cage. You know, and I should say that I'm very respectful actually on the whole of Japanese Buddhism. And we need such institutional sort of embeddedness in the society to disguise and protect the real lineages. And I think that we... So it doesn't mean you reject society. It means you find your own layer, your own freedom within society.

[12:33]

But the balance between becoming too involved in society and then in a cage... And within but free is a subtle balance. I think that much of our sports stuff is the attempt to get out of the cage of society. When you're jumping out of an airplane on a surfboard, you know, this is, you know, pushing the edge. You know, even if you've got a parachute on, it's still... But you can do that in practice, too. You can surf on original mind, maybe.

[13:51]

Okay. So because... Let me just finish my thought here. Because the realization of original mind, or even other than a kind of nice phrase, It's fairly rare that when it does happen, the Japanese Zen Buddhists say, hey, wow, this person is only 14, but they had enlightenment, they're now the great teacher. This is nuts. At 14 or 25, even with enlightenment, you're not ready to be a teacher. If you're smart and you're within the culture and you make use of the teachings that are there, Yeah, it's probably okay.

[15:10]

But if we in the West can't draw on the cultural wisdom, we're just stuck in our own culture, even if you have achieved some enlightenment. So I think we have to understand Buddhism as well as those folks who these koans are about and those folks who put these koans together. So I use phrases like non-object-bearing continuum. So let's use that for a moment and then have a break. Non-object-bearing break.

[16:17]

Okay. When you feel your body disappears, has your body disappeared? Well, if I'm sitting in the zendo with you, it still looks like you're over there. Your body has not disappeared. What's disappeared? Simple. Your experience of your body has disappeared. When you have a dream and you wake up in the morning and you can't remember it, Has the dream disappeared? Well, I think you probably all had the experience if you fall back to sleep or even into a light sleep, you can be right back in the dream almost completely.

[17:28]

So has the dream disappeared? The mind that carries the dream has disappeared. So there's mind carrying dreams and there's conceptual thought. There's dream carrying minds and there's conceptual thought carrying minds. So if you don't experience your body anymore, it means that you experience your body actually as an object. If I raise up this pencil when you see this pencil a consciousness has arisen that sees this object.

[18:40]

And I can put other objects in that. And you can see them all, and they're not too different. They're objects, and you have a consciousness that supports the perception of these objects. But again, I mean, this is simple, but we have to see the consequences of these simple things. If you're fairly sleepy, and you've been dreaming, I can hold these things up, and you're not quite sure what I'm holding up. Well, what's that you've got there? I mean, your eyes are open, but you can't...

[19:41]

And it takes a while to shift until you can begin to distinguish things. So when your mind, when your body disappears, what has happened is your body as an object of consciousness has disappeared. which more deeply means the kind of consciousness which apprehends objects has stopped. And we could define zazen mind or zen meditation mind as a mind in which the object-bearing continuum has stopped. So now that you understand this, you can understand a phrase, a typical Zen-type phrase, within

[20:52]

Within manifold forms and myriad appearances there is not a single thing. Within manifold forms and myriad appearances there is not a single thing. This does not mean that the world has suddenly disappeared. But that you have a mind that is seeing everything that's completely aware and yet doesn't accept a single object of apprehension. It'd be like water that was so still that you couldn't make it splash.

[22:18]

Or if it did splash, the whole feeling, if the water had an identity, the whole feeling would be the water and not the wave. So these are my attempts to give you some examples of the possibility of an unstructured mind. And one of the ways it is unstructured is it no longer has object-bearing capacity or continuum. It sees things but doesn't change its structure in response to seeing things. So er sieht Dinge, aber verändert nicht mehr seine Struktur, um jetzt die Dinge sehen zu können.

[23:26]

And this is another kind of seeing. So why don't we sit for one or two minutes and then have a break. I'd like to find out what associations this has for you and in what ways this makes sense, what ways you have questions about it.

[28:37]

So please share with me any observations and share with all of us any observations you have. Yes, Paulina? What was that? She's not shy, so... Yes? I have a question for you. How can I distract the objectless mind from the unconscious mind, from the one who is not present, because he is not present?

[29:42]

My question is, how can I distinguish a mind that is simply unconscious from a mind that is this non-object bearing continuum? Well, I mean, unconscious is... You don't mean unconscious, do you? Because unconscious is... No, not aware. It's really unconscious, like being in a coma or something. Unconsciousness, I mean, not being present, not being there, aware. Yeah. That's a good question.

[30:48]

I mean, you can distinguish, you know the difference. You really know the difference, there's no problem. Yeah, but what is the difference? I think that when you're in a kind of... not present state, right? You're actually in a object bearing continuum without any clear objects. It's diffuse and usually what that means is some kind of processes are going on underneath that you can't conceptualize.

[31:59]

Yeah, and sometimes that's good. It's good to recognize that and let that happen because it's like a stream is mostly under the stream bed. But I suppose it must depend on where the stream is, but mountain streams I know often about two-thirds of it even can be underground and only some of it appears. But if you get a real hard rock surface, bedrock, there's quite a lot of water suddenly appears. But often that we're not in that state of mind, we're not processing something, we're only in what I would guess is probably a we are experiencing a conflict of intention.

[33:32]

So the more you sort out your intentions so that you have one deep intention that that is inclusive of all your intentions, you don't have that kind of mind much anymore. Yeah. Non-object-bearing mind, does it have thoughts? And if so, can it have thoughts? And if so, they don't interfere with... I mean, there is something in the mind.

[34:35]

When you say that you see something, but you don't see... You don't see singularly. You don't distinctly. Yeah. So it can have thoughts, but they don't interfere with what's arising. Yeah. What is else arising, what else is arising. Yeah. You want to say that in your native tongue? I mean, I know you're not Scotch, so... Okay. If you have a non-perpetuating spirit, you can also have thoughts, and if you have thoughts, it is so that these thoughts do not mix with what appears in this spirit and can exist at the same time. Yeah.

[35:43]

It's better that I don't answer the question. Because that question that you have is quite accurate and fertile. And nothing more needs to be said about it. It's good to keep that question in view. And by your experience in practicing, try to sort it out. I could try to sort it out conceptually, but it's more useful for you to sort it out through your experience.

[36:50]

But some of the things I will talk about this weekend, in particular the teaching of the five dharmas, may help you sort this out. Because one of the things this koan is clearly about is the relationship between particulars and the big particular. Because I don't want to say the general, because the general is a generalization. We're not talking about generalization. So one of the things that Cohen is presenting is how do you get from the flowering hedge to the golden-maned lions? And trying to answer for yourself a question like that is one of the ways you discover what connects the specific and the big picture.

[38:22]

How is it possible to hold an intention in this non-object bearing continuum? If the intention is the direction of your mind, it's not an object. In other words, the stream may have things floating in it, But if you take out the objects that are floating in it, the stream still is going along in its banks.

[39:26]

Something like that, yeah. I listen to a lot of your tape records, and in one of them you are talking about the three states of mind, which is the daily mind, the dreaming mind, and the deep sleeping mind, and about the creation of a fourth state of mind, which is including all three. And do you mean the same with this? Or is it relating to this? Oh, it's definitely related. You want to say that in German? Yes, I have listened to several cassettes by Velka Voschy and on one he discusses the three states of mind in which we normally are, namely the daily, the dreaming and the deep state of mind and the creation of a fourth, which contains all three others. And now I would like to know how this relates to the topic we are talking about today.

[40:29]

Well, the effort, the recognition of the possibility of a mind that includes all three, is behind all of these practices. Now, is there only one kind of mind that joins these three? Or is there only one kind of mind in addition to these three? No. But that basic sense that there could be a mind in addition to waking, dreaming and non-dreaming deep sleep, that's called a view.

[41:49]

when you notice that you have dreaming mind, and you notice that you have non-dreaming deep sleep mind and waking mind, and then you hold in view this view that there could be something that joins these or arises from these. This sense of a view is what is meant in the Eightfold Path in the beginning, right views. Now, such a view in itself is not a mind, but it's held in your mind and makes you see things. For instance, if you don't hold that view, you won't notice certain kinds of things.

[43:16]

So Zen practice as a school particularly works with meditation, mindfulness, and views. And the views you hold in your meditation. And those views may be explicit or unconscious or just implicit. And when he holds this question in view, it's not so different than holding the possibility of this inclusive mind in view. And when you have views, when you hold views which are not in conflict with reality, you can say you have an accurately assuming consciousness. For instance, the simple example is if you habitually see things as permanent, even if intellectually you know they're impermanent, if at immediate spontaneous or intuitive level or

[44:46]

the actual way you function. You function as if things were permanent, even if you know they're impermanent. This would then be an inaccurately assuming consciousness. And would be the kind of conflicted state of mind, I suggested you were talking about. Which part of you knows things are impermanent, but part of you wants them to be permanent or thinks they are, or you're suffering because something goes impermanent, you know? That means that your initial state of mind has conflicted intentions, conflicted directions. So Zen practice, we could say, or I can say, means that you discover views that you hold that tend to clarify conflicted views.

[46:26]

Okay, so holding the view that there's there are minds in addition to these three could be called a potentially enlightenment precipitating view. Because it's a view when held will make you see things with more subtlety and accuracy. And what you discover, I will leave up to you. I could lay out different kinds of minds and things, but let's leave that for some time. So, something else?

[47:48]

Yeah. It's a little frightening for me to feel the reality as a body because I feel kind of swallowed up or eaten up or... Okay. So you just have to deal with the associations with the word body that you have. So try, because I don't know what the associations in German are for the word body, or what associations you personally have with it. But try something else, the pure fact of reality. The pure mind of reality.

[49:10]

And just, you know, you're free to change it around. And at some point you may want to think about, for example, are we, when you're sitting zazen, is it zazen body or zazen mind? And at least I can say that in yogic culture, often things which in Western culture we'd call a mind, in yogic culture tend to be called a body. A body is like, in English we say, a body of knowledge. It's more like that. Yes. Yes.

[50:30]

I have a question. I'd rather like to share my process. Listening to you, it's a very physical experience for me. It's the estimator of my physical. And I feel more quiet with the time and somehow sinking down. It's not going out, but typically sinking down as the, yeah, it becomes more quiet. And I would correct it less with my mind, but with my chest or my lower part of my body. Talking about it is really extremely difficult for me. I really have to search inside for words, like I have to divide something that's not divided, that needs an effort to do that, like turning around a switch inside.

[51:45]

Well, I wish I had the text of the koan here with me. Because it quotes Bhajan. Who said? We have to be something like this. We have to be able to observe things freely. And all perceptions and words need to be turned and returned to oneself to where they belong. can freely find their own expression. Something like that, it says.

[52:56]

It also says, again, this is a household affair. It says, don't try to understand this from outside. If you go to thought for this, to think this, to answer this, you'll fall into the secondary. The secondary means, just as you said, when you divide things. So your experience is exactly in the context of this koan.

[53:58]

And very close to what you said. How do you think or act or sort things out without dividing your consciousness? Something like that. Yeah, go ahead. Listening to that, I got in a picture. It's like, I don't know if you'd call it mosaic. Mosaic, yeah. There's a picture of five thousand different pieces. It's like, inside, I have a mosaic on a big table. And I really have somehow, it's really somehow a physical affair for me to put different pieces together, but not by thinking, but by trying out and seeing if it fits. That's all. Yeah. Well, the image that's often used is it's like the moon in the water.

[55:08]

The moon, the water doesn't interfere with the reflection or know about the reflection. The moon just reflects in the water. And doesn't disturb the water. So these images are used to give you a sense, an intuitive sense of this mind which functions, and it's called great function, which functions but isn't divided. So you're right now, through your own experience and questions, into a deeper level of this question. Okay, I recognize we have the possibility of an unstructured mind. Let's all recognize that's a real possibility.

[56:20]

Now the next level is, I'm not dead, how does this, what is the function of unstructured mind? Or how does it function? One way it functions is just what you were saying. By our talking and being together, moving into this state of mind, you find your own body moving into this state of body or mind. So right now, if we are the banks of the stream, this deeper mind is flowing underneath us or through us, but not at a conceptual level. So sometimes when I let something surface over the bedrock of the stream bed,

[57:33]

And say something, you may find you're surfacing in the same way. Oh yes, I know that, or I just thought of that, or I wanted to think of that. And that's not because we're discovering some Jungian universal mind. This mind is not universal. It's a generated mind by us. Yes. I was punished about this, what I experienced as it's a really physical quality of what's going on. And I mean, it's also physical somehow. It's extremely difficult, like the other side of the stream of self.

[58:50]

It's really this physical quality of my process. And that doesn't mean unstructured mind is really somehow very physical. Yeah, this is partly speaking to what you brought up. Are you saying this in German? I forgot. Are we having this whole conversation in English? I don't know where I'm at here. Is enough being said in German? I assume if people want it in German that they... No, but maybe you should say some of what you said in German. I don't know. my own experience. That can stay the way it should, no? Of course. and it's a very personal experience.

[60:03]

It is very difficult for me to talk about it, because I experience it as if I have to tear apart something that somehow exists together. And the word can tear apart something completely. And for that I have to work very hard at the moment to make it so that I don't always have to live like this. If we say mind, it's wrong. If we say body, it's wrong. Maybe we have to say body-mind or mind-body. In another case, a truism, I always say, a truism of yogic practice is that mind always has a physical dimension. All mental processes have a physical dimension.

[61:06]

And all physical, alive physical processes have a mental dimension. And when you stop being caught up and identified with your thoughts, you experience the physicality of mentality. Is that identical with the Jungian universal mind or where is the difference? In Buddhism, we don't think there's anything that's universal.

[62:23]

There's a lot of eaches. And within all these eaches, these Differences, particularities. There's larger processes or metaprocesses going on which are connecting all these in different kinds of patterns, but those patterns are always changing. What was the second half of your sentence? these connecting things in patterns, and these patterns are always changing. So we may generate a mind here, and it is possible for a group of people and the phenomenal world to generate a mind, but in each instance it will be different.

[63:26]

And although we may generate a common mind here, it's not identical in each of us. It's different in each of us. And from each moment, In ourselves it's different. And you are weaving this basket yourself all the time. Whether you're the weave of the basket or the space between the weave or the container of the basket or the space around the basket. And emptiness is not a thing, it's a possibility.

[64:29]

Things are always possible in emptiness, but you can't say emptiness is a thing that's universal. And our tendency and Jung's tendency, I think, to translate some of his accurate intuitions and experiences into a collected unconscious. If I dare say so about one of our great cultural figures of this century, He's been one of the pioneers who's made the study of Buddhism possible in the West. At the basis of his consciousness, he had an inaccurately assuming consciousness. And he assumed that if you saw something in lots of instances, it represented something universal.

[65:51]

And that's basically a theological idea. Which means that you assume there's something outside the system which is permanent or the creator, you know, And Heinrich Zimmer, also one of the pioneers, And the whole perennial philosophy also makes this, to my mind, erroneous assumption of some underlying identity that pops up in the mythology of this culture and the mythology of that culture. I think it's simply wrong. I mean, there's a lot of similarities in the myths of ancient India, in the myths of Russian bear...

[66:54]

bare-dressed shamans. But if you're a Buddhist, you don't assume those similarities mean something universal. They're just similarities. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I am constantly concerned with the difference between or a question about the difference between the different mental states and our different consciousness structures. And so it's so theoretical now, but I just want to get rid of it. And that's why the question came up for me, is there also a consciousness in the unstructured mind? Or do you speak of the integral consciousness, is that the same?

[68:14]

Well, my question is, I'm thinking about the different states of mind and I'm wondering, although this may sound a little theoretical, but I just want to get it out, these different states of mind either relate to different kinds of consciousness. And my question now is this unstructured mind, does it also have a consciousness? Well, it depends how you define consciousness, but yes, it has awareness. In the deepest sense, awareness. Yeah, I mean, and it's pointed to when sometimes in Zen talk they say, who is it that doesn't sleep? And the answer is the one who doesn't sleep. Unstructured consciousness. Or some kind of awareness that's

[69:16]

there when we're sleeping, but, as I often say, wakes us up when we need to be awakened and so forth. It's a subtle question. Nobody knows the answers to these things. And I'm doing the best I can to talk about them. But in the last five or ten years, there's a very large amount of work going on in science and psychology to try to understand the brain and consciousness and states of mind. And I read these things, and my own opinion is they're at a very primitive level of discriminating about it at the present time. But awareness seems to function through intention but not through conception. So, and this is what my experience is, and this is also what the language of Zen Buddhism is trying to say as far as I understand it.

[71:03]

And this is my personal experience, as I understand it, but also the experience of Zen Buddhism and how Zen Buddhism speaks about these things. Can you compare this spirit with the term world, which is always used in modern music? Can you compare this kind of mind with a field, what we consider a field in modern physics, that a field carries a force or generates a force but is not the force itself? Well, everything you said except it's not the force itself, I would agree with.

[72:28]

Actually, the old classic wave particle theory of light is very similar to what Zen is trying to talk about and what we experience, the difference between a field of consciousness and the specifics of consciousness. And the particularity. Okay. In his book, God as a giver, in the article, he says, everyone forgets God in his activities, everyone forgets his origin. Is this origin, what did he mean by that? Is that this uncorrected state of mind? God as giver?

[73:34]

There is an article in the book that says God as giver. And there it says, everyone forgets God, everyone forgets his origin, his source. Is this the origin of the source? Is this the origin of this uncorrected? Well, Sukhiroshi talks in his book about God as a creator or a giver and that everyone and each one of us forgets its origin, its source. And is that what you mean with uncorrected state of mind? Well, I don't remember exactly what part of Sukhiroshi's book you're... referring to, and it doesn't quite make sense to me as you've quoted it. But when Suzuki Roshi does speak about beginner's mind, he basically means uncorrected mind or original mind. And initial, we can call it, as I say, it's an initial state of mind, an initiating state of mind, and an initializing state of mind.

[74:49]

Can you say that in German? I think if you can say it in English, you can say it in German. I don't know whether that makes sense in English. I mean, it's difficult in English, too. Initial means it's beginning. yeah it's just there it's just the first state of mind initiating means it can start things and initializing means it shapes what it starts and it puts names on things and stuff And this initial state of mind, whatever it is, can look toward form and it can look toward emptiness.

[76:17]

And if we really want to get specific, you could sort of say that when it looks toward form, we call it original face. When it looks toward emptiness, we call it original mind. So what we're trying to talk about now is discovering this initial state of mind, or this unstructured state of mind, And this unstructured state of mind is reflected in the basic instructions for zazen, which is an uncorrected or unstructured state of mind. And that's why we don't give you too many instructions on how to sit.

[77:23]

Because if we give you a lot of instructions, we'll create a structured state of mind. And there can be some very good structured states of mind, enlightened structured states of mind. But Zen says, if you give instructions Too many instructions or too specific instructions, you will never realize unstructured state of mind. So while there's a certain amount of structure and correction necessary to sit, basically you're not correcting yourself. I want to say how much I love your questions.

[78:36]

I always learn so much. It makes your helping me refine this gold which we all are. And you help me to refine this goal from which we are all. Yes. You have a question? Yes. Something that one always experiences in the Zen, is the same thing that the yogis would now speak of, which one would call the reality, that one always reinforces. The un-structured mind, which one experiences in the Zen, and which I now always reinforce more in the reality. Is this the kind of mind that we create an experience in Zazen that we then carry into our reality and I personally feel more and more in my reality?

[79:39]

Yes. Yeah. It's unstructured mind. Well, you carry it in You carry it partly as a beginner, you carry it as a memory. And if you're a real beginner and haven't had the experience, you carry it as a possibility. But when you carry an accurate view, Even as a word or a phrase or an idea. It affects you. If you carry an inaccurate idea, it affects you too. So first you're carrying it as a possibility. And if you believe in the possibility, have faith in the possibility, you increase the depth of this idea.

[80:55]

And in the Prajnaparamita Sutras, this is literally called turning up the heat. And things are called low heat, medium heat and great heat. And it means the depth with which you believe, have faith in and have integrated an idea. So first you have the possibility and you hopefully develop some faith in it or acceptance of it. And the second stage would be you carry the experience, the taste of the experience, the memory of the experience, Then you carry the deeper insight that like water, even when it's busy, is simultaneously still.

[82:04]

So you recognize in myriad forms this unstructured mind. And that's why we say form is emptiness, emptiness is form. And at some point you are more like one zero, two zero, three zero. And where you're Resting is in zero. And the zero happens to be the first letter of original. Okay. Yes. Yes. I have the experience that this unstructured mind, it comes when I feel imbalanced, like the two poles of my person are imbalanced.

[83:39]

And I notice that, and I have a problem with that, non-instruction of Zen, because if there's too much time, like after a seminar, The one pole of personality takes over the practice. And it does it so subtle that, you know, they can go on for two months and I don't notice it. And suddenly, by chance, I notice it and say, hey, it's taken over again. And so sometimes I feel that there should be more instruction. I don't know if more instruction, but more time. Maybe you should say that in German. Die Erfahrung macht es, diese... unstructured state of mind comes when the two sides that I find in me are in balance. I have noticed that when, for example, there is a seminar and then a long time passes without, where I am just sitting alone, that then just one part of the personality takes over the scene correctly, and I actually don't notice that at all, because it is a very subtle requirement, and that for me this

[84:45]

Okay. So it may not be that you need more instruction, but maybe we need more time together. That's why we have a room marked out for you at Crestone. We carved Julio. It's in disappearing ink, though. Or you have to spend more time with things that remind you how to practice. It definitely helps to sit with others. Because there's, particularly in the early stages of practice, until you turn everything around from your own insides, there's a quality of bioentrainment, which is really important in practice.

[86:04]

Bioentrainment means like athletes hook their bodies together to play basketball or ride bicycles or something. I mean, there's a lot of, we discussed it in the Sashim, but a lot of practice and at Creston has a ritual element. Because ritual is like a wiring diagram which allows current to flow between situations and people. So that's what I meant partly by the presence of a teacher and fellow practitioners is necessary because it gives authority to your experience.

[87:14]

And you can't get that from a written sutra. And there's many things that can only be understood through bioentrainment. They can't be understood conceptually. That's why practice together in the Sangha is so important. Even if you only sit once a week with some other folks, it helps a lot. And that's what this keeps saying. It's a household affair. It means these two people, young men and this monk, have been practicing together a long time. Oh, my goodness. It's one o'clock.

[88:26]

We're supposed to have lunch. I don't know. Something made me look at my watch. You did, maybe. They don't like it too much if we're too late. You can wait. Okay. Hmm. So what time are we supposed to meet again? Three o'clock. Is that right? Okay.

[89:26]

I can hardly wait. Thank you very much.

[89:30]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_74.96