There was the, in America, you know, there were these shakers. Mostly of German origin, I think, who wouldn't marry. So, yeah, they lasted for a while, but they made some nice furniture, but they died out in a generation. And several of their places are now owned by Buddhists and Sufis and things like that. Because they left behind some really nice buildings. And then Mara sends... armies to frighten him and this represents the you know the caste the daughters represent the merchant class of the Indian times and the armies represent the military class and finally Mara sends his

[01:14]

appears as a Brahman priest and offers the Buddha spiritual power and worldly power. And the Buddha, again, is not tempted. And the most common image of the Buddha is the Buddha sitting with one hand touching the earth. And the touching the earth, the so-called earth goddess appears and testifies to his realization. Yeah, and this is, we could say that he touches his fundamental nature. The nature that's not cultural nature or societal nature.

[02:24]

The nature that's not separate from this world we live in. This world we're destroying awfully fast. So this is not about rejecting society. It's about from what nature do you listen to the call of society. And for most of us, we have to listen to it And all of us, we listen to it from both points of view. If we can, at least. And our society certainly tries to tempt us with the lowest common denominator.

[03:28]

In the mall world of America, It looks like it's almost entirely the lowest common denominator. So we can understand the eightfold path as a way to come into our fundamental nature. Again, Sukhiroshi said, we have a tendency to find our composure through identifying with others. Find our composure, composure. Okay.

[04:48]

And he uses, he says there's green frogs who, or there's frogs which if they're with, in a green environment they turn green. He says, we all like to identify with the majority. But how do we find our composure from within ourselves? We don't know in what direction our society will go. We can't fully know the drama and story of our own society.

[05:53]

Yeah, recently I've been renewing my interest in the Vienna of the Jugendstil Times. I'm going to bring some friends to Vienna soon and I thought, well, I better familiarize myself again with... Vienna, the architecture, music, and so forth. And it's amazing how much of our contemporary world arose at that time. Yeah, the music, the psychology, Yeah, and much of the science that shapes our world today.

[07:03]

But also Hitler and fascism. Yeah, and the Zionist state was thought of at that time. And much of the philosophy and poetry that I like comes from that time. Yeah, and I think we may be at a similar time now. And those, it wasn't clear at that time what the drama of story of society would become. You know, we can't really know fully. But it's

[08:04]

I think it helps though if some of us return to or have faith in our fundamental nature. Within our cultural natures, our fundamental nature is like the keel maybe of a sailboat or something like that. Und innerhalb unserer kulturellen Natur ist diese fundamentale Natur so etwas wie der Kiel in einem Segelboot. Maybe our cultural natures are like the sails. Und unsere kulturelle Natur ist vielleicht wie die Seele. And our fundamental nature is more like the keel. Und die fundamentale Natur ist eben wie der Kiel. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just trying to express some feeling I have. Okay, so I spoke about the... This list, again, is not just an inventory. This teaching is its own dynamic.

[09:29]

So we make the list so that we can bring attention to it. Yeah, so... For some reason, there's this teaching that this particular list of eight things is worth bringing attention to. And then the question is, what kind of attention do we bring to? As I said last night, we bring attention In the list, there is mindfulness and concentration. They bring that kind of attention. No, we don't know quite what concentration means yet. It doesn't mean the concentration of being focused on doing one thing.

[10:49]

To the extent that that kind of concentration is in this teaching, it's in the second intention. Which includes resolve. And also includes mental clarity. As I said during the pre-date, We have to look at these not as single words but as clusters of words. Because only seeing each one is expressed in several words do we get the feeling that each one is an activity. so intention means really the shape of the mind how you shape the mind intentions shape the mind but also a mind at rest is a shape of the mind

[12:06]

So intentions includes a mind at rest or a mind of clarity. And then views represent the roots of the mind. But it takes a while to get to the roots of the mind. Your practice has to be pretty developed to see into the roots of the mind. It's like looking into a mirror. You can see the contents that are reflected in the mirror. And it's pretty hard, though, to see the glass. But, you know, if you look, you could see the glass.

[13:35]

A glass is something like the structure of the mind. Does it reflect precisely, or is it wavy, or whatever it is? But the silvering behind the mirror can't be seen at all because it's inseparable from the reflection. I think nowadays it's not silvering, it's vaporized aluminum. But in any case... So just as it's impossible to see the silvering because it's... not separate from the reflections. It's very difficult to see the mind itself. First we really have to clear up three, four and five. Yes. Our speech, our conduct and our livelihood.

[14:59]

So it's funny, this is a list you get into the middle and expand, first toward the end and then to the beginning. You learn how to work the list. work the list, make use of the list, and then the list begins to transform you. I'm sorry to tell you that this little list can be so important. I mean, you should have a list of 84,000 items or something like that. But I look at painters and poets and I see most of them are working one or two insights throughout their entire life. Here's a group of insights brought together as a teaching over centuries.

[16:00]

Which we can devoted as we are to our human life. and this life we've inherited, we can begin to see how being participates in being. And participating in being is being itself. So we bring attention, as I said, let's just start again in speech. We bring whatever attention we can to our speech. And after a while we discover we really have to bring not just mental attention,

[17:02]

We need to bring bodily attention to our speech. It's interesting, our body, our larynx, mouth and tongue and lips are shaping our speech. But how divorced it can become even so from our body. So for the adept, this is to bring our body back into our speech. And our body has a certain pace that's not the same as a mental pace. If you want body and mind to talk to each other, if you want body and mind to talk to each other,

[18:25]

Speech is somehow one of the ways we weave body and mind together. And speech is most likely true speech when it's rooted in the body. You know the word think in English? has the same etymological root as thank. And I think that thinking originally was thanking. Thinking is a kind of gratefulness. A kind of recognition. Yeah. Certainly most of what Maria Luisa, what Sophia does is at this point just recognition. One of her words now is baa, which is her name for sheep, of course.

[20:00]

She sees one in the book and she says baa. and walking up here I saw one in the fields and I went and it looked at me and went and as I went up there I saw one and I said and it said back to me so so some kind of recognition hi there hi there But you know, I don't, but there's still this mischievous side we have. Mischievous. Deceptive, I don't know. For instance, I told you we have this enormous great Pyrenees puppy. It's only a puppy and it's as big as a table.

[21:16]

And Sophia likes to feed it. So we say, you know, she eats for a while until she's full and then she starts tossing things. And we try to stop her. So we say, no, you cannot give that to the dog. Okay, so she puts it in her mouth. As soon as we look away, out the other corner of the mouth, down to the dog. She and the dog have a very cooperative relationship. He's useful. He hoovers up all the mess. In America, you bring babies to restaurants, but not dogs.

[22:19]

In Germany, you bring dogs to restaurants and not babies. The best of all possible worlds, I would bring the dog and the baby, and then the dog could clean up after the baby. Because I've been recently on the floor of a lot of restaurants afterwards. And somebody asked little children, what is thinking for? What is the mind for? And maybe you can guess what most of them answered. What is the mind for? What is thinking for? To keep secrets. But still, when we bring our body into our speaking, it's hard to lie.

[23:37]

It's very hard for our body to lie. That's why lie detectors work fairly well. So something happens that even the space we live in transforms. Yeah. So we discover that the catalyst for bringing body into our spirit... catalyst for bringing body into our speech to bring the attention of the body as well as mental attention to our speaking the secret and the catalyst is the breath and that's where we left off last night

[24:43]

So I think, what time is it here? Let's take a break. And then we'll continue with the Eightfold Path. It's okay with you. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for translating. You're welcome. Oh, half an hour, is that right? And today we can have lunch at one, is that right? Well, one is reasonable, yeah. Half an hour, yeah, one is... If you're going to be late... I'm so grateful that you're all here and that we can do this teaching together.

[26:26]

I find this teaching so precious and then it's equally precious that I look up and there's so many of you here that we can try to practice this together. It's a kind of miracle, but anyway, here we are. So I would like to speak, of course, about what kind of intention we bring to the body, too, as well as speech. And now we have this strange fact that bringing attention to speech and the body transforms the body in speech.

[27:34]

It's sort of an inner education. It's like bring attention to some profession as a doctor or architect or something. Or a writer. And we learn something, of course. That transforms us, too. But bringing attention to attention itself is the most transformative thing. An education in wisdom. Not just in learning. So you can see where I want to go. But first I'd like to stop and see if you have something you'd like to bring up. Yes?

[29:00]

I would like to know why we know that the eight holy paths rise, affecting different groups. Deutsch, bitte. Yeah, but in German you could say your question. I would like to know why we know that the eight holy paths rise, affecting Because right has the problem in English of right and wrong. It's usually translated right views, right intentions. I think Lama Govinda translated his perfect intentions, perfect views. Perfect views. The meaning of perfect for Lama Govinda is to make whole.

[30:15]

But I also did it because, as I said, this is an activity, so no one word quite covers it. Words in teaching like this are used as doors into a whole series of words. Yeah, so... Like impermanence means many, many things, but impermanence is used as a symbol for, a sign for the many things impermanence means. And I think the right translation is integrating.

[31:20]

The best translation is probably integrating. Because that is what happens. But it's funny how a term can jump out of a teaching. Like the term mindfulness has jumped out of the teachings. And almost everybody. Again, I remember in the 60s when I sent a brochure about Tassajara's 25,000 psychotherapists. I sent 25,000 announcements that we were founding a Zen monastery called Tassajara. Not one was interested. but now half of the people who come to Tassajara are psychotherapists.

[32:27]

And mindfulness is one of the most common words now business, enlightened business practices. And I think there's no therapist who would not say, oh, it's good to be mindful. So it has a cultural power kind of released from its teaching. But we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking That's an understanding of the practice of mindfulness. And another one that was very influential, particularly in the United States during the Vietnam War, was right life. Many young people got out of the fighting in the war through, they didn't believe in God, but they accepted a Buddhahood as a godhood, as some sort of way of saying you could be a conscientious objector.

[33:52]

And many people, scientists in particular and engineers, refused to work in the war effort because it wasn't right livelihood. And you heard many people, even today people, speak about right livelihood, that's important. And it has some meaning still attached to its foundation in But again, it's not usually understood as a transformative practice within the Eightfold Path.

[34:54]

But it is interesting that out of such a list In particular, two terms can jump out and have an enormous cultural power. But I'm trying to fold these terms back into the teaching. Sorry, that was a long answer to you. Yes? Just a quick question. I don't understand what you're saying. Tassajara is the first Zen Buddhist monastery in the West, I guess. And it was where I first started to practice.

[35:55]

Yes. I was fascinated by intentions. The question would be, can it be seen as part of the able power, or is it just this cultural gem of a thing? And my experience is that intentions have a great impact on the flow of energy. And you get a project with energy lines, and in the end they were there, as planned, only by intention.

[37:04]

You can see with projects, you keep on the intention, and it really seems to be possible, it takes its time, I experiment with intentions and [...] intentions Well, intentions. I think we all know the power of intentions.

[38:23]

And we bring that power of intention into the Eightfold Path. What the teaching here is, is the location of intentions within the path. And it precedes speech. So in that sense it means intentions that are not in the mind of thinking. They may originate in the mind of thinking, but they are deeper than thinking. But when they're deeper than thinking, they then influence our speech. Like I say that most New Year's resolutions don't get resolved. Do you do New Year's resolutions in Germany and Austria and things like that?

[39:40]

But not seriously. Because New Year's resolutions are usually in thinking mind. And thinking mind is different, you know, three days later. It happens that the singer Linda Ronstadt is a friend of my family. I don't know. She's a popular singer in the United States. I don't know if you know her here. But she's half of Hispanic background. And her family sang a great deal. And at three years old, she developed an intention to be a singer. And that intention never left her. And she hates to perform, she hates to be in front of an audience, but she loves to sing.

[40:43]

And that intention, as she says, it was just that intention. Once I had that intention, everything was clear for the rest of my life. And I think we're very lucky when we come to an intention deeply like that. But let me try to explain again what I mean a little bit by intention. what mind you place the intention in. And this is the distinction I make often, sort of background of how I'm trying to teach. The distinction between awareness and consciousness. And I think you can think of various states of mind, modes of mind, as different liquids. And thoughts float in consciousness. But they sink in awareness.

[42:13]

It's a little bit like dreams float in awareness. Dreams float in awareness. float in awareness, or dream mind. But as soon as you're conscious, they sink out of sight. It's like the different minds have different viscosities. So intentions don't have much power in thinking mind. But if you have an intention, for instance, to... The example I give always is to say, wake up at 6.02. You wake up at... You're not thinking, but that intention goes through the night while you're not conscious and you wake up at 6.02.

[43:20]

At least many people have that kind of experience. I have a very funny thing, is that I sleep usually, according to a stopwatch, exactly six hours. It used to be less than six hours, but now I have decided on six hours. But strangely enough, it's not six hours. It's when I set the stopwatch. So say I set the stopwatch and then I end up talking and being up for a while. Stopwatch is a clock almost. Stopwatch. I'll actually be sleeping five hours and fourteen minutes or something but I look at the stopwatch and it says

[44:23]

55, 59 or 601. So some part of me tracks the stopwatch. Not my sleep, but the stopwatch. Come on, I want to sleep, but no... I say that only, I mean, I have this experience night after night after night. Okay, maybe I get up and look at the watch. Exactly, or 6.01 or something. This is something mysterious. There's a lot of mysterious things. We don't know, we can't explain. Maybe practice makes us more accepting of mysterious things.

[45:36]

Or more in touch with letting them have their power. And that's what partly this koan I brought up during the pre-day of why does the Bodhisattva of Compassion have so many hands and eyes. The introduction says, spiritual power begins to function in all directions. And we exercise that power partially through intention.

[46:37]

And we exercise that power also by getting out of the way. We're bringing, as I would say, awareness more into the fundamental way we function. Yeah, that's something like what I mean by getting in touch with your Buddha nature and not your societal nature, your true nature or something. Sorry to answer at such length again. Yes. For 13 years, I was not at home, but somewhere else where I wasn't so happy. So when I came home, I had four weeks, like my days, I mean, I did cardboard.

[47:48]

Cardboard. Cardboard. Card, yeah. Five days. [...] spring coming for a movie, lunch, afternoon, evening, and night programs. This was that, because all my friends made fun of me. But that couldn't change it. And I liked it because all these people, it made sense because it was theater and movie. And then afterwards, I went back to normal. These five weeks were like that. And for probably 13 years, I used it. I felt it's more, I needed it, I wanted it. And this time he screamed, I came, I came, we were eight, we were 15, I realized that, you know, he's 20, he's with me. I saw my people. I had never really thought the intonation, but something in me thought the intonation, like I don't need, la, la.

[48:49]

I never thought about it. So she was back today. Yeah. But of course, I looked. 13 years, I was always the only one in my life who thought to myself, where did I get the right person, where did I write down my date and entered it, where did Dr. Franzi come from, where did I go, where did I go, and in my case, of course, I made myself clear, and she didn't want to be left alone. It's just that when someone is sick, it's a big flame that comes out of the brain and into the heart. But I always knew, it's actually stupid, it's stupid. Yeah, I think it's better to trust your feeling. Yeah, I'm glad. Yes, I think so too. Yes?

[49:59]

I'm still intrigued by the difference between empathy and security. Well, we can call it the Eightfold Walk, is it right? We don't want to call it the Eightfold Talk, so... But walk, I don't know, it would be fine. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, really? And walk is something I do.

[51:12]

It's an activity and it feeds on itself. It doesn't seem like right or wrong and walk. But certainly you can be on the wrong path, you can be on the right path, you can miss the path, you can be on track or out of track with walking. No. Yeah, but the idea of path in Buddhism is you make your path by walking. So, you know, we could say way, the eightfold way. But again, it's way, walk, path, etc. They're all in the territory of what this means. It's a path you discover by starting at some point. But several people have, and I saw people respond, this distinction between activity and entity is something that Eric has mentioned too.

[52:26]

And I don't know if this has to do with German and English, or there's something we need to clarify, but I'm happy to speak about it if someone wants to bring up more. And you had something? I find it very helpful that it was distinguished between different forms of suffering. So I'm doing a sweet pose, you mentioned. Physical suffering? Emotional suffering? Mental suffering. Ah, suffering. Maybe there is a possibility that everything would not happen in this emotional suffering. Oh, really? You mean you have emotions too?

[53:35]

Yes, actually. Actually, really? Oh, good. I'm glad to hear it. Yeah, I thought that I would leave suffering for Sunday. Yeah. When I heard you again, and I saw these eight-foot-five, I remember that very many years ago when I heard that, I found a certain wisdom, because it was for me something like a commandment. I was challenging myself how to get away from commandments. You have to, you have to, you have to. So I thought, wow, I'm just changing from one system of commandments to another system of commandments.

[54:39]

And now I start to realize I actually want to ask you a way of practicing intentions because like you explained just before, it's really, it's got nothing to do with thinking. So it's something given to you, and the only way to practice it, and that's the sense of the curse book. Would it be possible to reduce these eight points, which is especially to remember how they are, what is five, six, and eight, to reduce it to just one, I don't like, I don't know, awareness, or presence, or bleeding, or wouldn't that have as a consequence that colleagues and others would fold up? I mean, and that is even less.

[55:41]

I mean, you have to, you have to, because you cannot, I mean, when you start, You have to be... With speech, when I get so conscious of speech, I totally separate the being from the other one that I'm talking to. So it is really something which... which emerges by an inner... Posture. In a posture. Yes, a little bit. Yes, it's always good to do something like this. I've been doing this for 14 or 18 years now. A certain level of resistance, because I had the feeling that there were eight points that I wanted to learn from, and so the laws or promises, so that we have a system that works through promises, and there is a very deep inner need to act not according to promises,

[56:56]

that all these commandments, like from myself, are naturally present in me, if I could perhaps reduce everything to one word or one quality, one memory and hold, that I actually only pay attention to that and everything else arises from myself. It's not about me saying to myself mentally, I want to do this and that, but it's actually something that has been given to me. So how do I practice that? And if I have to practice right away, after eight minutes that I have to stop, then I have to do it again. Well, I understand your resistance.

[58:08]

And I think it's your resistance which led you to practice. So I want to honor your resistance. But I, and from your point of view, for you, Maybe the entry is some one thing like awareness. But for all of us, I think we need the whole Eightfold Path. And it's not that hard to remember. Think of how many phone numbers you remember. And the alphabet, it's 26 letters or more. So eight, you know, the Buddha was very kind. It's only eight, you know. Phone numbers in the United States are usually seven numbers, unless you have to put in the credit cards and things.

[59:18]

So I think you can memorize this if you'd like to. But, you know, the question is, okay, awareness, what are you aware of? Mm-hmm. the teaching of the four foundations of awareness or mindfulness, says there are certain targets for awareness that are more productive than others. Yeah, you can just be mindful of your activity. That's one part of practice. But it's helpful for someone to say, okay, be mindful of your breath. And then be mindful of emotions. Or be mindful of mental formations.

[60:21]

or be mindful of mental formations at their moment of appearance. Those are teachings which I don't think we can think of all by ourselves. Some of it, yes, but much of it, even if you think you thought of it by yourself, you probably got it from the cultural atmosphere. We're not all interested in mindfulness because it just appeared in us mindfully. One of the amazing things that happened in the West is these broken lineages. I would say that Whitehead, William James, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, all got to a certain point and they didn't understand Michael.

[61:37]

Mindfulness. They didn't understand practice actually, yogic practice, so they couldn't bring where they were headed to the next step. These guys were mostly smarter than most of us. But we all know about mindfulness, but they didn't. So this is a cultural... activity we're involved in. And we're doing this together, it's not just coming from ourselves. We have to make it work, we have to bring it home to and through ourselves. We have to rediscover it as if it were our own.

[62:51]

But it's still, I think, wise to say, okay, I understand these three, but why do they add this fourth point? So I've been practicing the Eightfold Path for many years. But coming back to it this time, the last few months, there's aspects I simply didn't practice in the earlier, because I wasn't ready. So if it had only been six, I never would have discovered the other two. But it took me till now to really see the relationship between all eight of them.

[63:56]

But on the one hand, I would trust your sense of entering from one point. But I'd be open to letting that bring you to the other. Because we can be just aware, but what are we aware of? And this says, okay, be aware of these things. And only when you're aware of these things can you really bring awareness to awareness itself.

[64:57]

So you get your life in a certain order, you can't do certain things. You'll notice in all of these comparable lists, effort or energy is always in the latter part. Because you can't really be released into energy, even Freud said it. Most of our energy is tied up in all kinds of psychological stuff. You don't really have energy until you've got your life clear. Yeah, like that. For me, teaching includes that which I couldn't think of myself.

[66:02]

I try to... I found a way for me to... to work with attention, and I feel seen a little bit in the mirror. I try to look for one, and if it's true, there could be one attention. And I have found that it's more thankful or more a teacup of breakfast, I think it is. When you study your dreams. So in my dreams, the intentions that are already there are much more present. I can feel them now.

[67:04]

And it's a jungle of intentions. And some are bad and some are really good. Yes, I suspect that many intentions come from the same, could come from the same. I try to... I don't do anything to find small access, I just... I just try to look which intention. German, please. I try to find one intention and one access. I have found out that it is easier when I study my dreams, when I look at what intentions I have in my dreams, rather than in my dreams.

[68:14]

So what kind of feeling is a dream? And there are so many different intentions that are like a circle of intentions. They really feel good. And I didn't expect to have such an access. Well, our life is, our human life is a complex life. We have to, you know, make use of our complexity.

[69:32]

So, one thing Sukhya used to emphasize a lot was finding our inner, coming to our innermost request. but often we don't know our inner request and we can't follow it even if we know it it's lost in the education of childhood And social aims and so forth. Our career. Yeah. Desires. How do we uncover it? Sometimes it takes meditation to uncover it. Often it takes meditation to uncover it. To be able to ask yourself, what is my innermost request when you're not distracted by thinking?

[70:48]

But why would you ask yourself? Why? Yeah, I'm saying, why would you ask yourself? Where does that come from, to ask the question? Well, maybe it comes from a teaching. Maybe it comes from us being here together. Or maybe your inner request is sneaking up into your consciousness and says, hey, ask for me. There's a A Zen phrase, little jade, little jade. Little jade, jade is, you know what jade is? No. It's that green stone that... Jade. Jade. Yeah. Yadi, that's the same word it sounds like.

[71:53]

But Jade is the name of the servant of a woman, a Chinese woman. And so her lover is hiding in the garden. And she wants her lover to hear her voice. But she doesn't dare call, Hey, Sam! So she calls the maid, little Jade, little Jade, hoping her lover hears her voice. So it's used in Zen to mean when you hear something that has another meaning. So sometimes your innermost request is calling, little Jade, little Jade. To see if you can find your innermost request hiding in the garden. So we can bring consciously our intention.

[73:10]

Or we can discover our intention. But the teaching of the precepts is that if you make some basic intentions really conscious, it makes a huge difference. The Buddhist precepts have very little to do with Buddhism. They're kind of a universal common sense. Don't lie, don't steal. We say, instead of don't steal, we say, do not take that which is not given. It's an interesting way to phrase it. You wait for things to be given. Yeah, and so forth. But the precepts come down to altogether do no harm.

[74:14]

Okay, well, I think all of us would like to not do harm. But do no harm becomes a Buddhist practice. When you can be aware, and here's awareness again, where in the middle of your speaking you can also have the feeling, the awareness to do no harm. If you make that a conscious awareness, part of your activity, it tends to uncover your inner requests. It's kind of a process of excavation. Much of practice is about holding wisdom in front of us.

[76:10]

In this case, for instance, the intention to do no harm. But not to think it intellectually, but rather make it present in each moment. That's really not so hard to do. It's like, as I say, being pregnant with the teaching. A woman who's pregnant is aware that she's pregnant, but she's doing her normal life most of the time. But she's careful what she eats, careful how she walks, and so forth. So I'm just asking you to be careful of the Buddha within you. Yeah.

[77:19]

Yes? It's interesting for me that by having an intention, For example, having the intention to stay with your breath or with your body, in your body. That by that you end up in speech. So this was like a revelation for me. So because with the term right speech, and every day this is really difficult.

[78:25]

But bringing that back to that breath comes through your throat and you can reconnect that with the breath and body. So somehow you end up with the idea that from reconnecting with the body, right speech will come out by itself somehow. Yes. So you have to put effort in right speech, this can drop away. Yes, that's quite, pretty much true.

[79:28]

You know, I... I'm a primitive kind of person. And I have to find often primitive solutions to my... So I made a vow once. I've told you this before. That every time I said something that I would regret later, Every time I said something that I didn't feel was right speech, or I would say something that made someone else feel poorly, and one of the ten precepts is don't put yourself up by putting others down. So I decided whenever I did something like that, I would bite my tongue.

[80:38]

Maybe you can imagine What kind of hamburger my tongue was. For two or three years. For several times a week my mouth would have blood in it. And my body was so quick. I mean, I would say something that if I thought about it, it might be the next day that I realized I said something that was pretty lousy what I said, you know. Sorry. It might be the next day that my thinking would tell me, oh, that was pretty lousy what I said.

[81:40]

But my jaw, which is the strongest muscle in the body, seemed to recognize the mind from which the statement was about to arise. And I would even not even be ready. I hardly had started. Practicing the precepts is hard. But after a few years I got so I didn't do it very often. So I'm sorry. Anyway, reverting to primitive methods is sometimes for me necessary. And I'm far from perfect in this, but I'm not so bad that I bite my tongue off.

[82:44]

I can decide to develop good intentions or bad intentions. And the teaching is that now it's better to develop good intentions. Sounds right. I heard the teaching is based on the Yin-Yang Symbol. And it says that the light on this highest point brings out the dark. So, you can find it from here, I can interpret this, that if you fix one group of intentions, you can squeeze Become egoistic? Yes. So, I also must look at the way of Buddhist taking to treat me, to overcome Buddhism.

[84:12]

So, for me, the right intention would be having no intention of prayer. But the intention, how to practice? How to practice? Oh, I see, okay. So, German, please. So, when I heard the teaching, I said, many people think that the good always brings the good, but when you see that it is not self-evident, Actually, I don't know what the opposite is. [...]

[85:13]

I don't know what the opposite is. I don't know what the opposite is. Well the first, shall we say, dynamic of practice is acceptance. So your initial mind is accept. What's there? What's here? Okay. So if you form the intention to accept, this is already an intention. Mm-hmm. If you decide to eat sand instead of salad, I suppose it would be a sort of stupid intention.

[86:31]

So you eat salad, you don't eat sand. So just by what we eat, some kind of intention is being expressed. To be healthy or take care of ourself or at least enjoy our meal before we destroy ourselves with drugs immediately after the salad. So for everyone if they stay alive there has to be some mixture of good and bad intentions. But from the point of view of practice it's to look at each equally. Equally and evenly. Also gleich anzuschauen und evenly, auf eine beständige Art anzuschauen. With equanimity.

[87:36]

Mit gleich Mut anschauen. So this is already practice if you can just accept equally or evenly. Schon das ist Praxis, wenn du alles gleichermaßen anschauen kannst. Now I think it's good to start really in a, again, a very primitive way. Ich glaube es ist wirklich gut, wenn du auf eine primitive Art anfangen kannst. I tried to live for some months with no intentions and to only do things which I found unavoidable. So I went to the toilet And sometimes I would go for days without washing my face or so forth. But then I found myself, even though I didn't intend to, I found myself washing my face.

[88:37]

I even started brushing my teeth. Luckily I was by myself, so nobody had to face this mess I was. But I really wanted to see how much of my life is intended, or why am I doing it, or where do things arise? And also, out of kindness to others, you want to dress at least, if you go out, you want to look not too horrible. For many years, I would only wear old clothes, you know, from second-hand shops. Now I'm a fashion plate. Fashion victim, yeah.

[89:50]

Anyway, but in meditation you try to see if you can discover a mind which you don't which is uncorrected. The whole secret of Zen practice is uncorrected mind. Okay. Now, after a while you find that the intentions you have are as different as drinking water or eating sand. You become more sensitive and it's like you can't put sand in your gas tank.

[90:54]

You can if you want, but then you can only use your car as a tent. So some kind of practical reality begins to assert itself. And part of that reality is that when you have, for instance, a precept, do no harm, you actually feel better. More fundamental food than food.

[91:30]

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