Yeah, we watch a movie and somehow we find ourselves crying. Or during the day we feel the movie made us more aware of aspects of our life we don't usually think of. or over the course of the day we notice that the film has allowed us to perceive A life we don't usually think of. Yeah, and dreams do that sometimes. You know, a dream pulls aspects of our life up onto the stage of the present. And if you do Zazen regularly, usually we have a little fuller sense of conventional life.

[01:08]

haben wir gewöhnlich einen volleren Sinn für unser gewöhnliches Leben. We get used to it. We now think nothing's happening. Wir fangen uns an, daran zu gewöhnen und meinen, nichts geschieht. But if you stop doing Zazen, after a while you find your conventional life begins to get narrower. Or it compacts. Compact. Compact. It settles down into... Sometimes it takes two or three weeks before it happens, or longer even. If you start zazen again, it even might take a few weeks before you begin to feel space in your compacted conventional life.

[02:37]

And we begin to feel the simultaneity of different kinds of time. Yeah, our conventional life begins to fit us better. It feels better, like clothes that fit. Strange. So what I'm talking about here is that zazen makes our conventional life fit us better. And we can understand the Eightfold Path as, first of all, bringing mindfulness, mindful attention to our conventional life.

[03:44]

And we can even let the... energy ball or dynamic of impermanence reach into its fuller implications in our conventional life. Now we may start feeling like the simultaneity of different kinds of time. Where you really have to do something, but in the middle of it there's kind of a big quiet space. I like the Russian our custom of when you're racing for the airport after you got your bags packed you have to sit down for a few minutes everyone sits down

[05:07]

Many times I've had, I used to go to Russia a lot, many times I've had this experience. We've only got a few minutes. Let's go. Everyone sits down. Let's have a vodka. No, no. It's almost like that. So somehow in our Life, we may be busy, but we also feel the one who sits down. Okay, we also feel other kind of mixes of emotions or attitudes that we don't usually mix.

[06:22]

Yeah, we might feel a certain sadness, for instance. At the same time a gratefulness. Yeah, we might even feel some agony or confusion and yet some sense of beauty. Or we might feel, oh, just, I mean, I have to, you give up hope. Yeah, but in the middle of that, we feel some warmth and generosity.

[07:24]

It's almost like something's calling to us from the other side of our conventional life. Yeah, maybe in this stage, the stage of the present. the aspects of our conventional life that are usually off-scene. We've opened the curtain through zazen and mindfulness wide enough Yeah, that we see, as I've been saying, the aspects of our conventional life we often keep off-scene. And somehow zazen or mindfulness creates a wider space, a bigger stage, which we can integrate more aspects of what we already know.

[08:44]

And we have a fuller sense of life. Yeah. But still, maybe in the back part of the stage there seems to be another curtain. Then in our conventional life, we may feel kind of hopeless sometimes. But from this, you know, from the partially open curtain in the back part of the stage, we feel some gratitude or beauty. Then we wonder what's there. Yeah, like in We feel the presence of it.

[10:21]

Maybe like Bart Hellinger, the missing parts of our life are there. Or perhaps there's a Buddha back there. Perhaps this curtain is over the room of the Buddha ancestors. Now, wouldn't that be nice? Yeah, but I think it's true. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Now, we can study because what we're doing now is our practice life is to observe, to bring mindfulness into our life. And to have the skills and craft and the existential depth to keep a beginner's mind in our zazen and mindfulness practice.

[11:50]

So what are we observing? Our conventional life. So in our busy, I'm talking about a busy convention, a busy narrow conventional life. And a wider conventional life. And I'm speaking about observing it. But then we also have this experience of what I'll call an observer me, a me observer. Aber dann haben wir auch die Erfahrung von dem, was ich ein Ich-Beobachter nenne.

[12:53]

And sometimes this me observer is quite realistic. Und manchmal ist dieser Ich-Beobachter ziemlich realistisch. And sometimes, you know, it's like we were saying last night. Do you think you brought up the idea of an inflated ego? Yes, an inflated me-ness. An inflated ego. Hey, what time is it? Could be worse. So this kind of exaggerated me-ness, which sometimes thinks we're the most important person in the world, we usually keep off-scene.

[14:17]

We learn to do that. But this... Unrealistic ego comes out sometimes when we're feeling weak or excited or something. Now, why I'm speaking about this also is because the me observer is kind of a controller of our conventional life. So when you study your conventional life, your wider conventional life and your narrow conventional life, you see there's an experience of a me-observer. And you can observe the me observing.

[15:36]

And as your practice gets more subtle and your mindfulness more tuned... You see that actually a state of mind, a quality, an aspect of a mode of mind is it has an observing. It has the ability to observe itself. Do you see that a state of mind, the quality of a state of mind, has the ability to observe oneself? And then you begin to see that different situations produce slightly different modes of mind.

[16:51]

And each one has a slightly different observer. But we tend to generalize the observer. We think it's the same all the time. And that's because I think mainly because we can't really observe the observer. So a real practice in life entering into the dynamic of impermanence, is able to see the observer is impermanent and changes. And changes.

[18:04]

And it's different sometimes. It's impermanent and different. Yeah, so as your mindfulness develops, first you can First you observe the contents of your mind. And then the details. And you feel some relationship to the details. Then as your mindfulness develops and you become more able to identify with mindfulness, not the objects of the mindfulness, Mindfulness widens your conventional life. And again, as your mindfulness develops more, you can see the... Somebody used the image of a flashlight.

[19:07]

In this practice we're not observing the one who holds the flashlight. We're not observing what the flashlight illuminates. We're observing the light of the flashlight itself. Wir beobachten das Licht des Blitzlichtes selbst. And this light kind of widens. Und dieses Licht weitet sich. And as we identify with or feel ourselves part of the light, not either end of the light. Und wenn wir uns mit als... as we feel we're part of the light, and not either end of it or the holder and the object, and being identified with the light or immersed in the light itself,

[20:40]

We can turn it around and observe the observer. And that's called turning around the basis. You shifted the basis from the observer and the object to the light or the mind itself. And that's now the basis. And you turn that around. Yeah, it sounds interesting, huh? It's not so difficult to do, actually. You have to be there, then you can do it.

[21:51]

Getting there may not be so easy, because our conventional life is real nice. But when you widen your conventional life, it's more satisfying, but not always so nice. So you begin to be able to observe the observer. the observing function of a mode of mind. Then you begin to see it's a little different in each mode of mind. And then you notice that, well, I've never noticed it's different. I've always thought it was the same old observer.

[22:52]

Yeah, and it's the same old observer, and because we generalize it into the same old observer, the young observer, sometimes our body ages around a young observer. If you begin... Well, I won't go into that. But... So now you see the observer is different. But because we've generalized it as being the same, it tends to draw up our memory, up our history, the same way. It's like several different observers all are stuck with the same history.

[24:07]

But just as when you really work, say, with the, you know, vijnana of smelling. Or even you just notice you smell something. And memories come up through smell that don't come up through sight. So each sense has its own history. And which you find more and more the case as you practice with the separation of the vijnanas.

[25:15]

So... So you begin to see that the different observers actually have somewhat different histories. Now, there's two more parts to what I want to say. To make sense of what I'm saying. But I have time for only one more part. So the other part will remain off-scene. Or maybe we can do it tomorrow or the next day. All right. So once you get the sense of this me observer...

[26:22]

You can see it functioning. You see it's a kind of functioning. And one of its functions is to bring up a lot of associations in memory. And also one of its functions is to create memories. allow a mode of mind to function, to make decisions and things like that. So you just do a little substitution. Like you have one character on stage and suddenly he goes off stage and somebody else comes up and stands where he was. in a very simple way when you notice something and you have the feeling of a A center of your experience.

[27:42]

Notice. You take the label of me off it. And you put the label an ancient Buddha on it. So you look at something and you suddenly say to yourself, an ancient Buddha is seeing this. And every now and then you do this. For the me observer, you substitute an ancient Buddha observer. Yeah, so you try it out. You may find you feel a little different. For one thing, The me observer draws up a certain history.

[29:03]

The ancient Buddha doesn't draw up that history. If you change the observer, you change the associations that are brought up. You feel something, but you feel it in a little different way. The curtain at the back of the stage over the Buddha Ancestors' room opens a bit. And you feel the observer of an ancient Buddha draws into our deepest life. Our deeper life beyond our conventional life. So what I'm talking about here is how to bring on to the stage of the present our deepest life as well as our wider conventional life.

[30:24]

Yeah, there's lots of ways to do it. I've given you one way to do it. Which allows you to experiment with the illusion-like me-observer. Illusory-like me-observer. Yeah, not an illusion, but it has some qualities of being like an illusion. So this experience of the me observer is given depth and flexibility. And the ancient Buddha observer awakens our secret history of being a Buddha.

[31:45]

The many ways are actual experiences that we've had. The many ways... in which our actual experiences could be the history of a Buddha as well as the history of a me observer. You begin to feel this different way of functioning. Yeah, in your practice life. Okay, thank you very much. Danke schön. May we, together with all human beings, go through their north with the true service of the Buddha's path.

[32:59]

Shujo om urense rando, bonom ujjiense randa. Oh, my God. [...] The way of the Buddha is unsurpassable, I believe. And we'll join in changing your law.

[35:30]

Yeah, good. Stay in mind. Oh, oh, [...] oh. vāre maha-kenmaṁśhī Ṭhūjī-sūrū-kato-ekṣāri niyā-vā-kuvā-myorā-yokṣu-śvien-jit-sū-myo-geshī-tate-matsurān I hope that we will be able to get through this together. I hope that we will get through this together. I hope that we will get through this together. Well, winter seems to be cooperating with giving us a winter retreat.

[36:52]

Yeah, the rest of Germany is enjoying spring. I don't know, maybe not, but we have a little hill of winter here. The Dharma Inn on Winter Hill. So I think the image the other day, Friday, yesterday, of a stage was useful. Anyway, just by sort of luck I decided to use such an image. My luck?

[38:03]

Yeah. I started out thinking, how am I going to feel? How am I going to find a way to say something? I can feel what I want to say, but I... It's not what I want to say. I feel what I... I feel what the practice week wants me to say. But sometimes I'm a little lost. How can I make it happen? Say something. So I found myself sort of talking about how practice brings our life onto the stage of the present.

[39:13]

how practice brings our life onto the stage of the present. Yeah, and then this turned out to be a rather useful image. Because I think we can really see the difference, the simple difference, between a kind of compacted or busy daily life. And when we feel a wider sense of our life. And when we feel a wider sense of our life. And sometimes this wider sense often reaches back farther into our deepest desires. and this further sense returns to our deeper yearnings,

[40:53]

So we have two senses of conventional life, I put it. Why do I use the word conventional? Well, I mean, I've got to use some word, right? I can say usual or ordinary or something. Daily. But I think maybe all in all, in English, at least conventional is good because it fits in with other people's usual life. It fits in with conventions. And conventions in English is a good word, too, because it has a pejorative flavor, which I don't mean to imply.

[42:09]

Oh, that's like we put down somebody. He's a very conventional kind of person. Which means he's predictable and boring. But in a positive sense, we do live by conventions, and conventions has the feeling of it's not reality, but an agreed upon reality. So there's some wisdom in the word convention, conventional life. And I also use the word conventional because we convene this life.

[43:50]

Und ich verwende das Wort konventionell auch. We convene this life. Convene means to call a meeting. Let's convene this afternoon and have a staff meeting. Denn wir treffen uns mit unserem Leben. Okay. Kommt zusammen mit unserem Leben. So I think that... One reason I'm saying these two, a narrow sense of conventional life and a wider sense of conventional life. And the reason I'm calling them both conventional life is because they're both convened, called to meet by the me-observer. So the me observer of our narrow life, conventional life, and the me observer of our wider conventional life?

[45:03]

Yeah, about the same. And I think most people, when they practice, probably mostly the fruit of their practice, is a wider conventional life. More satisfying and realistic conventional life. Even a wiser conventional life. The wisdom of old age, perhaps. When the ear lobes get longer.

[46:05]

And the teeth get longer. They look longer. Or they look longer. It's old age in English. Because your gums... He's long of tooth. It doesn't mean he looks like a wolf. He's long of tooth doesn't mean he looks like a wolf. We're talking here about So the wisdom of old age, but probably not the wisdom of enlightenment. And I think probably the reason so few people realize enlightenment in Buddhist practice And if you study Korean, Chinese, and Japanese monasteries, where people do it, most of the people, they don't actually realize enlightenment.

[47:24]

They like the life or they want to practice, they love practice, they want to help others practice. But an enlightenment experience integrated with practice is fairly unusual actually. And, yeah, people, enlightenment experiences are, excuse me for going in this, but I have to say a little something so you feel better. We can say non-Buddhist enlightenment experiences are, you know, not uncommon. But enlightened experiences integrated in and developing, maturing Buddhist practice are not so common.

[49:00]

But what I see is there's invisible enlightenment experiences working within our practice. Why do they remain invisible? Yeah. I think probably one of the big reasons is because most practice widens our conventional life. And we're not really ready to give up our conventional identity. or we think somehow if we practice Dharma surgery, or we have the Dharma shift we can call enlightenment, or when we have the Dharma shift we can call enlightenment,

[50:22]

Or the idea of practicing Dharma surgery on our poor little self. I don't get it. When we have the Dharma shift, we can call that enlightenment? The Dharma shift, that is called enlightenment. Penis scares us. Or the Dharma surgery on our poor little self kind of scares us. What's going on there at Johanneshof? Dharma operation. There's too many doctors practicing on it. But conventional life should be defended.

[51:40]

And I think a deeper understanding of Mara, the tempter of the Buddha, is not as a Satan-like figure. as a Satan-like figure. And most versions of the Buddhist life present Mara as a kind of Satan. And I don't know if that's partly from Christian influence and translation or it's how much is part of Buddhism. Buddhism did develop its own idea of hell. But it's a fairly late development, I think.

[52:45]

And it has Hieronymus Bosch-type images. But it's only a place you go for a while for a little training, you know. It's not eternal damnation. Heavy duty kind of, you know. We call it tough love. You can call it a tough love. If your father catches you smoking grass and sends you to a drug rehabilitation center, that could be called tough love. If your father catches you smoking grass and sends you to a drug rehabilitation center, that could be called tough love.

[53:52]

One of the protectors of the Dalai Lama. Yeah, is a woman riding on a horse. And she's carrying a little bag in her hand. And in the bag is all the diseases, you know. Pestilence. Pestilence or diseases, you know. Smallpox. Smallpox? Yeah. And she was a demon, but she's been converted to Buddhism. And she keeps the bag closed.

[54:55]

And her saddle on her horse is the skin of her son. You can see his face looking out. But he refused to be converted. You could call this tough love. Anyway, the point I'm making here is that demons and the devil and hell and all that stuff in Buddhism is very... Often the protecting figures are former demons. The protecting figures used to be demons in Hinduism.

[56:01]

They get converted to Buddhism and then they become good guys who protect the Dharma. That these are demons from Hinduism who are then converted and then they become good figures in Buddhism. Yeah. I mean, and they're protectors because they know they used to do what... The protector of children is someone who used to eat children or make them sick. So there's even a sense that demons are Buddhas, but it's not like... the fallen angel of, you know, Satan.

[57:04]

This is a kind of, as someone said to me recently, like putting your left hand and right hand together. You know, uh... Uh... Mahamaya is the mother of the Buddha. The name of the mother of the Buddha. But in Hinduism, Mahayana is a name for Kali, for an ogress. But in Hinduism, that's the name for what? Kali, K-A-L-I, or an ogress. Kali or an ogress? You know what an ogress is? An ogre is a very bad guy. You know, picking up people on alien and things like that.

[58:09]

An ogre, O-G-R-E. Oh, I thought it would come from German mythology. A troll? Yeah, an ogre, but it's kind of worse than a troll, but it's kind of boss troll. Yeah, okay, maybe we've gone too far today. I don't know. I'm trying to give you other pictures of Buddhism. So the point I'm... We'll get into this because Mara, although he's presented demonically or as a kind of Satan figure, Originally, I think Mara was more like just king of the world.

[59:13]

And he was trying to protect the world. And when he tried to tempt the Buddha with his daughter. And it's interesting, the Buddha can be sexually tempted, but a Christ figure can't. Es ist interessant, dass der Buddha sexuell versucht werden kann oder verführt, aber nicht eine Christusfigur. Ja, and then he tried to frighten him with armies. Und dann versucht er ihn mit Armeen zu erschrecken. And then he presented himself as a kind of Brahmin king and tried to tempt him with power. And that these three represent the three main classes of Hindu society of the time.

[60:31]

The daughter represents the kind of trade and merchant class. And family and wives or husbands and accumulation of wealth for the family. And the warriors, the warrior class. And the Brahmin class. And basically saying, look, this is a huge achievement, what we've done. We found a way for all these people to live together and have families and so forth.

[61:41]

I think of a scroll I have, one of my favorite scrolls, and I have it in Crestone. And it shows this fellow sitting on the stump, a very big stump of a tree, almost as wide as this in proportion to one person. And he's sitting on this tree that's completely just a stump. It's cut off. Look at him. He's quite a funny guy. He has little kind of animal-like ears.

[62:51]

And he's got a bear claw shamanic necklace around him. And his feet are kind of like in these little kind of forest shoes. It almost looks like they belong to the forest. It would be quite exciting to meet him. Yeah, and he's sitting there, and he's got this big, long bow. And he represents the first emperor of Japan. And the cut tree represents civilization. And supposedly the kinds of forests that were once in Europe and America maybe there's one or two trees left in all of Europe and maybe there's 50 in America that are the size trees were before humans started cutting them down.

[64:23]

I mean, trees were immense. And probably in the original forests in Europe and America there are hardly any of them. In Europe maybe two trees of them and in America 50. Before people started to cut down the trees, they were of an incredible size. In England, I don't know about Germany, but in England a lot of the monasteries are at the site of ancient trees that are older than Christianity. So it took a long time to cut the trees down and create a way where large numbers of people could live together and so forth.

[65:27]

So that Mara sang, hey, come on Buddha, don't destroy all this. Don't tell people there's a better way. Let's have the threefold pass. Not such a law now. Yeah. Don't. Tell people there's some kind of deeper life than what conventional society offers. Let the Buddha, you know, he's a stubborn guy. Plus his sasen is so deep, he hardly notices Mara is there.

[66:34]

Anyway, joking aside, I think we have this same confrontation inside us. We want to live in a way that we can, of course, bring up our family and so forth. Find lovers, have a job, you know, so forth. And we think, oh, God, living at Crestone would be impossible. Even Janisov, it's, you know, pretty difficult. Or even if you don't live at Janisov or Crestone or some such place, you think you somehow will harm yourself by going too far into practice.

[67:41]

And I agree, conventional life should be defended. But we don't have time to go into kind of interesting ways in which... When society is in transition, it turns to Buddhism to help make the transition. Tantric Buddhism came into Japan and Tibet at the same time when they were first creating a state. We're making their first gathering a state together out of little tribal or feudal.

[68:48]

Yeah. Yeah. So Buddhism has also very interesting images. You know, when we say in the ceremony, which we'll do tomorrow afternoon, when a person is ordained, The earth trembles. Why is that in there? And why did I leave it in there in the English and German version? And why did I leave it in the English and German version?

[69:57]

Because it's one of the most fundamental, fundamental Mesopotamian ideas in Buddhism. When Mara tempted the Buddha, how did the Buddha respond? He touched the earth. And the earth trembles. And the earth goddess appears and testifies to his enlightenment. And where did he realize enlightenment? Sitting under a tree. An uncut tree. And where was he born? His mother was out walking in a forest, you know.

[71:02]

She maybe got the due date mixed up. And she suddenly felt a little funny. And she held the branch of a tree. And while she was holding the branch of the tree, he gave birth to the Buddha. So he was enlightened, sitting under a tree, born under a tree, And the earth goddess testified for him. And the earth has the last word, because he's buried in the earth. And when the Buddha enters nirvana again, Dying, again, the earth trembles.

[72:11]

And what is the goddess that's the protector of the Okesa, Buddha's robe? The placenta goddess. Because the robe is seen as a kind of rebirth. This is the umbilical cord, you know, here somewhere. So that Buddhism attempted to find mythopoetic or mythopoeic images that reached into the earth and the society at a deeper level than conventional society. How do these things develop?

[73:12]

Well, that's another discussion. But you could examine my own statements, for example. Aber ihr könntet meine eigenen Aussagen untersuchen. There's no Buddhist psychology. Es gibt keine buddhistische Psychologie. There's a Buddhist mindology, but not psychology. Es gibt eine buddhistische Geisteswissenschaft, aber keine Psychologie. Because there's no psyche in Buddhism. Denn im Buddhismus gibt es keine Seele. And why do I say that? Well, I say it because that's my experience. And I think we can practice with psychology and the mindology of Buddhism with more clarity if they're understood more precisely and separately.

[74:21]

But also there's an implicit strategy in my statement. Because I want the roots of Buddhist mindology to reach you. past our own culture. I don't want the roots of Buddhism to be confused or shared with the roots of psychology. If we start thinking that way, then Buddhism will only grow out of our own society. It will become modern and contemporary.

[75:31]

So I think a lot of this arises from many small decisions like that. What arises? These myths like this is a placenta arises from many kind of subtle decisions trying to define Buddhism in a way that's separate from the conventional culture. Look at Bodhidharma. He has a red, okay sir, placenta colored. And he sat nine years.

[76:32]

So there's like nine months. There's a lot of interpenetration of ideas... that tie us into the culture and separate us from the culture. So what I'm trying to say here is it's a very big and deep step to go from a wider conventional life still governed by a me observer, to open the room of the Buddha ancestors. So we could all say, hey, let's just have a wider conventional life.

[77:43]

What's wrong with that? That's great. But we still have some, not intellectual, but intuitive urges for enlightenment. We still have this non-referential joy. Yeah, some kind of... softness, ease of life that calls us toward this Buddha ancestor room. So how do we respond to this? And yet at the same time take care of our conventional life and respect our conventional life. Do we want to do it?

[78:53]

This is the basic question of a lay practice life. Okie doke. Thank you very much.

[79:24]

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