Is everyone aware of the distinction I commonly make between awareness and consciousness? Is somebody not? Okay, all right. Okay, so that's good. I will have to say something about that then. Okay, something else. Yes. Apology said the trap of Zen of escaping your story would like an example. Well, you said to me yesterday about talking to me about meditation. You asked me about when you're counting, you've been sitting about a year now. Eight months? Okay. It's not long enough to have a baby. Premature.

[01:03]

So, and you asked me, didn't you, is it still, what does it mean that I still can't count, get to ten often? Okay. 20. 20 is as bad as not getting to 10. It means you went right by 10 without noticing. You went straight going right through a stoplight. Okay, that's good. Something else. I wanted to know if I understood something correctly. You said that all parents want to write a good life story for their children.

[02:03]

You were saying that all parents want to write a good life story for their children. And at the same time you said that the worst you can do is sort of to interfere or cut off other people's life stories. I'm wondering if parents have the right to write a life story for their children. Yeah, okay. I understand. I don't think people mind hearing you translate the questions for you.

[03:11]

Yes. Yesterday we talked, you think there's a danger in Western Zen to try to to be only to try to be now and here. I can't understand what you're talking about. OK. OK. This is my . Yeah. OK. Yes. Okay. You know, right now, this morning, I don't know anything. So, you're helping me because I want to... There's no point in my talking about it unless we really get into it in terms of our own vocabulary.

[04:31]

So each one of you has been giving me a kind of gate. So, Please, anybody else? I'm confused about the space giving structure to a leaf. Yes. Confusion lasts on. Ah, good. No, I mean good, yeah. Because it's, I mean, on a certain logical level, the words make sense.

[05:35]

I mean, I think it's kind of logical. But actually to feel it in an operative way, is a significant change. Let me tell a little anecdote about myself. What I mean is by an operative understanding. I mean, I knew for a long... I mean, I would know intellectually sort of that there's not that much difference between being in here and out there.

[06:43]

But I was walking along back in the early 60s. 61 or 2. Going back to this warehouse where I worked. And I'd had lunch at a little different place than I usually have. And I was coming back to this warehouse where there was a railroad tracks that came up and stopped so that a railroad train could load things into this warehouse. And in those days, I sort of smoked. I mean, I didn't really smoke, but I kind of would blow this smoke through my nose. Like Clinton, I never inhaled. Yeah. It's true, it tasted so terrible, but I sort of liked the physical activity.

[08:05]

So it was, you know, I was walking along and I guess I must have smoked a cigarette. And I had a cigarette package or something. And I threw it down on the railroad track. And suddenly I... I stopped like I'd been struck. And I, you know, in the warehouse I sort of, you know, it was a book, big book warehouse. It shipped out books. And I often had to sweep the floor. Yeah. And so I struck and the first thing I thought, nobody's going to sweep it out here. So it was a practical thing that, you know, nobody's going to sweep out here, so I should pick it up.

[09:09]

And... That was kind of obvious. But I'd been doing meditation for maybe at that point six or eight months. And what struck me really was not just that no one was going to pick it up, But that I was being irresponsible, throwing it down or something like that. It wasn't a moral thing. It was that I recognized that In some way, I thought that the outside was different from the inside.

[10:20]

And as soon as I was stopped and recognized that only was no one going to sweep it out. But that little notice that no one was going to sweep it out shifted to a more fundamental noticing that I thought there was a distinction between outside and inside. And at that moment everything stopped. And I entered space rather than time. And I can't say much more about it right now than that.

[11:26]

But it was a pretty important experience for me. And I've never... I've... That experience had been a kind of building block of my present state of mind. And since then I've never felt And the feeling that came up then has never changed. It's developed, but I've never lost it. So before this experience, someone could have said, or I would have thought, outside and inside are the same, but didn't actually have an operative feeling of that. So it's actually very good when you feel stuck by something.

[12:29]

And if you get one or two, I mean, I don't think you have to feel stuck in the sense that now I'm going to solve something or it's going to lead to some kind of nice experience. But you allow yourself to be in that space of being stuck without trying to get unstuck. I was reading something some weeks ago about a therapist speaking about the difference between patients he has, clients he has, or she has, I don't remember, who practice meditation and those who don't. And she said that the people who she noticed who practiced meditation, she began to notice that those clients she had who practiced meditation were a little different.

[13:44]

And the main difference she noticed was that the meditators were able to stay present for something and not try to relieve it. Okay. Okay, now, this matter of what I call the practice of counting to one. You're trying to count to ten, and yet you get to one or two, and then... Now, most of... Most of you have heard me say this before.

[15:00]

But since I'm not here so often, maybe we have to establish basic vocabulary again. Okay. When you can't count to one, when you can't count to ten, Because you can count, all of you can count to ten, can't you? So what does it mean that you can't count to ten when you're meditating? Not that you're impossibly distracted, but you're in another state of mind. And a state of mind which doesn't know how to count to ten. Does that make sense? So once you can't count to ten, you're actually, that's quite good, because it means you're in zazen mind.

[16:03]

So if you have some kind of mental idea of... I'm supposed to be able to count to ten. You're actually doing damage to your zazen mind. And if you kind of force yourself with energy to keep counting to ten... What you're doing is forcing ordinary mind into your sasen. So does that make sense? Is that clear? All is clear? All is clear. So... So this is one distinction I can make between awareness and consciousness.

[17:20]

Awareness, consciousness can count to ten. Consciousness is what the gymnasium system, the school system, tries to educate. It pretty much ignores awareness. Now, again, as I said last night, this is an idea. This distinction between awareness and consciousness is an idea. I'm not saying there's actually two different things. Although I think that it's useful to think of it sort of as two different things. But don't be too literal. This is a way of seeing. So when you're little, you know, it takes quite a little time for a child to learn to count.

[18:35]

And you give it blocks with numbers on it and they pile them up and things like that. In a way, for a baby, we can imagine, say, that, I don't know for sure, I haven't been one for a long time, Well, some people wouldn't agree, but... I hope actually all of you are somewhat neotenous. Near what? Testing my translator. Neotenous means not monotonous. Neotenous means a... baby-like, child-like qualities that are continued in the adult stage.

[19:40]

So you just use the word, yeah. So artists are often very neotenous in the sense that they have childlike qualities, even though they're adults. I think it's actually a term from biology. Some insects or animals have, in adult stages, child, they're infant, you know. So I can imagine perhaps that an infant's consciousness and awareness are joined. They're just one kind of looking around. Okay. And... When you start teaching the child, depending on what you're teaching the child, but we in general, probably since Plato, tend to teach the child in such a way that we draw them away from awareness into consciousness.

[20:48]

And eventually, our educational system, all throughout European and Western culture, really emphasizes educating consciousness. To the extent that awareness is almost verboten. If your child exhibits cities Siddhis means special powers. If your child exhibited siddhis, or some special powers or intuitions, many parents would think their child was going crazy, but would be kind of worried about it.

[22:09]

So if your child said to you, you know, dad or mom, sometimes I know what people are going to say before they speak. Or we were out rowing on the lake and I knew that such and such had happened back at the house while I was on the lake. The father or mother might think, hmm, you, well, I wouldn't notice that kind of stuff too much. Next you know you'll be hearing voices. Yeah. So this is partly what I mean by the story you give your child. I don't mean you give your child a story that says you must inherit the family business.

[23:31]

Or you're a doctor, I'm a doctor, you should be a doctor. I mean the kind of story that allows the child to, say, have this experience without feeling they should reject it. Or the story that allows the child to be its own person. I can remember my I said to her when she was very little, she wouldn't do something. And I said, you have to do it. She said, no. And I said, but Virginia and I, her mother, made you. You belong to us. She looked at me and said, it's too late now.

[24:36]

I belong to me. I thought that was great. I said, okay, fine. So that's what I mean by her story was good. You know, she... Can I tell one more story about my sweet daughter? That was my older daughter. My younger daughter, when she was a bit older than the first story, I think it was maybe four or so. And she was doing... gymnastics from the chair to the table back to the chair.

[25:41]

And it was about 10 o'clock at night, and I was getting ready to drive to the monastery 200 kilometers away in California. She really should have been in bed, but she was up saying goodbye to me before I left. So at some point she almost knocked this big chair over. And I said to her, Elizabeth, would you cut that out? You're acting like a little boy. I said, girls are supposed to sit on the couch holding a doll to their chest. And staring out into space with a benign smile on your face. She looked at me and she said, well, some don't. She said, and I'm the leader of those who don't.

[26:49]

I thought, oh, shit, I don't think so. I can't resist telling one real short one. Elizabeth was falling asleep. She was very tiny, almost sitting on the dashboard while we were driving. Nearly, you know, kind of like that. And I said, Elizabeth, watch your head. She said, half asleep, I can't see it, you watch it. So anyway. I missed them.

[27:54]

Obviously, I wouldn't be telling these stories. Okay. So when you can't count to ten, zazen mind has arisen. And zazen mind doesn't have the structure of consciousness. Now, consciousness is a little different, and I would say it's different enough that you can give it structure. It's a little bit like as if water, you can give the structure of waves to it. But say there was a kind of liquid that was part of the ocean that wouldn't turn into waves. Just imagine a liquid that had a kind of different viscosity that didn't become waves.

[29:05]

Maybe it had a reverse surface tension or something like that. Well, awareness is more like that. It doesn't make waves the same way as consciousness. So you have to have a different way of educating it. Or relating to it. And zazen mind is your first experience of it for most people as adults. Zazen mind is very close to dreaming mind. Dreaming mind supports images. But it doesn't support a certain kind of thinking. And in general, you do a kind of damage to dreams when you try to analyze them.

[30:08]

And it's often a kind of misuse of psychologizing. It's better to just stay with the feeling or image of the dream. But when you've had the experience of waking up and you've had a kind of vivid dream, and you're trying to remember the dream, and you can't quite remember it, But you can kind of feel it still. And you can almost kind of go back into it, but you know what I mean. You're at the edge of consciousness and awareness. And if you fall asleep, you can go back into the dream often, but you can't remember it. And if you stay conscious and you try to remember it, you can't remember it because consciousness can't grasp the dream.

[31:41]

So when you begin to learn to practice meditation, you're developing a state of mind that can go back and forth between dreaming mind and conscious mind and not interfere with either. And conscious mind. So, when you can't count to ten, it's quite good. It means you're in zazen mind. So, your story has a... one picture in your conscious mind. And it has another picture in your awareness. But in awareness, until you really have a certain kind of stability and awareness, you can't, most of your wider existence appears fragmented as distractions.

[32:52]

Okay, so when you make an effort to count to ten and to force thoughts out of your mind as is a common idea of Zen practice you're actually doing damage to your developing awareness. It's much better to practice for two or three years maybe and not be able to get to ten very often. Because your awareness is now going through zazen practice, your awareness is going to zazen university. And it's learning to develop its own relationship to awareness and start penetrating into consciousness. So this is part of what I mean about living in the present.

[34:06]

I'm not saying there is no alternative to living in the present. All other alternatives are delusion. But still, if you live in the present in such a way that consciousness and awareness are not integrated, then you are... I think misusing Zen practice. You wanted to add something? Well, I have two questions. When I noticed that I'm not counting to ten, I'm not in Zen mind anymore. So why should I preserve that state? It's a good question. Why don't you say it in German? Please. Yeah, go ahead, yes. And what should... I mean, not forcing thoughts out, but what if I happen to have, like, a perfect daydream?

[35:32]

A perfect daydream? I don't know. Should I stay tonight? You want to say that in Deutsch? This whole seminar is a perfect daydream. Well, of course, the background of everything I'm saying is that practicing zazen is used on the whole a good thing to do. So I wouldn't say, oh, I've noticed now that I'm not counting to 10, so there's no zazen in mind, so I think I'll get up and read a book. Now all of these are a kind of negotiation.

[36:41]

And a kind of education. Okay, so you're counting to ten. But you get to two or three. And you get lost in a perfect daydream. Great. And then at some point you may notice and you may actually find yourself more concentrated. Because sometimes, often, concentration becomes, real concentration appears when you go back and forth between an effort to concentrate and just relaxing. So let's say that this is your zazen mind. I mean, excuse me, this is your conscious mind. Okay, so you start counting and you're here somewhere.

[37:41]

And distractions come in. And then one of the distractions turns into a perfect daydream. And you may be settling a little deeper through that perfect daydream actually because the distractions are organized. Then you start counting again and you actually may be a bit farther deeper into zazen mind. And then you notice that you're not counting. Okay, but you can also notice that when you notice, it doesn't disturb Zazen mind. If you start thinking about noticing, you probably enter consciousness.

[38:42]

But if you don't think about it, and you just notice it, and maybe notice that you're noticing, You've discovered a kind of thought which doesn't disturb Zazen mind. And you could even use that, noticing that you're not counting, the kind of feeling of that as the place to start counting from. Because if you imagine counting, your conscious mind is a boat, say. You start counting from the boat, you know, because you start doing Zazen and you're counting from the deck and pretty soon you're down along the bottom of the boat counting. But your counting is still stuck to the boat.

[39:48]

Then you have a daydream and you start floating away from the boat. And then you notice that you're not counting. And that's a kind of, the anchor's dropped down and the anchor's sort of in your... And you can start up the rope and go back to the boat. Or you can start jumping from the anchor. One anchor. And if you remember that feeling in a way, if you get that kind of inner tactile feeling for this anchor which is both in the water and still connected to the boat.

[40:57]

That may be the kind of thought which has the right structure to be both in awareness and consciousness and can have the kind of structure which allows you to go from dreaming to waking. It's a little bit like the experience of lucid dreaming. Because lucid dreaming has several interesting characteristics. There's a moving point of observation. You can be in the dream Then you can engage yourself in the dream. You can pull yourself away from the dream and see that you're dreaming without waking up.

[42:01]

And yet there's a kind of connection up to consciousness And yet it's also a connection to the dream. And then you can move back and forth between the dream and this point of observation. You can actually go into the dream for a while or come back out. You can use the observation point to decide to change the dream, go back into the dream and change it. And you can also notice that you not only have the observation point which can go into the dream, That observation point is also an all-around awareness that seems to surround the dream or surround much of it. And that all-around awareness you can sustain. and why can you sustain it because your body is motionless because one of the qualities of dreaming and then lucid dreaming is your body is motionless so the motionless body allows awareness to separate out of consciousness

[43:32]

That's why in meditation, in Zen-style meditation, we emphasize learning to sit motionless. Because it allows you to begin to study yourself And to study yourself and your existence as it appears as consciousness and as it appears as awareness. And to develop the point of awareness, the observer point. and be able to move that observer point, and also be able to develop and expand that point to an all-around awareness. And then you can ask yourself, Who is doing this?

[44:57]

Now, this is a kind of false question. But it's a question deeply embedded in Western culture because of the idea of soul and spirit and so forth. In Buddhism we talk more about an observer point which can expand or contract and can disappear and can generate certain kinds of intactness. And those intactness occur at different levels. And this intactness could also be, just as there's a distinction between conscious and awareness, this intactness can be seen in one way as soul and another way as spirit.

[45:59]

And this intactness can be shared with others. And the sharing of this intactness with others is the first parameter of generosity. Which some contemporary people call the warrior side of practice. But I don't like, it's too warlike to use the word warrior for me. So I like a little better hero, but then we need shero. So I don't know, maybe Bodhisattva, we have to use Bodhisattva. One who develops one's his or her own intactness and then shares it with others. One who develops his or her own intactness and then shares it with others.

[47:21]

And then ultimately realizes their own intactness through this potentiality with others. Okay. Now, what I just did was I took very simple things that you gave me that are completely beginning practice. And I wanted to show you that very advanced attempt practice is embedded in the most simple things of beginning practice. So what I just talked about is no different from your experience in Zazen. I mean, what I talked about is no different than your experience. The only difference is I have 30 years of studying that experience.

[48:35]

But the experience is no different. So if you study this experience and begin to see, oh, what is not counting to 10? What is noticing that I can't count to ten? All of Buddhism is there. You just have to study that. And that's what we're doing. So, why don't we take a break? Okay. One thing I might point out about this experience I had, this little experience of throwing away this cigarette wrapper at the warehouse, is that in English it has a lot of the ingredients of dream thinking.

[49:37]

The situation has a lot of the ingredients of dream thinking. And dreams often, as you know, have a lot of puns in them. So when I had this feeling of I was going back to work, But where was I working? And I was working in a warehouse. And I was 25 years old and working in a, you know, this, you know, funny job. That's in a nowhere house. And I was on the tracks and off track.

[50:50]

And they were also what's called in English the backtracks. I was backtracking. I was on the backtracks. So I think that this kind of experience often actually overlaps with dream thinking. And this is one of the things that meditation does is it makes dream thinking push against your surface mind more. And then some little thing like a cigarette package can poke a hole and the dream thinking comes up into the surface mind. Now again, let me say, these aren't images. I'm using an image of the surface mind that's up and And awareness mind was down.

[52:16]

It's not up and down. It's not inside and outside. These are just convenient distinctions that allow us to see something. When I say you're developing something inside, it's not really inside, it's another kind of outside. But we first locate it through an experience of inside. You know, at 25 years old, your life is started and mostly ahead of you. And I still was pretty much wandering about, wondering what to do.

[53:18]

And when I threw the cigarette package down, And it's like I threw it down inside my mind. And it's like it started burning a hole in my mind. And Again, with this sense of staying with a feeling of discomfort. Through practice, my dream mind was pushing on my surface mind. And there was some discomfort that I didn't understand why this cigarette package stopped me. But I stayed with being stopped. I didn't brush it aside and say, oh, back up and walked on. Excuse my language. I stayed with it, and then I had a series of, you know, little realizations.

[54:32]

And one of them was at that age... was I thought that my life was outside of me somewhere in the future. And that my life would start happening sometime, but it was ahead of me or outside or in the future. And when I realized there's no outside, no inside, Or it's all a big inside. I realized, of course, that in the future it will always be right here. That I was in my life already and I couldn't think it was outside or in the future.

[55:32]

And you know, this statement of Wittgenstein that I like, that could be a kind of one of the veins, V-I-N-S, of this seminar, is that no phenomena on its own is mysterious. but it can become mysterious. At least in the English version of this, I don't know whether he said it in German or English, he says, each one, with a feeling of one being a person or a phenomena, each one can become mysterious to us. And when it becomes mysterious, it's a sign of this spiritual awakening of people. And this is interesting, because of course its source, Wittgenstein, is one of the people who

[57:08]

made a real effort to define things extremely clearly. And in pointing out how most philosophers only look like they're defining things clearly, He had to recognize the dimension of mystery in even the most clear definition. As Gödel has so significantly pointed out in mathematics. So you can take, when you begin to hear things in this way where it touches your parallel life, you can begin to hear even a popular song in a different way.

[58:21]

Bob Dylan has a song, Mama, You're Just on My Mind. He says, I'm not asking you for yes or no, to say words like yes or no. I'm not calling you to any place to go. I'm just whispering to myself. He also starts the song with, perhaps it's something like, I don't remember exactly, but perhaps it's that I'm at the crossroads of a sun-caught fly. And that's, you're in a different space when suddenly a fly goes by and you see it caught in the sun for a moment.

[59:28]

Emily Dickinson has a famous line which is, I heard fly buzz when I died. Presumably she only imagined it because otherwise she couldn't have written it down. But you know what she meant. but you know what she meant. I'm sorry. Yeah. Translators cannot think. Try it. Shut up. Switch it off. Okay. Okay. But I actually like Dylan's thing better than Emily Dickinson. It's the crossroads of a sun-caught fly.

[60:33]

Yeah. And sometimes we're at a kind of crossroads like that. We feel something like, geez, where am I at right now? Where am I going? And a very basic practice in Buddhism is what? What is it? That everything you look at, you may say, this is you or something, but also, what is it? If I look at you with what is it, it looks like you just came out of a space movie. We're all extraterrestrials. What is it? Whoa. He also says, when you wake up in the morning, He's our guru for today.

[61:51]

When you wake up in the morning... Baby, look inside your mirror. Yeah, he doesn't say, look in your mirror. He says, look inside your mirror. And you'll see that I'm not here. Anyway. So I'm just taking a popular song and you can actually start hearing it differently. I'm not calling you to any place to go. I'm not saying, asking you for words like yes or no. So let's sit for a few minutes. You all found a place to eat?

[63:05]

Or you ate here or something? Don't worry. It's all right. You can... If you want to wait for them... Oh, that's all right. Well, there was two people in line. You just lost your place. I'm sorry. Hmm. Hmm. Since most of you have experience in meditation and since the two or three new people look pretty resilient, means strong in a flexible way. I suppose it means actually the ability to bounce back. Yeah, it means you're strong, but not important to pick it up. Resilient. Maybe not a translated? Resilient. Gordon. Elastish.

[64:22]

Elastish. Because I don't know what it means. It doesn't mean strong, but bounce back. That's good. Since the new people are very elastic, I want to try doing a little more meditation this seminar than usual. I have these strange legs. And when there's five or six or seven or eight people who are hurting, my legs start to hurt. And then it's very hard to keep you sitting because my legs hurt. I know your legs are hurting.

[65:22]

I'm so cruel. So it's hard to get you to sit when I feel I'm forcing you. But with this group, I feel, you know, we could sit all day, it'd be fine. So, let's sit for a little while. To start out with, I promise it won't be, you know, it'll be, it'll stop at 4.5. Yeah. One of the nice things about these seminars is that we are... maybe we notice the pace of the day.

[66:25]

So the voices change The voices and quality of sound and all is a little different in the afternoon than the morning and so forth. You can feel the day moving through the city and the people. And moving in yourself too. It's in a kind of resonating pace. Actually, you don't have a word for pace exactly, do you? You have one, but it doesn't cover the same meaning. Yeah, rhythm or something. It's a step. Pace is like a step. What can you use pace for?

[67:27]

Okay. Act. I beg your pardon. Sorry. I'm just kidding. It's an explanation for case. It is. Act. It's text. Yeah. But text is something written. Yeah, anyway, it's not quite. Hello. I had lunch with a few people, talked for a bit. And someone mentioned to me, Munch, that this description of sitting that we went through a little while ago was quite useful to him.

[68:38]

And someone else, some other people mentioned to me that last night they liked particularly. And there's a difference between last night and today which is that last night is more like architecture and today has been more like carpentry. And some people, I think, would like me to talk about architecture all the time. The kind of big picture of practice. And some people I know would like me to talk about carpentry all the time.

[69:40]

So, it's actually easier to talk about architecture than carpentry. Because in carpentry, it's all details. There's no place you can stop. You ask a carpenter, tell me about carpentry. They wouldn't know what to do. Well, you go to work in the morning. But if you're doing some carpentry or you're trying it and you have some problems, You can say, really, it's not so easy to nail a nail, to hammer a nail. Because now, Chris, they all use these air hammer nail guns.

[70:48]

But it's actually quite a skill to nail. To really hit a nail once, hit him once and it's done, you know. So you could ask a good carpenter that. And he could tell you just how you hold the hammer, not too tight, etc. And probably if you paid attention to him, he would actually demonstrate to you the state of mind necessary to maintain the rhythm of hammering. And he would probably not be able to describe the state of mind, but intuitively he'd demonstrate it. And he would say... Something like, and if you hit your thumb.

[72:04]

And he would demonstrate at that moment a certain kind of distraction. So I think it's interesting to talk with you about the carpentry as well as the architecture. And much of the carpentry is the part that's kind of more taught in monasteries just by living there. But again, I need your help to talk about carpentry. Because I don't know where to start unless you tell me. You have to say, I'm having trouble hammering. I can't hammer to ten. I keep missing the third nail. In fact, the whole building disappeared.

[73:19]

Then I can talk to you about carpentry. And, you know, I have certain... Of course, I have weaknesses as a teacher. And you need to help me with those. And what I mean by that is, if I'm a little cold in the way I... present something, you should give me warmth. Or the translator should help me. As he is. Or if I emphasize the architecture too much, you should bring up the carpentry. And one of the great things about these seminars is we have a little bit of time here and we can spend some time on the carpentry.

[74:24]

So if I'm talking too much though about the carpentry, you should remind me about why people live in the house. Why we live in a house is quite different than the carpentry. And if I talk too much on the level of why we live in the house, you know, taking care of our family and so forth... Then you should remind me about what actually happens in the house. What actually happens is often quite different than why we are living there or think we're living there. And then this house of practice is not an ordinary house. because sometimes this house expands to cover everything and sometimes the house shrinks to a tiny dot and you're exposed in primordial mind or as we say exposed in the golden wind

[75:43]

So, does anyone want to bring something up? Yes. I've been thinking about dreaming about it, about it. I wondered about, you also mentioned the story and so on. Sometimes the story of a dream is a parallel story, and not to analyze the dream, I can understand. Maybe you should stop and let him translate for that. Gordon is, I think, capable of saying it. Oh, then say it yourself in German. John, I really can't. So I thought about it again, about the different stories that run parallel with the dream and that the dream sometimes runs parallel to life and that you shouldn't analyze it, of course.

[77:09]

I understood that too, right? How can we work with the dream? What can we learn of the dream? Sure, please. I was wondering about the creative process, about the writing process where dreaming is also a part, and there is always the tension of the technique and the writing, and there is an opening towards the conscious breathing. and just getting deeper and deeper in moments. I mean, there's the tension and then the opening of the tension into self-forgetting.

[78:13]

And for me, I was always wondering how to combine or how to find the relation with the patient, which is a separate process for me, and the writing process. It's the same, what's the relation, what can we learn from the dreaming, which appears through meditation, and this inside-out process of writing. Do you want to say that in German? and then the opening in the areas Mm-hm, okay.

[79:19]

Anyone else on this line? I have a question concerning two experiences which I felt which interrupt my... One is like, a little bit like falling asleep, it's like I lose my... My being uplifted, I start to move, like losing the bottom of my body. It's not that I feel I'm asleep, but it moves my body. So I get back and then... And the second experience which I'll interact with is having pain, like hurting the shoulder. So now... But the structure, the intention of it, I don't know to the part of the other. So in German, two experiences that bother me. One is that it just happened to me at the table, or before, but now after dinner.

[80:54]

And in the meantime, they let me fall asleep, where the body goes out of balance, where I start to move. And, so, unconsciously. Anyone else along the same line would like to say something? Yeah. When I came here I could say the distinction between consciousness, there is a difference in German consciousness and being conscious. Don't you speak to me. I don't know the difference between awareness and the dreaming state.

[82:06]

Okay. Maybe that's enough. Is there anybody else? Maybe not. I'm not here. It's nice to see you again. You and your daughter touch very much, and I think they are happy they got a good script. I hope. Yes. How can meditation help to get along with that script? Yes, that's the main point. Do you want to say that in German? Yes, I was very touched by the story of Weka Roshi and her daughters. I think these children have a good script. The characters help with a bad script that the parents have written. Yes. Is it okay to dream while you meditate, to let your mind just wander, or should you try to have a practice, like practice and be concentrated?

[83:18]

Dream when you're feeling blue. It's the thing to do. Your guitar is something. Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. More? I find it impossible to sit while I'm in pain, and I move into my head and get tense and can't sit. Okay. It ought to be that situation which really should help, but I can't help it. Yeah. Well... Okay, now I'd like to try to touch on what everyone said, and if I don't, please remind me.

[84:32]

Now, we can talk about these things with each other from the point of view of ordinary mind. But because we all share an interest in meditation and some experience, We can also talk about it from the point of view of meditation. Both from the practical point of view of our current experience in meditation and also from the point of view of an ideal practitioner who's very adept. Because, as you've seen, and even more than you realize, the ideal practice is embedded in many tastes in the most beginning practice.

[85:50]

And practice, you could say practice, is to weave these little tastes into your life more and more. So don't worry so much if you're practicing all the time, though that's good, but more like the sense of weaving practice into your life. Okay, so from the point of view of meditation, I should say something kind of general about meditation. And I'll point out what I mentioned in the recent session where some of you were. In fact, I'd like to ask you, I won't, don't get nervous, but I'd like to ask those of you in the session to tell me those things now and for everyone. Because I'd like you to share the teaching with me, but at this point I won't ask you to do it.

[87:08]

But there's three things you're trying to do when you're practicing. When you're practicing Zen. And these three things are extremely important. Because they're the means by which the Chinese Zen teachers brought all of Buddhism into the sitting posture. And when we sit for our 30, 35 minutes, if you're practicing Zen, you're trying to do these three things. And it's again quite obvious, but it's worthwhile noticing. And the first is, you're trying to develop a yogic posture.

[88:19]

Not all Buddhism does. Much of Tibetan Buddhism sits for just a few minutes, really, often, and they work on visualization and other methods. And some Buddhism which emphasizes compassion and morality and behavior more don't sit with the yogic posture. They sit with a more relaxed posture emphasizing calmness but not yogic experience. Okay, so the yogic experience really emphasizes the upright back. And if possible, folding your legs together. And so forth. And when I fine-tune your posture a little bit,

[89:19]

feeling your body. This is I'm reaching, trying to reach into your body and help you find the yogic posture. And I'm trying to look inside the mirror of your body. Whispering to you. And the second is you're attempting to develop a uncorrected, unfabricated state of mind. Or beginner's mind. And this is no simple task. And the simple instruction for it is, don't invite your thoughts to tea.

[90:48]

But the advice doesn't say, shove them out the door. They're in the house, but let them wander around. Don't say, hey, let's have some tea. Slightly impolite to your guest, but you know, it's all right. Okay, so the second is you're trying to let happen with a certain gentle intention an unfabricated mind. Das zweite ist also, dass ihr geschehen lasst mit einer sanften Absicht einen unhergestellten Geisteszustand. Das dritte ist, ihr lernt still zu sitzen, ohne euch zu bewegen. Bewegungslos. And there are many things that arise from moving toward being unmoving.

[92:02]

Good. So those three things are really what you're trying to do when you do zazen. Now, to respond to these questions about writing and dreaming mind and so forth, Of course, there's a whole institution developed with various schools of psychotherapy in which dream interpretation is central. And this is unquestionably useful to people. And it's familiar to all of you, I assume. So I don't have to talk about that. So what is your name?

[93:37]

Yeah, Gordon? Hi, Gordon. Could you say your, just so I stay on target, though I remember, could you say your question again or your statement?

[93:49]

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