There's a line in the Koran 21 of the Shoyuruku. Borrowing temporarily, he comprehends the gateway. giving birth on the spot. It's almost the last line of the koan. And it's also dying on the spot. And it's a kind of capsulation of the whole koan. And I would like to explicate it, which means to unfold.

[01:04]

You know, surfers sometimes describe what they do. Surfers? Yeah, surfers. They also read poems. Surfers sometimes describe what they do as inserting themselves into the folds of nature. Yeah, and maybe we're doing a slow motion inserting ourselves into the folds of nature. But in any case, I would like to...

[02:07]

use these three days to partly at least to explicate this statement. It's quite wonderful. I mean, it's wonderful if you like problems like I do. Borrowing temporarily. We all borrow him temporarily. He comprehends the gateway. Giving birth on the spot. Okay. There's quite a few new people here, more than usual. And I have no idea what this sounds like to a new person.

[03:17]

I have lost perspective entirely. It all seems ABC to me. And it doesn't seem, I'll bet, say to me, but it does seem A, B, C. Okay. And, please. And so I'd like some help if, I mean, once everything, as I said, it's a problem, it shouldn't be understandable. It shouldn't be understandable. But it should make you think. And that thinking, as I say, incubates and gestates. So I'd like to hear from anything you guys... guys, and I include women and guys, have to say.

[04:35]

Who will be second? I would like to ask something about mutual mind. Is there a structure or are there instructions how to study the mutual mind? Sometimes when I sit in the center I can feel wider than my own mind. And then I also have a feeling like a light from the lighthouse or from a torch.

[05:43]

how I can investigate it or study it with attention. But I would like to hear What do you might say to help me along? Well, it sounds pretty good, what you just said. In fact, I'd like to sit in your mind tomorrow morning, if you have room. But I don't know if I can manage red hair. Yeah. If you see me after doing service with red hair, then now I've succeeded. Well, most of us already have a mutual mind. And it's called culture. And if you think thoughts that you don't have permission to think, you think you're crazy.

[07:12]

And one of the challenges of meditation practice is to trust the practice enough that when you have experiences you're not sure anyone else has ever had. The second best alternative is you're going crazy. And the first best alternative is, hey, this may be just enlightenment or practice or Buddhism or something. So I think when I'm speaking about mutual mind, I'm trying to speak about something that is a fact.

[08:13]

But I think when we go to work in an office, we have a somewhat different mind than we do at home. And it may be actually significantly different. The body may be different, too. So if we talk about a mutual mind from the Zen point of view, we're talking about a negotiation of our experience through Zazen. or a negotiation of our experience through insights, or a negotiation of our experience through new unexpected spontaneous experiences, negotiating in such a way

[09:30]

With our usual mind, that's established primarily by culture. Yeah, if you're on a bus and somebody is acting funny, maybe they're not acting funny, they're just not in the cultural mind. Someone reminded me recently of a guy who used to walk up and down street on Page Street in San Francisco. Talking either to his hand or the brim of his hat, I could never knew which he was talking to. He'd walk along like this all the time, speaking in Italian. with a kind of Borsalino hat.

[10:54]

Do you remember this guy? Maybe not. He used to walk up and down the street talking away. looked like he did not share the usual cultural mind. One day I was opening our garage door, which we had one of these little remotes to squirt. Yeah, and he... saw me do that, he said, how did you do that? And I said, well, I pushed this little button and I said, do you want to try it? So he took it and the door opened. And he gave it back to me and he said, you mean you can open any door? He didn't share our cultural mind.

[12:13]

We are just not aware, because we experience the cultural mind as ours, how much it is actually a cultural mind. And Zen practice is to step out of that. And sometimes you step back into the cultural mind with much more awareness. I'll try to be briefer if anybody else says something. Yeah. You said that one can experience mind. Well, I asked the question if one could.

[13:19]

And I asked myself whether the mind needs an object so I'm able to feel or to experience the mind. Or is it possible without an object? That's a good question. So I think we can ask the question, is mind experienceable without an object of mind? And it is the case that it's difficult to experience mind directly when the object of mind are the familiar objects of mind. It's difficult to experience mind directly if the objects of mind that are being experienced are familiar.

[14:26]

So then we can ask, if we uncover new categories of the present, for example, does it call forth a new mind? And I will maintain that it does. Then we have to talk about the categories in which we experience things, through which we experience things. And then we're back at the inventory of the ingredients. As you know, inventory means it's related to invent, to discover.

[15:29]

and the inventive, which comes from Latin, is the root of inventive, [...] My observations or my attempts are to simply follow suit. Ich bin schon ein bisschen geübt, die verschiedenen Sinneseindrücke und Sinnesfelder zu betrachten. I'm already a little trained in observing such objects and such fields. Drained? Trained. I'm drained sometimes too. Ich spiele gerne and I like to play around with concentrating just on one sense field or one sense and then the other.

[16:44]

So I tried to play around a little further, so I had these five senses plus the sixth, the mind, and then when I take away the five, What's left is the sixth one, the mind. And I have a little friend and ex-student who helps me with that. A little friend? How big is he? He's 16 but he's very small. He has something wrong with his heart and scoliosis. And he likes to do things with me.

[18:09]

For example, 3D films in the movie theater. Or to go to a restaurant. whose name is Blind Cow. Okay, so it's totally utterly dark in the restaurant. I've heard about it. And blind people work there. And it's just great to talk to this guy how what changes there are in what we feel and hear and experience. So I am very grateful that I have this friend with whom I can share these experiences and also talk about our experiences. and in Zazen I like to continue exploring this.

[19:32]

And before when I thought I observed mind it was always a thinking mind, and in that it felt like it was in the head, And these days it's quite different, very often. And when I experience moments where I think, now I've got it out, I've got the sensual impressions, perhaps as dissolved, And when I have moments where it seems that the sense impressions are like dissolved, then there is space, it feels very wide, but nothing.

[20:42]

And I don't understand. In a good sense you don't understand? No. And there's no necessity to understand that. That's different. Yeah, you brought up a lot of things there. And most of them I'll just let... flow into the surf of our mutual mind. But you have brought up the sense that an object is six objects. One of the admonitions in Zen practice is to know the six objects.

[21:52]

And that means to know something from the point of view of each sense. And that means you practice sometimes very specifically with separating the six senses. And the easiest way I've discovered to introduce that into one's life because in general we experience things through a convergence of the senses. And then that convergence of the senses is very controlled by language and culture. And if you see things through the convergence of the senses you usually see generalizations about the world.

[23:25]

And if you're seeing the world through generalizations you're not experiencing it. So one of the ways to peel back the surface of the world is to, in a sense, diverge the senses. So, as I said, what I found the most accessible way to begin this practice is do it when you take a walk. And take the walk a portion of the walk or the same path, like you were a blind cow.

[24:35]

Sort of, as much as possible, barely look. I mean, I don't want you to fall into a lake or anything like that, but... And try just hearing the path. And surprisingly you can start to hear whether the trees are near or far and so forth like that. Or to start trying to smell the path. I remember I could smell where the leaves had been stepped on and it wasn't the same as where it was just grassy. So you can take a walk and you can take six walks. And really, once you've had some experience of separating the senses into six objects, once you've had the experience,

[25:50]

Once you've separated them a few times, like in a walk, that separation tends to remain. I read the other day that muscles tend to remember when they were strong. So if you become mushed like me, my muscles remember when I used to do 25 push-ups. Supposedly, if I put my mind to it, I could get back to 15 anyway. Yeah, I'd have to lose some weight, I think, too. Anyway, these are other problems.

[27:12]

Okay, but... My point is, once you open something like this up, your system tends to remember it, and it begins to happen in other circumstances. Now, I'm mentioning something like the practice on a block of the six objects. and opening up the idea of practicing with separating the senses, which may make us notice that we primarily

[28:16]

We organize the senses primarily through language and vision. And it's important to see that habit. Okay, I'm mentioning these things partly because there's quite a few new people here. and to enter into the fabric of what I'm speaking about, there's lots of practices under the various aspects I'm speaking about. So if you do something like practice on taking a walk around our Preet Garden here, With a sense of primarily hearing or primarily smelling or feeling with your feet.

[29:42]

It will open up. It allows you to experientially enter into practice which opens up a lot of things. This allows you to enter into the practice from the experience and you can then make a lot of new experiences. If I understand you correctly, then for you culture or does culture arise through common practice, a big group? When I understand you correctly, you mean my culture, the kind of living practice or life practice of a big group of people. And culture helps to experience certain experiences but it also kind of shuts the doors to other experiences. For sure. Is Zen a culture and what does it give you entrance to and what does it shut the door to?

[31:09]

Are you a troublemaker? Ideally, Zen is a culture which intends to undo culture. But it definitely conceives of itself that way. I mean, all of Zen presumes a freedom from culture. Of course, it still remains a culture. And for instance, I would say in Tibetan Buddhism is also a way to free yourself from culture. But how it goes about it is a little different than how Zen goes about it.

[32:10]

And then you have Vedanta and various things. So there are various cultures which intention is to undo culture. And then there's like, I don't know if this is true, but they say, I've heard it so often, it's probably not true. But usually in Native American Indian baskets. I guess it's U.S.A. You don't say Native USA-ers. Anyway.

[33:18]

They weave the, in the weave, they leave a place where it doesn't connect to let what's not included in the culture in. So it is the case that some cultures assume that their culture is only one basket. Yes, and Japan, the secular culture assumes this, separate from the Buddhist culture. For instance, at the core of many ceremonies is to gather grass And then to use the grass to tie the grass.

[34:31]

So that's like borrowing temporarily and then you use the grass to bind the grass. And then you burn it. And that basically the concept is we are putting things together and then it's only temporary and the ceremony is then you burn it to show that it's temporary. So one of the teachings of the six objects There's also seven or eight or ten or fifteen. Like right now there's, I don't know, probably the Bourne conspiracy is playing right there somewhere.

[35:37]

And there's Jason Bourne being chased by a car. In other words, right here in this room, there's cell phones and movies and all kinds of things if you have the right receptors. So that the six objects are six pieces of the pie, but the pie is much bigger. What these insects do, or the sunflower, while we're in the sun, is not something we can do. Some of us try to do it by going to Italy and not very flirtatious. Or coming to Gnasov on a rainy day. Okay, someone else.

[36:43]

You're doing pretty well so far. What do you mean with the word mind? I can't really do anything. Yeah, that's the point. That's what we're trying to figure out here. We use the word all the time. But do we really know what it means? whether we use the geist or we use mind or we use consciousness. If we look at anything carefully, do we actually know what it is? That's my point. So thanks for pointing it out.

[37:44]

And let's see, this is one of the ingredients of our life, let's see if we can look at, find out what the actual ingredients are. Okay, someone else. So then I have to just start calling on the old adepts. But there's a new adept in the back. What's your name? Volker. Hi, Volker. Is the mind afraid? Can the mind be afraid?

[38:58]

For sure. Well, I mean aspects of the mind. Fear certainly occurs within the mind. And when you call the mind a... When you call the mind a geist, I'd be scared too. You need to have geist busters. Maybe that's what Zen is. It's a Geistbuster. How do you translate Geistbuster? Geistvertreiber. Yeah, the mind, I mean what we call the mind, we mean lots of things when we say mind. And I can say in English, you know, I don't mind what you say about mind. But I'll mind what you say about mind even though I don't mind.

[40:00]

So what does it mean? It depends on the context. And certainly if you're... We could say that when the mind encounters something unfamiliar, it becomes afraid. And then, of course, that brings up the problem or the question. How is the mind primarily defined through the familiar, or does it also include the not yet noticed? Now someone said to me this morning, that was a lot of questions even for new people.

[41:19]

But if any of them stick with you, It makes you look more carefully at the ingredients of your existence. Then we've accomplished a lot. Paul? I feel a very pleasant floating feeling. I slept many times. I haven't been sleeping because of the jet lag.

[42:21]

I slept maybe two and a half hours last night. I tried to sleep, but it was very difficult. And I'm finding in being here this morning and listening to the things that you're offering us to consider not so much what it is that you're offering as how I'm making an effort to put it together Now I'm making an effort to notice my mind, not just determining what mind is. And because I'm feeling this floating quality, the activities I'm engaged in have more relevance for me than the actual content.

[43:53]

So the The content is not so important, but the activity is important, which means you're sleepy. If I sleep two hours tonight, I wonder if I'll float tomorrow. I am reminded of what we talked about last winter. Is it possible to observe what is self-thinking? That always comes to my mind when we try to observe the mind.

[45:05]

Do I have to step outside of myself to observe my mind? Usually a person who is out of their mind cannot observe their mind. Well, I think that the, as you're implicitly pointing out, the whole point of zazen is it's a very effective way to observe the mind thinking. because you're separating acting on your thinking during our daily activity our thinking is quite integrated with what we're doing or might do or something

[46:08]

The point of having a specific time which doesn't end Forty minutes in the first period, thirty minutes in the second period, here, now, today. Is it you just, you stay the forty minutes or the thirty minutes, no matter what you're thinking? And doing that repeatedly over years, over months, begins to separate mind and thoughts and activity. plus the very simple instruction, don't invite your thoughts to tea, is you're noticing when you think more and you're noticing when you think less.

[47:36]

You can observe that in ordinary circumstances. I can observe it right now. But it's much easier to observe in zazen. And you can notice when you identify with the thinking and when you don't identify with it. Another basic instruction for zazen is let your thoughts come and go. Then you have the interesting problem. What is letting thoughts come and go? Is it a who that lets thoughts come and go? Is the self letting things come and go? Who did that? So you begin to notice through such simple instructions, letting thoughts come and go, done by thoughts, etc., you begin to notice an effect, structure of mind.

[49:10]

That the mind which is thinking can also let the mind which is thinking come and go. And after a while, if you get used to that, there's a very interesting and satisfying space that begins to happen, which is not the thinking, not the identifying of the thinking and as you can notice now when you're thinking more and when you're thinking less and you can notice when self is strongly present in your thinking less strongly present in your thinking and as soon as you really notice that

[50:36]

You notice that there's not a consistent entity called the self. As soon as you can see the self is more present in some thinking, and that makes you feel a certain way, And less present than other thinking. And you can notice within thinking in which self was not present, suddenly self got involved and then it changes the whole tone of the thinking. and one can notice that suddenly more self appears in the thinking and how the whole feeling changes? You, you, you, you, you.

[51:45]

It's a song. You could notice the big you or I don't know what kind of you this is. can locate yourself in one you or a different you. We don't have the language for it. In other words, the subtleties I'm speaking about, as we say, it's the everyday bread and butter or everyday nourishment of a monk. A monk means in this case an adept practitioner. It's the everyday food and drink of a practitioner.

[52:48]

At least in English there's no words for the ingredients. So I have to start making up words. What you can find after a while with this repeated practice of Zazen which always isn't wonderfully interesting something happens as the inventory gets more and more you can find a space to feel located in which can become thinking or can become self but is somehow imminent and yet transcendent of self and so forth

[53:56]

That's such a big statement, isn't it? It's a good time to stop. Oh dear, so nice to be here with you. And you make me say things I've never said before. Shame on you. Thank you very much.

[54:40]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_55.07