Over the years of 55 years now or so I've been practicing much of that time teaching. It's become an unavoidable part of my practice and teaching. To cope with and make use of the world view difference. And sometimes I get a little worried you're all going to get bored with hearing about it. But I'm after all these years still in the process of assimilating it and seeing its enlightening possibilities and also its effects.

[01:02]

And one of the most difficult words for me to cope with in trying to make sense of Buddhism in English and European language thinking And that word is discipline. And And Paul picked up on one of the key ways we can look at that is this word, hold in as closely held attention.

[02:24]

and that we hold the precepts, for example, more than we follow the precepts. Now, the word sila, S-I-L-A, it's spelled means virtue, precepts, purity, discipline. And one of the early formulas, and again, I think it's useful for us to practicing Buddhism, we're trying to assimilate some aspects of Buddhism into what we do.

[03:40]

To look at the early formulations when Buddhism was trying to find ways to make itself clear to people living in the world at that time. I mean, the basic. A question of Buddhism that propels, has propelled Buddhism from the beginning is a simple question, what the heck is this world we're living in? And why do you, if living in it one way causes so much suffering and there's other ways to live in it which cause quite a lot less suffering?

[04:47]

So one of the early formulations is sila, samadhi, and prajna. You can say that something like, sila is something like discipline, behavior, and samadhi is discipline. created and creative states of mind and prajna is translated as wisdom prajna is translated as wisdom

[05:57]

Which means also knowing how to avoid delusion. Okay. Now, One of the formulaic ways of describing sila, samadhi and prajna is the gate, is the non-arising of thought, is the gate of sila. The non-arising of thought is the gate of samadhi. And the non-arising of thought is the gate of Yeah, now, I think the translation would be better if it said, as you heard me imply, the non-arising of consciousness. ...

[07:34]

Okay, now if we're going to look at these things carefully enough that they make a difference in our own functioning and thinking and so forth. I read an article recently which says when you... that nowadays people use keyboards so much and kids are not teaching them cursive handwriting. And studies indicate, but I would just assume myself without the studies, The experience of making the words in cursive handwriting helps in your experience the words mentally.

[08:49]

The experience of making the word helps with your thinking. It's certainly assumed that that's the case in China and Japan with making calligraphing kanji. And they say that learning to code, as in computer coding, is also similar to affects the clarity of thought people can have. develop. Learning to code, just like handwriting, helps to think carefully about each unit.

[10:07]

I'm quite sure that must be true. In any case, it's true of in the examples I'm trying to communicate with you about is Buddhism assumes that there's closely and the koans and the sukhas are written expecting a closely held attention So in Buddhism it is about, and this is also in the literature of the Khoras, about these close-knit movements. Yes. Really, if you do look carefully at a statement like that, non-arising of consciousness is the gate of discipline.

[11:16]

Don't you think that's a strange thing? Findet ihr nicht, dass das eine seltsame Aussage ist? You doubt, I mean you. Because your consciousness never arises. It takes discipline so that that's possible. Yes, that's right. But what is the non-arising of consciousness? And also, let's say we have consciousness, we call consciousness C and we call awareness A. A for awareness.

[12:39]

So why don't we just, why don't I just say, in the mode of mind we're calling A is the gate of sila. Again, this is because, as I've been emphasizing for some years now, everything is an activity. One of the koans says, the teaching is in the difference of kinds. The difference of kinds.

[13:41]

Yeah, you may have. So it's noticing and experiencing differences. So the arising of consciousness is a description of a difference. So practice the path is to notice the arising or non-arising of consciousness. So I move these two flowers to make the translator Christian happy and to make me happy. And so they appear. And normally when they appear, consciousness appears. So it means the non-arising of consciousness means you interrupt the arising of consciousness.

[14:59]

So you make use of the habit of consciousness arising to have consciousness not arising. No. What can we say is the difference? We could say one is the distinction I make sometimes between, as I've implied it, between awareness and consciousness. Another distinction is the distinction I've studied between the fourth and fifth khandhas. Consciousness being the fifth skandha, associative mind, much in the Freudian sense, is the fourth skanda.

[16:09]

And there are different modalities of mind. And you can feel the difference in the shift between one and the other. So we could say that if you prevent or learn the bodily feeling when consciousness doesn't arise, And you can remain in the bodily, um, interceptive state. that holds the body, in effect, and the body-mind in this more inclusive mind, an inward mind than consciousness.

[17:17]

So, and we can think of consciousness as an outward... the mind that creates outwardness, And we can think of the fourth skanda, awareness, and the third skanda, and so forth, as minds which you're turning your light inward. There's an inward feeling to those minds. So there's an inclusive... for the fourth skandha, associated to mind, as an inclusive inwardness.

[18:44]

So we could say very simply, The gate of sila is knowing from inside. So we have a wider understanding of knowing than just the kind of knowing knowledge of the I-pronoun thinking. the knowing that the self knows. So this inward knowing extends beyond simply what the self is able to know. Okay.

[19:59]

All right. Did any of you remember the movie with Robert Redford, The Horse Whisperer? And there's even, you know, around Crestone there were dog whisperers for a while. In Creston there was a dog whisperer. It's a very famous one in California. One of his disciples came to Creston and was making all the bad dogs happy. Look at a lot of those people in Creston. Me, I'm one of them trying to make all the bad dogs happy. He makes all the bad dogs happy. So I'm bringing this up is that if you think a horse already exists you're going to discipline it from the outside.

[21:07]

But if you think a horse doesn't yet exist, that a horse is making itself from inside, and you can enter into that process of making it from inside, then that's the concept of discipline in Buddhism. You have to approach everything, the monk, the layperson, the meditator, as if they were creating their existence now and you have to kind of secretly engage in that creation. You have to participate in that even secretly, participate in that creation occurring from inside.

[22:31]

So basically discipline means how to shape the mind so it can hold an intention. Discipline So the first parameter, the first perfection is generosity. And it doesn't mean you're giving away stuff all the time. It means you have an intention to be present with the other person in terms of whatever they need. To whatever extent you can.

[23:44]

So again, as Paul said, it's a mental, bodily mind posture. And the practice of generosity is to be able to be present to that intention with each person. The practice of generosity is to be present with that intention with each person, with each situation or person. Präsent zu sein mit dieser Absicht und mit jeder Person. Präsent zu sein in dieser Absicht mit jeder Person. And then be able to act from that intention.

[24:44]

Und dann aus dieser Absicht heraus zu handeln. There are a lot of people begging in Vienna. Es gibt viele Bettler in Wien. And quite often I have no money, or I have 50 euro, and that's a little bit too much to give to every beggar. I'll give a euro or two or five or something, but, you know, I have a limit. But often I have only one of those fake coins you put in the grocery cart. I could give him that, but then he'd have to go to the grocery store and then he couldn't buy anything. So I try to do something else. I can't give him a grocery cart coin. So I smile at him or I bow, a little bow to him or something.

[25:46]

And you don't want to be patronizing, but... some kind of just being with them for a moment. But the second parameter perfection is discipline. And that simply means you have the capability to hold an intention in every situation. It means you've learned to shape your consciousness so it can hold an intention

[26:48]

through your own inner processes and desires. Yes. So, I mean, I can't say much more than that, but when you do think about, and it took me a long time to recognize that discipline is about something you do to yourself that's not done from outside you. And it's something you do in order to give order to the mind. And I'm watching the difference in Sophia.

[28:19]

As I've said before, she seems to have some musical talent. And for a while, quite a few people have been putting pressure on her from outside to practice the piano. And it's been dramatically ineffective. I mean, with as much force as... can be put on her. Maybe in a week you'll get five minutes of practice. I mean, five minutes would be a lot to accomplish, you know. Whips and guns and pistols. Yeah. And she's gotten away with it because she's talented enough to impress her teachers once a week.

[29:44]

But very recently, I mean within the last year, she suddenly began to discover that the piano is shaping her interiority. It's almost like she felt the piano, playing the piano, was caressing her inside. And you can just, when she plays now, it just fools her around. She practices a lot now, but she wouldn't call it practicing. She'd call it something like, if she was me, something like letting her emotions flow through her fingers into the piano.

[30:48]

And she likes complex pieces of music. If it really isn't quite complex, she doesn't feel the composer flowing back into her. So her own emotional development is being developed through Mozart and Bach and so forth like that. It's really interesting to see it happen. But I feel like working with koans is like that.

[31:50]

Koans are set up, they're kind of like musical interludes that connect you with somebody in the past and their intelligence flows through it into you. Okay, so the non-arising or knowing from inside is sila or precepts or behavior? It's only knowing from inside, the non-arising of consciousness, the knowing from inside that can lead you to the concentrated ecstatic states of mind called samadhi. And it's only knowing from inside that gives you the ability to really distinguish between the misleading temptations of

[32:55]

Distinguishing between that and the path leading experiences of wisdom. The wisdom or the insights that lead you into the path. practice. Okay, so as you mentioned at the break what is this inner attentional space and outer attentional space?

[34:15]

And I would like to, I think I should speak about that. But now I think we should have some kind of discussion, conversation. And excuse me for since last evening talking so much. I didn't really want to or mean to. But I'm trying to get us on the same page so we can talk about the same thing we talked about last year. Okay, so does anybody have anything you could say?

[35:35]

Yes, Hanna. Yes, because about practicing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm maybe a specialist because I studied music and to practice an instrument is very familiar to me. First there was this excitement about practicing Buddhism and the discipline as something that's from what? An instrument, music.

[36:41]

There's this excitement about practicing an instrument and then what? When you start to study it and you choose it as a profession, there goes something in your mind and you say, I should practice this. So then something enters into the mind of this idea, I should practice. Yeah. Yeah. When you run around. With this mind and this obligation. And then it doesn't feel like doing it from the inside out. And I know this process in many students and sometimes I don't know how can you help them.

[37:49]

How to hold discipline in a way where it's from the inside out. And maybe it's the same or at least similar with the practice of loving. Yeah, if you don't start getting a certain amount, I mean, some texts play real clearly. As long as Dazan isn't a greater pleasure than anything else, you're not going to do it for very long. And sometimes the pleasure of sarsen is not so obvious. But if you see it in the context of your whole life and how it affects your life, then usually it's pretty clear.

[39:19]

If you're one who continues. And it's clear, I don't know why Sophia is like she is, but she clearly will not practice because she's supposed to. She simply won't do it. But somehow, when this shift occurred and she... found herself practicing, I don't know, let's keep it simple, from inside, she'd just start practicing hours a day. Of course, that's different than being a professional musician. You have to do this and that. But from the point of view of just enjoying her life through music, this is what she's doing.

[40:22]

That's quite different from being a professional musician, where you have obligations. But for her, it's simply that she enjoys her life through music, that she enjoys her life through music. Someone else? Yes? At the beginning, I used the example of the direction of heaven and God. In the beginning today I mentioned the example of the cardinal directions coming towards us. And then I asked myself, well, what does that really mean? What kind of experience is that? And my feeling is, when the cardinal directions come toward us, we are receiving something, we are receiving the directions. This is also something that you brought into the last seminar and that supported us. You brought that up in the last seminar and I think that supported us.

[41:58]

When you talked about different ways of looking at mindfulness. The receiving is like the other side of inside out. to me it's like a simultaneity or it's simultaneous with or it's the same sort or something like that yeah Okay, someone else? Yes? Sweet medicine.

[42:59]

I'm remembering the view of sweet medicine. It's a Native American concept. They say that the processes from the inside to the outside are in the west and the processes from the outside to the inside are in the east. And the west processes are from the inside to the outside and the east from the outside to the inside. That's called the nagual axis. You make a distinction, but they're also together. Intuition in the West and inspiration in the East.

[44:02]

Of course it is corrupted, because in the East, when it is corrupted, it is the patriarchal principle from the outside. And it's corrupted. When it's corrupted, it's the patriarchal principle from, say again? From outside to inside. It's a patriarchal idea in Native American view. Is that a patriarchal? They'd call it patriarchal or something like that. In the Native American view, is that a concept of... In the Indian culture, is there a concept of patriarchalism? There is the concept that in the east there is the masculine. The east in the directions, not in terms of eastern culture and western culture.

[45:06]

So in the East is where the masculine is. In the West there is the feminine. And the feminine is associated with intuition and the masculine is associated with inspiration. And the way it should be is that both concepts should be available to us as a shift in perspective. Okay, yeah. Well, let's make that happen. One similarity is the sense of things coming towards you.

[46:25]

One of the, what is it that Dogen says, when the ten thousand things come towards you and authenticate your life, this is enlightenment. One of the experiences of the lessening or freedom from the subject-object distinction It's simply you feel things are coming toward you. The more you have a strong subject-object distinction, you feel things are sort of being pushed away. There's a directionality to it. Wenn du eine starke Subjekt-Objekt-Unterscheidung machst, dann ist es eher das Gefühl, dass die Dinge weggeschoben werden von dir.

[47:42]

Das ist ein Unterschied in der Richtung. And I think we notice it most like falling in love, you feel this person is coming toward you. Sometimes too fast, too much. But that can be a general feeling in the world. coming towards you, being part of you. What comes to mind is the observation of breath. I'm recently fascinated by the fact that by breathing in I am connecting with the world and of course vice versa when I'm breathing out I'm giving something into the world

[48:47]

This constant mixing of the interior with the exterior, that occurs often. So now I'm asking myself to what degree does it make sense to even separate the two or is it about mixing them or let's say having them in an exchange? Yeah. Yeah. I feel that's the basis of life. Anyway, the way you look at it, it's worth exploring it and just the way it occurs to you to explore it.

[50:16]

And I want to state again that the body is what you notice. Okay. Now, if you go to a doctor and he tells you, well, I see you have a tumor or something like that, and you haven't noticed it, well, yes, but the doctor's noticed it, but then you, that's another concept of the body. Okay. Or a masseuse, a massage therapist or something might have another concept of your body. But the people I know who do this kind of massage and work.

[51:24]

I don't know what the word is. Massage seems to be not a positive word anymore in English. They don't relate to the body they're working on. As a body, they relate to it the way their body kind of talks to them about the other person's body. And nonetheless, we do have a concept of a body. But it's useful to emphasize in the path of practice that the body is the noticeable body. And the body that notices itself.

[52:35]

So strictly speaking, you wouldn't say the mindfulness of the body, you'd say the bodyfulness of the body. And I'm trying to make a distinction here that I made in the last seminar, that it's like you're not mindful of your leg stepping Your leg is showing you what stepping is. If you can get the feel of that, you're much closer to being on the path, we'd say.

[53:46]

So when you do zazen, you use your consciousness to get yourself to the cushion. But soon as you've gotten yourself there, you stop doing zazen. And you was only involved in the sense that you let the body show you zazen. So the body shows you what zazen is. So you have to have a new kind of way of noticing an attentional awareness that allows the body to show you meditation. As long as you are doing zazen, zazen will get pretty boring.

[55:04]

Because you will only notice what you, mostly consciousness, can notice. So the excitement in zazen is when you start to sit you're going into uncharted territory. So then zazen becomes a way to increase your participation in the noticeable body. You know, I'm a kind of numb person.

[56:32]

I can drink at least correctly when I'm younger. If I wanted to, four or five cups of coffee and go right to sleep. Nothing bothers me much. But I can say to the dentist, that x-ray didn't work. The x-ray in my teeth... and I can feel that it didn't penetrate my teeth. And they say, well, you can't feel an x-ray in your tooth. And I'll say, well, go look at the image. I said, then look at the picture. And then they left and looked. Yes, the picture was nothing.

[57:35]

The same experience when I had radiation therapy treatment for prostate cancer. They were convinced you couldn't feel this X-ray. I'd say, that one didn't work, and they'd go, look, and it didn't work. So if a numb klutz like me can, by suspending the usual way you notice things, notice things like that, then this is the effect of meditation. I know lots of you are way more sensitive to me and all kinds of things. but they can't suspend the usual way of noticing.

[58:59]

Their way of noticing is more sensitive than mine, but they can't suspend that, which I've seen that happen to be a little bit. I know a lot of people who are much more sensitive than I am, but they can't let go of the usual way of perceiving or noticing. But it seems... And I'm using myself as an example just because this is not just from sutras, this is our practice. Your example, my example. And this a kind of discipline to limit, to discover the body that you can know. And the process of noticing educates the body and educates the noticing.

[59:59]

And as Angela pointed out, it always starts, usually traditionally, with breathing. So a lot follows from being able to, a huge amount follows from being able to be present with your breath all the time. But for the yogi, it's only the first step in developing more and more subtlety in how you notice the body.

[61:05]

Yes. It's an interesting point for me. Consciousness takes you to the cushion and then you allow for the body to show you what doesn't. And I think for persons who mostly practice in their daily life, this is a difficult point. So I've noticed there's a shift that should be available to us.

[62:17]

Because the body that we usually have does not show us what Zazen is. And when we sit down with that body, it's not showing us what it is. So I'm looking for a transition. And I have the feeling that it is as if one would It's as if you turn the body inside out, that's the energizer. Yes. Sitting in my office I feel I more have a body that's shaped from the outside.

[63:26]

And of course it's myself who's doing the shaping. So there is a territory there where we need an invisible change, transformation. The experienceable body does not fit the contours of the physical body. Okay, I think it's time to have lunch or something like that. And so I will speak about, or as you wish me to do, I will, as you know, about this inner attentional space and outer attentional space and why the distinction is useful.

[64:51]

Anybody who sits regularly actually is experiencing this distinction, but many people don't notice they're experiencing this distinction. And not noticing it means you miss many of the potentialities that arise through noticing it. And again, let me say, it just takes a long time for these distinctions, which sound pretty much the same in our language, because our language makes everything sound the same. It's taken me a lot longer to find language for the distinctions than to experience the distinctions.

[66:10]

But when I do find language distinctions, it then helps my practice. Because concepts are, whether you like it or not, an attentional attentional part of practice. I can barely do this in English. I don't know how you then do it in Deutsch too. So I still want to speak about the youthfulness of these six distinctions of time.

[67:33]

It's grown to six. No, you have to talk about the in-between, like there's five fingers and six spaces. The six what aspects or what were they? The distinctions of time. Okay, right.

[67:53]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_74.8