So you have some experience of the fourth skanda. And they just take some flowers in the morning, you know, at breakfast or something. Yeah. don't have flowers for breakfast. And then try to remove any associations and just see if you can just have perceptions about the flowers. And spend some time actually letting your mind roam in the flowers. Taking on the shape, your mind takes on the shape of the flowers. You'll find that you begin to feel different in your body than if you're having an associative mind.

[01:17]

Also ihr beginnt euch anders in eurem Körper zu fühlen, als wenn ihr einen assoziativen Mind habt. So already you've gotten, you know three of the skandhas. Also da schon kennt ihr drei skandhas. So like that you find some example within your own experience. Also ihr findet ein Beispiel aus eurer eigenen Erfahrung. And you just start noticing it. Und ihr fangt einfach an es zu bemerken. So that's one way to approach it. Another way is to just take the five skandhas, like we chant them in the morning, form, feeling, perception, impulse, consciousness. And you hold them in front of you, hold them within you, like a mantra. It may not be so interesting.

[02:21]

But this is part of Buddhism, and you say, oh, well, maybe I can understand it. I've got nothing better to do with my background mind today. So my foreground mind, I'll keep busy. My background mind, I'll keep on the five skandhas. And the way such an effort works is you begin to notice suddenly things, oh yeah, now I feel the presence of a skandha, or now I see what that means. And that technique is basic to Zen practice. To hold something and let the world speak to you through it. Again, it's like you wake up with a dream Instead of analyzing it, you hold the feeling of a dream or the image from a dream undiscriminatingly just hold it and let the world speak through the lens of that.

[03:44]

You'll find after a while you get sort of familiar with how to do this. You'll find almost everything during the day actually has something to do with that dream. And the atmosphere, the richness of the image begins to blossom with the experience of the day coming through it without analysis. Okay, so coming back to what you said. So you're sitting down in zazen. And you have the feeling, as I've said, the major posture of zazen is uncorrected mind. But again, this is, what can I say?

[04:52]

This isn't, I don't know what, how to put, this isn't, this has to be realistically applied. When you sit down, you're correcting your posture. You don't have uncorrected posture. And if you try to sit this way, it would be kind of hard after a while. God, that hurts. So you're correcting your posture. You notice that you're in the fourth skanda. That's all.

[05:53]

That's just normal. When we leave this room, you'll all make a choice. If you want to practice uncorrected mind and keep walking into the wall, you can. But I think probably 100% of you will go out that door and you might choose the window. You won't even realize you've made a choice. If you really didn't make a choice, you'd keep bumping into the wall. I'm practicing uncorrected mind. I mean, this can get ridiculous. So there's normal things we do.

[06:56]

You know, we sit down, we try to sit straight and so forth. We try to take care of some simple basics. Yeah, that there's air in the room and so forth like that. Then you settle into uncorrected mind. But that doesn't mean you sometimes don't think about things. Or correct your own thinking. But you go back to uncorrected mind. So you can practice uncorrected mind in each of the skandhas. And after a while you cannot worry about which skanda you're in because you let something take care of you. Okay. Something else? Yeah. I have a personal question.

[08:11]

I'm trying just to do it in my own words now. If I leap out my head and I get a feeling out of my guts and it feels like love, but not love which blinds you, but a knowing love. Is that like that?

[09:16]

Sounds more like a statement. How is that? You mean, I hear what you say, but I don't see how it's a question. I have now tried He's describing his own way. I observe my breath and I hear myself and get into a transcendental space. And it does express in this love, which doesn't blind me. And it re-confirms that I know. Yeah, that's right. If I were to say something about it, if you get rid of obstructions, being alive is caring.

[10:50]

You're not interested in anything unless you care. As I say, all emotions, even anger, you're not even angry unless you care. So the more you take self out of your knowing, and so forth, the more your experience is one of simply caring, of loving. And that's why that experience is why compassion and wisdom are the same, the inside and outside of the same event.

[12:01]

And from this experience, compassion and wisdom are the same, two different aspects of the same. OK. Something else? Yes. You mentioned the naming mind yesterday or today. You mentioned the naming mind. That naming doesn't mean thinking. And in contrast, that naming can diminish thinking. Does working through the skandha have anything to do with naming? Well, you could use naming to work with the skandhas, yes.

[13:09]

Okay, is that enough? That's the question, yes. Yes, you could work with naming. Yeah, fourth skandha, you know, associative thinking. If associative thinking comes up, you can say, associative thinking. Perception, just perception. And naming is an easy thing to practice. It somehow disposes of things. It's like you can you go for a walk you look at a tree and a whole bunch of stuff you just say tree and then you look at oh it's street nothing else is street and you keep doing that

[14:12]

It's funny, you enter into another state of mind. And as I said the other day too, you can also play with naming a tree and then peeling the label off. Name and unname, or take the name away. And these little games, it's a kind of game you can play. Really show you how the mind works. So you can use the mind to change the mind. Okay, so it happens to be five to six. Yeah, please. I would like to speak about a personal experience. Please. Before I came to the Johanneshof, I had a dream about a baby.

[15:25]

Before I came to the Johanneshof, I had a dream about a baby. Recently? The other day. Not here. Yes, I understand. Before I came to the Johanneshof, I had a dream about a baby. And since I'm too old to have a baby... And envious about the man who can get babies at 40 and 50. Yeah. 65 next month. I'm going to retire next month, by the way.

[16:27]

I haven't told you. He'll be 65 next month. And then he'll retire. So my dream continued in a completely different way, because I couldn't have a child. But I had a child. So a friend of mine had the baby, was pregnant in the dream. And I asked myself, well, what's about that with that dream? And now that I'm sitting here, I have one possible explanation. That I can feel a little pregnant here.

[17:36]

Because such a kind of baby, that is perhaps a picture of something that wants to grow in me. It might be an image for something which wants to grow in me. And although I haven't understood much about the skandhas, but I feel it's a treasure that I can take with me. And that you gave me the confidence that something will mature in me. I want to thank you. I wrote something for the tree planters because of Frank's urging and others.

[18:54]

It's called The Practice of Buddha in Zen, isn't that right? And I try to speak in that. If you haven't read it, you might want to read it. I try to speak about Buddha as qualities and functioning rather than as a person. I mean, if you functioned or acted like Jesus, for instance, we would not say in Christian culture that you are Jesus. Be considered. Not so good to say. Certain ages, you know.

[20:12]

But in Buddhism, if you function like a Buddha, you are Buddha. It's not tied to the person, it's tied to the activity. So if for five minutes you acted like a Buddha, you're Buddha. Now, if you... the bodhisattva functions like a lay person and a Buddha. And the experience of moving in that produces the bodhisattva. It's like the activity of unfolding and enfolding is an activity that generates Buddha nature. From continuing on what I said this morning, first of all, one way mind is understood, and we can also say consciousness,

[21:20]

And I use consciousness in various ways. You have to understand which kind of consciousness I'm using. Don't tie it to a dictionary. Okay. The mind in Buddhist culture, ancient Buddhist culture... is considered to be a radiating force. I'm not trying to be scientific here. I'm not saying it's true even. Right now I'm just trying to give you a feeling for the way they thought. And I believe the ancient Indian word for space means to shine and radiate outward.

[22:40]

Now, if you think of consciousness or mind as permeating space, Yeah, that's okay, but it's a little hard to accept that. Yeah, the moon, you know, it's too much. But if I just right now keep it, you know, tied to our actual experience. Just looking at this room. Again, I'm seeing my mind see you. The colors, the shine, the feeling of you is my own mind. Radiating in this room.

[23:48]

In a sense. If I perish right now. This particular realm I'm seeing right now will disappear. And the particular realm I'm seeing is different than you're seeing and different than you're seeing. So the particular realm I'm in the midst of radiates from my mind in a certain sense. Okay. Now Within this radiated mind, we can feel this as a kind of space, as a kind of all-at-onceness, a kind of simultaneity.

[24:51]

Eine Simultanität. I can have a feeling of mind. Ich kann ein Gefühl von mind haben. In which I don't separate you. In welchem ich euch nicht trenne. Or think about you separately rather. Oder über euch als getrennt denke. But I more or less feel you all at once. Aber ich spüre euch alle auf einmal. And that extends also to the weather, the night, the... That feeling of a kind of interpenetrating, unhindered mind, not tied to duration, open to moment-by-moment change, but feeling the all-at-onceness of each moment,

[26:12]

the generation of that mind is called the Dharmakaya Buddha. When you have that kind of mind, That activity is the activity of a Dharmakaya Buddha. And that's closely related to another phase of when you're doing zazen. When we taste this most directly. And you taste this most directly. you have the simple and common meditative experience of not knowing where your thumbs are, where your body is.

[27:32]

The boundaries of your body seem to disappear. And you feel like a field. You can pull a field in or let it go out. Und du kannst es nach innen ziehen oder es rausgehen lassen. That kind of mind, not just in meditation, but when it's present, we call the activity of Dharmakaya Buddha. Also wenn diese Art von Mind präsent ist, dann nennen wir das den Dharmakaya Buddha. Now, when you have a feeling of mind that's very, where you feel the potentiality of each moment, this creative potential of every moment, which is called the Tathagatagarbha, and somewhat related to your dream, where everything is simultaneously womb and embryo.

[28:35]

When you feel the fertility and potentiality of each moment, in yourself, and yourself is not separated from everything, that kind of feeling is called the Sambhogakaya Buddha. When you can hold that feeling and act in the world, allow a kind of free-flowing activity to occur through you without much sense of self. But often it's the feeling, this Dharmakaya feeling which gives birth to the Sambhogakaya feeling and the Sambhogakaya body or mind or feeling which gives birth to the Nirmanakaya body, where you act in the world through a feeling of all at onceness and interpenetrating fertility,

[30:09]

Especially the fertility of enlightenment is always possible. That freedom from affliction is possible. You see a person speaking to you about their suffering. You can see how it's locked into a certain posture of mind. And you can feel how that posture of being free of that is right there. sitting right beside it. But the person can't see it. But you can feel it. You can act in relationship to both those postures of mind. And when you're acting in that kind of fertile activity with each person, Yeah, this is again called Nirmanakaya Buddha.

[31:35]

So these so-called three bodies of Buddha are ways of being within oneself and in the world and in the world, that we can feel the seed of in ourselves. And although we can't probably activate that fully, We can feel that seed wanting to come into being. And we can be patient as long as there's space and sentient beings. And knowing that the more we can open ourselves to the seed of the three bodies of Buddha, You awaken the seed in others and a kind of bodhisattva-like presence or presence of these three bodies begins to function in the mind space that generated in the Sangha.

[32:50]

It can begin to function in the mind space, body space of a society. Just as greed can function. in the mind-body space of a society, so can enlightenment function in the mind-body space of a society. And we say body because It functions like a body, like among us there's the presence of different kinds of bodies in this room. And in Buddhism we don't just say mind only, but we generally say body.

[34:11]

Because it affects our bodies. It functions somehow as a body. Okay. So let's sit for a few moments. None of you are always Buddha.

[36:33]

But some of you sometimes are functioning as a Buddha. Wonderful. And Sukershi used to say, We're always showing what kind of Buddha we are. Sometimes it's not so bad.

[36:59]

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