Yeah, when I first start a seminar, I'm always a little surprised. What are we doing here? Yeah, and we ought to do something if we have these days together. Yeah, and we have a topic. The topic is sort of... something you pull out of a hat. And then you say, whoa, what are we going to do with this? So I'm told the topic is the new mind. And the six... Yesterday, Nico, Beate and Tom stopped by Freiburg on the way here and we visited.

[01:19]

Someone said, what's the topic? And I said, I think it's new mind. And Tom said something like, what isn't a new mind? Yeah, so that's true. And of course there's nothing If Zen is anything, it's a response to the question, what is mind? And real questions are problems. Problem in English means something thrown into the pot. And it's not necessarily something that can be answered. But it's something that makes us think. Yeah, so we have already then the question in this title.

[02:33]

What is mind? And I suppose what is new? If you buy a new car, it's already been shipped, it's been made somewhere, it's been driven by the dealership. When does the car become new? When can we call something? When is it useful to call something new? Yeah, then we have the word THE. What is THE? Well, it's related to the vastness of Buddhist ignorance.

[04:03]

That's the deepest, the word for the deepest experience of how things exist. It is related to the so-being in Buddhism, and it is one of the deepest experiences we have. Okay. But the also sets up otherness. What do I mean, sets up otherness? Well, I'm here and you're there. Ich bin hier und ihr seid dort. And you're other than me, I think. I don't know for sure. Und ihr seid anders als ich. Denke ich. Ich bin nicht ganz sicher. So, the establishes an object.

[05:07]

Also, der etabliert ein Objekt. The tape recorder or whatever that's called these days. An MP7 or something like that. Das Aufnahmegerät, ein MP7 oder so. Well, And if it sets up an object, it sets up a subject. So I'm calling that otherness. Yeah, so there's a very common phrase in English, And then there is an expression that has become quite normal in English in the meantime, be here now. And I think the phrase was thought up by friends of mine, actually, Dick Alpert and a couple other people.

[06:14]

Or at least they gave it coinage. I'm testing it already. Um... So you can spend it in common currency. Okay. But it always annoys me, the phrase. Because it sounds important, but it means almost nothing. It's a good idea to... as everyone says practically now, which they certainly didn't thirty or forty years ago, one should live in the present or something like that. But of course, what is the present? As soon as you ask that, we have a problem.

[07:16]

Because you know in any with a moment's thought, the present has no duration. It's already past. So what is the present? Now I'm asking these questions, these problematic questions, You know, a way of getting started. By the way, this room is nice, isn't it? So now we get it done, and various people helped us, and it works much better.

[08:20]

It's sort of like a nice place to be. Yeah, and we also have here, you know, beds and rooms and sheets and toilets. And a Zendo. And these are all ingredients of our seminar. And they allow us to be here together. And this is the prologue day. So I like to start at 10 o'clock without any zazen. Usually we start at 9.30 and have a half hour period of zazen before the seminar starts.

[09:24]

But I like it. Are we both speaking loudly enough? Clearly enough and slowly enough? And intelligibly enough? Okay. So on the prologue day I just like to start with more with our usual mind. I don't want to prepare. Have you already half zazened by the time I start speaking? Because, you know, is there a difference between the mind that we usually occupy, my habit, and the mind influenced by James Aspen? So if you study, you know, there is a problem right there.

[10:51]

If you use zazen to study mind, are you only studying the mind that zazen creates? Then we have the question, how do we study ordinary mind? If it takes us and mind to study mind, how do you use it, etc.? So I'm really trying to look at this actual situation that we're in. Also versuche ich wirklich die Situation zu betrachten, in der wir auch sind. I've been the last ten days or so working and writing in an apartment in Freiburg. Die letzten zehn Tage war ich in einer Wohnung in Freiburg.

[11:51]

For me, it's kind of like a cave with running water and lights. And I can get up when I want, do what I want. And there's an expression in Deutsch, which doesn't exist in English, storm-free. You learned that from Frank, didn't you? From somebody. And I don't know exactly what the connotations are in Deutsch. Is it negative or positive? I don't know why. And I don't know exactly what the connotations in German are, whether it's positive or negative or whatever it is. Anyway, I liked our storm this morning. The storm this morning during Sazan struck me. In any case, I brought my wife and daughter to the airport ten days ago or so.

[13:00]

And then someone said to me, now you're going to be storm-free. Is that critical of my wife? I don't know. But it means I can get up at 2 a.m. if I want to and work for four hours and then go back to bed for two or three hours. I can't do that with my family. And I can't do that here either if I want to stay awake during Zazen. So here I find myself with you in a schedule. And I actually like the schedule. I've got a lot to do with creating it. I mean, I've inherited, I didn't make up the idea of a schedule, but I inherited a tradition of creating a schedule which schedules the mind and body.

[14:23]

It's not just a schedule for our activity or our bodily activity. It's also a schedule for mental activity. And that's why the Zendo and Zazen is part of the schedule. So in a sense we could say, I'm just trying to again use common words, We're scheduling the mind and the body. Or scheduling the mind-body. Yeah, and we're scheduling it with each other. So some kind of mutual mind and body is presumed by the skeptic.

[15:38]

Because we're doing this together for three days. And it was, you know, I mean, very early Buddhism was emphasized the cave. And at some point, It was decided that a kind of decision probably occurred over a century or two, that it's more effective in the long run to practice together. Because then you're, in a sense, studying not only the individual mind, but the mutual mind.

[16:54]

In English, studying may not be quite the right word. It might be better to say in English, observing. I don't know if makes a difference in German. So we're observing the mind, our mind, We have the word mind, but what do we mean by it? Do you know the word mind because it's some sort of word that we use in relationship to consciousness, dreaming and things like that?

[17:55]

Because we dream, we Must have a mind, I guess, or whatever we call it. Dreaming occurs and consciousness occurs. And dreaming is not quite consciousness. So do we have a word that covers both? But is it just a word for us? Can you feel mind the way you can feel water when you pass your hand through it? And feel whether it's warm or... In other words, do you have an actual experience of mind, or is it just a word?

[19:02]

And if we could discover in these, you know, wouldn't it be wonderful or interesting at least, in these three days, the actual feel, tactile, tactileness of mind. Yes, then we could say, yes, I experience mind. Then the word the new mind would have some experiential actuality. So I'm noticing, of course, that I don't like the word my mind because what I'm calling my mind mostly occurs where In my location?

[20:12]

No, I don't own this location. This location is occupied. But I'm sorry to make it so confusing. Yeah, but Really, if we're going to ask what mind is, our new mind is, we have to look at the ingredients. And are the ingredients just generalizations, or are they ingredients that we actually experience? And as you know, I mean, I'm using words and I have to talk with you and you have to translate them if you want to.

[21:19]

Yeah, and so I'd want to see if the words mean anything experientially. Because again, one of the characteristics of Zen practice is you're always, you're trying to take your identity out of thinking. And you're trying to take the words you use and root them in experience. They're not just traffic directions. You go this way three blocks and then that. No, what is it like to walk on those three blocks? And if you actually walk on the three blocks, you might only go two of the blocks, and decide, this is so darned interesting, I'm not going to go the third block.

[22:39]

You know, but if you just take it as mental information, then you'd go the three blocks and you wouldn't even notice what happened. In a way that you experienced it changed your mind. And the word ingredient, so I always try to look at least at the, not only the usage, but the etymology. You mean the word ingredient? In the word ingredients. For example, with the word ingredients. Ingredients literally means in, to go into. She's a professional philologist, so I feel good having her translate.

[24:06]

That's true, isn't it? Yeah. So the gradients part is gradation or to walk around. So, literally, the word ingredients means to enter into and walk around in, explore, wander. Yeah, walk around. I remember once I went to a concert at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Which is a rather... pretty beautiful gothic cathedral in the middle of San Francisco.

[25:29]

Oh, San Francisco, sorry. New York. Yeah. And we went to a performance of a a rather famous, very famous organist. And I was there with Philip Whelan, the poet, friend, and disciple. And Philip himself is an organist. Do you know that? When we lived in Japan, we had separate houses. I had one house and Philip had another house somewhere.

[26:31]

And we would see each other quite often, of course. And I would go over to his house. We'd make some arrangement that I and my family would show up at 10 o'clock or roughly sometime. And we'd get to his house and you know in Japan you don't knock, you kind of holler. You get to the door, you say, Go men, kudasai. She also knows Japanese, so... And no answer. Sometimes when Philip couldn't get a poem started, he'd say, I'm trying to write a poem, but the muses are out to lunch.

[27:40]

Out to lunch. Out to lunch is an expression which can mean you're not there. It can also mean you're crazy. He's out to lunch. He has to hit lunch. What else? You're mad or you're crazy? Crazy, well, if you say, boy, Catherine is out to lunch. You're seldom out to lunch, even when you're cooking lunch. You don't have to translate that. Okay, thank you. It would have been hard. So, but I knew Philip must be there, right? he probably wasn't out to lunch so finally I opened the door and go into the the entryway in a Japanese house is called the genkan which means the mystery gate

[28:43]

And like most people, they forget these things. Most Japanese people forget that Genkan means mystery game. As we forget in English that the N-trance So I went in through the mystery gate wondering what was the mystery of his not being there. And there he's sitting at his small organ. With earphones on. And he was rather big and fat. He'd be laying away, you know. I couldn't hear anything. Anyway, this is just an anecdote.

[30:10]

But at this concert at the Grace Cathedral This organist was really good, and the cathedral really lent itself, as it's supposed to do, to this kind of music. And so at the intermission I said to him, boy, this guy is good. And Philip said, yeah, he was walking around. And I had the image that somehow the guy, this organist, had created, filled the cathedral with music. And the organs almost looked like Gothic cathedrals. And he filled this room with music.

[31:25]

And joined all of us in the music. And he created so... The feeling I got from Philip to what he meant was he created so much of a kind of room of music that all of us were inhabiting. That he could walk, the organist could walk around in it and walking around in it keeps shaping the space. Well, we're trying to do something actually without an organ, something like that here. If ingredients is to enter into and walk around, How can we enter into the ingredients that are the present?

[32:38]

One of the ingredients of the present is otherness. is the subject and the object. But Zen also emphasizes non-dualism, which would be something like the disappearance of subject and object. And then you'd have an experience of connectedness. But without the structure of subject and object, wouldn't it just be a big mush, like overcooked cereal?

[33:41]

How do we experience these ingredients? Anyway, we practice zazen in order to begin to notice the actual ingredients of our experience. The surface that we call the present and what's under that surface. And I probably should stop for a while, right? I mean, it must be time for a break. Ich sollte vielleicht ein bisschen aufhören. Oh, pretty soon, but, you know. Bald. I'm not too late. Nein. Okay.

[34:45]

So I think I would suggest that we do something very basic, which is center of practice. is to schedule your mind with your breath let's say that one way to relate to mind is to relate to attention Attention is kind of an expression of mind. And it's an expression of mind that we are more likely to be able to actually feel. By the way, whoever put flowers in my room upstairs, thank you very much.

[35:50]

They're all so beautiful. And right where I was sitting in the There was three sunflowers in a vase. And one was facing me. And it's a kind of, I mean, it's such a simple flower. It's the kind of flower a child would draw. You circle it. But you look carefully at it, and it's got this yellow petal, and then an orange ring, and then a green soft sort of disk in the center. And I'm looking at this very simple classic flower, and it's so complex, actually.

[36:58]

Yeah, and then I happen to know, plus I've also seen, how sunflowers follow the sun. So they're pretty complex. This darn little flower, this looks like a child's drawing, knows where the sun is. So I got up and I walked around the room to see if the sun would follow me. No, it stayed right where it was. Maybe if I'd had a bunch of flashlights and I'd walked around. Yeah. Anyway, so to schedule the mind and the breath,

[38:01]

to bring attention to the breath. And if you can do that, you know, and intend to do that, and succeed some of the time, you'll also be scheduling the breath with the body and the mind with the body, and you'll also be scheduling the mind and breath with phenomena. And if you find yourself able, with the help of the sheets and the beds and the toilets and the zender, is to bring the mind and breath into a kind of schedule with the body and with phenomena.

[39:27]

You'll also find you're coming into some kind of schedule or connectedness with the mutual body and the mutual mind. And you begin to be able to observe mind which isn't just your mind. Being also partly our mind. And that could be a new mind.

[40:40]

But I actually don't want to look at the topic this first day. I've almost done it too much already. Because we're supposed to really focus on the topic tomorrow. So we're freer to do what we want today. There will be a few more people arrive tomorrow. Then we'll have to get down to business. But now, you know, we can talk about anything. I suppose, who's making the rules? We can talk about anything we want. So if there's anything that makes sense to you, please say so. And if there's anything that doesn't make sense, please say so. And if there's anything you're kind of curious about, let's bring it up. And if you would like to know something, please bring it on.

[41:56]

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