I have introduced to you a certain vocabulary and some practices last night and today. And the vocabulary has to be unfamiliar to you. Even if you're familiar with it, it has to be unfamiliar to you. I mean, I've been doing this 30 years, and it's still unfamiliar to me. I'm still exploring things like inhabit your physical existence. So I would like you to share with me any feelings or anything you'd like to make statements or questions about.

[01:09]

And it helps all of us. It's a kind of courtesy to others to ask a question, even if you think you know the answer. So you ask a question for the others who are a little shy. And the shy ones shouldn't depend on the less shy ones, so the shy ones should start. That's a good example of Buddhist logic. All right, please. In German it's best, yeah.

[02:42]

You can't. [...] I mean in the sense that I can just free myself during meditation. How much time do you want to spend at this? You got ten years? Yeah. Well, there are Buddhist practices which are meant to get you to stop your thoughts. They are not Zen Buddhist practices.

[03:47]

Or it's considered a kind of primitive form of Zen. The point of Zen is to change your relationship to your thinking. And to change the field of mind of the thinking. So basically I think this simple advice of don't invite your thoughts to tea is best. A bit like you were watching a movie you were kind of bored with. But since you bought a lifetime ticket you stay in the theater. Someone else? People seem to think a great deal and question not too often.

[05:12]

Particularly in Switzerland. I know you think a lot, that's obvious, but you don't ask questions very often. Yes. I would be interested to talk a little more about the Buddhist dream practice which just started yesterday. Yeah, I could tell last night that that struck a nocturnal chord in a lot of people.

[06:13]

And somebody, I think, mentioned that this has been a practice of yours to work with dreams. Is that right? I deal a lot with dreaming, in particular lucid dreaming, and I would be very interested in what Buddhism has to say. Well, that could be a whole seminar in itself. And I would like... I'm considering asking whoever wants to, and you, later in the seminar, maybe tomorrow, to share something of your interest in dreams or your experience or practice.

[07:22]

without turning this into a dream seminar. I have a question, but I'd like to share an observation. I feel this physical location that my body is. It's actually not just the body, but it's bigger than the body. So that's quite an interesting observation. I try to inhabit my physical existence and find out that my physical existence is just bigger than this body.

[08:35]

That's quite an interesting feeling. You said that in German? When I practice to take possession of my physical existence, I realize that this physical existence is simply greater than the body, that it is somehow a field, and that it is very new to me and somehow exciting. Maybe the aura, she asked, is this the aura? Now you're looking for a meaning. I don't know. No, I think, no, it's natural to ask. But if you want to practice Zen And you want to study the mind. And you want to study the body.

[09:38]

It's best to not give name. Now this is a teaching One of the things this is, is a teaching of how to view the mind. How to view the body. So it says here... No cognition, no feelings, no perceptions, etc. One of the commentaries on this says, everything exists without names. So when you say, and you know, this is, I'm not...

[10:40]

focusing on you. This is just what I do, what everyone does. They find some name for something. So you see somebody again across the restaurant, and you put on your glasses, and you've given them a name, and then you cannot pay too much attention. When you put your glasses on and you see them, then they have a name and you've kind of forgotten it. So, if we When you name something like, I have a feeling of something larger than my, I have a feeling of the space of my life, not just the body.

[12:07]

When you say that that's an aura, you protect yourself from it. And you isolate yourself from it. It's better to say to yourself, is this really true? Is this possible for me? that I sense something, or a friend, somebody I know, the woman sitting here translating, senses her body being larger than her body? What is it? That's very fertile. And if you Do it that way.

[13:17]

At some point you may say one tiny name for this for confused people is aura. It's a little bit like calling Zurich Zurich and not knowing anything about it but its name. When you explore Zurich, only one aspect of Zurich is Zurich. So the teaching of this sutra, one of the main teachings of this sutra that you actually just pointed out in your question, is to view the mind is to start the process without names. Now I want to come back to the dream question.

[14:19]

I said last night that we place structures on our consciousness. And those structures have many forms. And one of the ones I have mentioned recently is the structure that's put on our mind through the knowledge of Catholic confession. Because Catholic confession, whether you're Catholic or not, enters, makes, us enter a realm where we think, are our thoughts good or bad, or were our thoughts crazy, or should we confess our thoughts, etc.

[16:09]

Confession is in the one hand a technique of self-examination and study. Confession, on the other hand, another surface of it, is a coercive technique to make you dependent on the institution of the church. The church is defining whether your thoughts are good, bad, or different, or whether you should have them or shouldn't have them. And the mantle of that responsibility has been shifted to therapists. You go to a therapist to say, are my thoughts all right?

[17:28]

Maybe a therapist should, when a patient comes and says that, a therapist should say, fuck you. Don't bother me. That would be a kind of tough training. But that's a structure we put on our consciousness. But language is a structure we put on our consciousness. Thinking space separates us instead of space connects us is a structure we put on our consciousness.

[18:31]

So one thing you have to study if you're practicing or just decided to be alive is what are the structures we place on our consciousness. So that's a big practice, big topic. Very hard to notice because what notices the structures is the structure. How does the eye see the eye? You have to have a mirror. So how do the structures that see the structures see the structures? And see the non-structure? That's the basic problem of Zen.

[19:45]

That's how we're trying to sneak into it through this zazen posture. Okay. So that's one big topic. Now the second big topic is that we generate consciousness. You are simultaneously putting structures on your consciousness, but that consciousness that you're putting structures onto is simultaneously being generated by you. It doesn't exist just independently, passively, waiting for you to swim around in it. It's not like plunging into a lake that was there. It's more like as a baby you plunge into and as you're plunging you make the lake.

[20:52]

And with every stroke you produce the water that your arm goes through. So that's the second big topic. Can you be present in the generation of consciousness that you're swimming in? It's fun, you know It gives you something to do, you know, when you're bored And it's a topic you never need to hunt for If you've forgotten a book on the bus you don't know what to do when the bus is stuck. Just start swimming in the bus.

[21:53]

And create an image of the bus swimming through the streets. You know. Because that's the second big topic. The third is what is the continuity in the midst of the structures and the generation of consciousness. What is the continuity in the midst of the consciousness that you generate and that you structure? And that in specific is called the path. The whole thing is the path, but the feeling of the path is when you begin to put your foot in, like into a string, you begin to put your foot in to this continuity.

[23:18]

Now this is where dreaming comes in. The long way around to get to dreaming, but anyway. I had to put it into a Buddhist context. So one reason, very simple reason we believe our dreams is because we have a habit of belief. You believe this room is here. So if you dream this room, why shouldn't you believe the dream is there? So one of the first things you have to do is if you're going to question if you're going to know you're dreaming when you're dreaming you have to know you're dreaming when you're not dreaming.

[24:25]

No, this room is real. I mean it's As real as the word real has any real meaning. Okay. But it's functional reality is mostly generated by you. How we're using it, how we feel about it, etc., etc., And in fact the whole reason it was built was so that we could have all of these feelings about it. So we in Zen begin to have practices of what's called direct perception. in which we explore this room as having specific aspects a light that changes during the day and the colors change at the wall

[25:44]

And the room has a presence that's very interconnected with our own state of mind. So when you look very carefully at the room, you can feel whether your state of mind is a little depressed or a little joyous or something. So direct perception is a way of studying your state of mind that's perceiving. And then we notice that the space of the room we call uncaused space. So this room has shaped a little uncaused space. Then we could move the room, put it on a big truck and cart it somewhere and then the uncaused space would sit here waiting for another room.

[27:28]

You begin to have a feeling of you're walking through uncaused space, causing it a bit of trouble. Dogen has a phrase, arrival hinders arrival. So you could say cause hinders causation. Or cause interferes with uncaused space. So it means you're all troublemakers. Yes. Uncaused space says, here comes another troublemaker.

[28:31]

He's going to build something here. And this room eventually will fall apart and decay. The cement lasts about 70 years. So, This studying, just studying perception, you begin to see that the space is very tied up with your states of mind, with impermanence, and so forth. So when you really examine the perception, you realize that this space is very connected to your own mental states, What was the last thing you said? Not important.

[29:33]

Now this is, you'd have to say technically, in our culture, in the realm of excluded knowledge. Or it's knowledge or a level of attention that's not pointed out and you have to kind of make an effort to notice it or think it might be important. Okay, but when you begin to think this way, you're actually moving gently into the territory of dreaming mind. Because dreams are very clearly generated by your states of mind and accumulated experience and so forth. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay, so when you really look at things carefully, you begin to generate a state of mind that's of the same character as the dreaming state of mind.

[31:15]

This allows you to move into a state of mind that has continuity in night time and day time. Now on the whole, dreams as a study is not so important in Buddhism. The state of mind of dreaming is an important study. Some kinds of Buddhism and some teachers may use dreaming itself as a form of study. But the overall... But the...

[32:22]

overall general sense of dreaming in Buddhism is to develop a clarity that extends through the night. It may or may not include dreaming. Now, we already have that to some extent. For example, if Ivan and Marianne sleep with Sarah, especially when Sarah was very tiny, and you could have smothered her easily if you... So slept on her, put your arm over her face. Somehow you are conscious enough or aware enough during your sleeping to always protect Sarah's space. So that's a kind of awareness that's not conscious Now Buddhism makes a big thing of this kind of awareness

[34:03]

Because that kind of awareness that doesn't have to think but protects your baby is the same awareness that in zazen protects the baby of you. It gives you a larger territory for your existence. Now there are specific practices to develop a continuity of awareness during sleep. And I will tell you two or three of those tomorrow. But for now, what I'm emphasizing is the basic Buddhist attitude toward dreaming which is that dreaming is an aspect that dreaming allows you to, is one of the gates to the continuity of awareness which is neither waking nor nocturnal.

[35:45]

That was a rather long answer to your question, but I think it fits in with what we're talking about. And I think it's useful, it's familiar enough to you that it makes sense to most of you, I would say. So although we have intimations of these things, To acknowledge them and bring them fully into your conscious life requires a decision to do it, a commitment to do it, and a few techniques. We should go to, I think at 12.30 we should go to lunch, maybe.

[37:06]

So, if there's another question. We'll have one more question or two and then... When I can inhabit my physical existence, how does that change my relationships to other people? That's a good question, actually. In one sense it doesn't change them at all. I mean, it doesn't have to. At the same time, the more it's the case that you inhabit your own physical existence, You produce less tension when you do that.

[38:26]

Maybe I can talk later about why that's the case. And you make other people feel more comfortable. You also increase the possibility that other people can catch the feeling and understand it themselves. Now there's a slight problem with this in our culture. When you change the way you perceive yourself, you change the way other people perceive you. That's true in any culture, not just our culture. And so you have to deal with those differences or kind of be sensitive to them.

[39:32]

And I suppose the main thing most people would probably notice is it changes the degree to which people immediately feel intimate with you. So there's an increased feeling of intimacy, which is a wonderful and slightly threatening territory. And we have a lot of social structures to deal with intimacy. And if you increase the degree to which people feel intimate with you, or you can feel more immediately intimate and relaxed with others,

[40:52]

Often the social structures which shape that are bent out of shape. So there's lots of teachings about hiding your light. And that also includes something as simple as what we're just talking about. You have to learn as your inner reality, inner and outer reality changes, you have to keep remembering the usual vocabulary of how to relate to people. Man muss also dieses normale Vokabular, das muss man sich erinnern, wie man sich eben mit Leuten bezieht.

[42:13]

And inhabit the usual vocabulary at the same time as you're inhabiting a little different space. Und dass man also in diesem normalen Vokabular drin bleibt und gleichzeitig einen anderen Raum anfängt zu besitzen. So if you, if you, as you, meditation changes you, if you become, if you study also the way you've been, you make it easier on your friends. A very common experience for people who start to meditate is after the first acceptance by your friends that you're doing something kooky again. as action becomes clear you're serious and it's affecting you they try to stop you in various ways making a little fun of it you know

[43:19]

And it's natural, because they feel they're losing a friend. Because you're changing so that your friendship would be different, but maybe you won't be friends with them in the future. So those are some of the problems. Mostly it's no big problem. But most of the time it is mixed causes. One other question. Yes. Yesterday you told me that it is easier to talk about it than to do it. When I meditate, sometimes I have the feeling that my perception of the world changes a little. And when I go into everyday life or just go outside, the feeling disappears quickly again.

[44:53]

And now you have an exercise in which you turn over the threshold with your own foot in everyday life. I find that exhausting, that you're not only doing it now, but also now. My question is, my problem is, how is this transition? Does anyone know anything? ja, wie das weitergeht, wenn ich nicht diesen Forum habe. It's easier to talk about something than actually doing it. And during my meditation I experienced that my perception of myself and the world sometimes changes slightly.

[45:59]

But it's very hard for me to take that into my everyday life. I lose it quite quickly. So then when you gave this practice about stepping over outside the door in a certain way, I realized it's quite an effort. And I'm beginning to realize that there's some kind of transition between some kind of feelings and sensations, and then, and then making this an effort, or...? That's maturity. There's really no alternative. And a passive relationship to life will cause you more suffering in the end.

[47:10]

And more sickness. So you got born. So whether it was your intention or not, you got born. And here we are. And as long as the force of your cellular integrity keeps you going, it helps if you take something it helps the more that force, life force, is imbued with and pervaded by consciousness and awareness. And since for a lot of reasons we're taught not to do that, like you're saying it's work is part of what you've been taught,

[48:12]

and you've been taught that to keep you from doing it because no one knows how to control a population that is fully awake no two parents would want to have six children who are fully awake You'd have to abandon yourself to awakeness. Can you imagine an entire population awake? But really, once you do it, it's great. It was interesting to watch you make your statement and ask your question.

[49:34]

Because I couldn't understand a word you were saying. So of course I had some feeling from your body and your tone of voice and your gestures. But what was interesting to me is that what I was watching is that your body said things before your words. And that was clear because the people in the room began to react to what you were saying before you said it.

[50:20]

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