Yeah, this is the Bodhidharma stone. It came from Bodhidharma's grave, a pile of stones. And Rikug, the Greenway, lifted it. Shoplifting and grave lifting. It was a grave offense. But anyway, she wanted to bring us all closer to Bodhidharma. Quite nice thing. And this is also Bodhidharma, but in a different form. This is an example of the two truths. Just so that you know everything is changing. So anyway, those are the two stews.

[01:08]

This is also Bodhidharma, of course. And that big, the calligraphy with the big one swoop is Kastanahashi's version of the Bodhidharma. It's hanging in the hall. Hmm? But it's not a circle. It's not a circle. It's just an arch. Okay. Don't defend yourself. It's all right. Okay. Okay. So, please tell me something.

[02:09]

Yes, Nico. So the first question was to discuss valid cognition and they first found a translation. A German translation. A German translation. And we talked about it. We produced more questions than answers. That's been going on for a number of centuries, actually. Does valid cognition have to do with truth? Has the truth to be true for everybody, to be the truth? Our basic... Attitudes and views are very often there, I mean, like a flash.

[03:26]

How can I recognize that they are possibly not true? Is a valid cognition possible when the psyche does not play a role? Even when one does not make a very fast inference, even though one can be wrong, That's for sure. Some of us felt that intuition is a prerequisite for a valid cognition. And then the question came up, what feeling or feeling made us anticipate, accept that Buddhism presents a door to truth?

[04:44]

Oh, what feeling made us anticipate that Buddhism is a door or a gate to truth? So he said, wow, you worked a lot. It sounds very impressive. So we asked questions and got fewer answers. One attempt was to give the impression that we had a valid knowledge One possible answer we tried was valid cognition is more probable when one is anchored in the immediate situation. And the feeling that there is a valid cognition is a bodily feeling.

[05:46]

Yes, that was the first question. The second question is about pausing for the particulars. And about the second question, pausing for the particular. This question was more concrete. Before we go to this, the one word I didn't understand in your list of questions was psyche. What do you mean by that? Oh, psychology. Oh, psychology. We say more or less synonymous. Oh, really? Psyche in English means something more like a soul. Yeah, I know we don't need that in psychology.

[06:48]

So the second question was more concrete and it leads to the present moment. And pausing makes a feeling like time is a series of pausing. Like images of a film. And our practice generates pauses without pause. You mean endlessly. Endlessly. These pauses are very full. Oh, okay, good.

[07:56]

Food and drink. That's enough, maybe. Okay. You ran out of questions? Okay. Someone else? Mohamed? Mohamed? We stayed with quite a long time with pausing for the particular. So one question was how to practice with that.

[09:03]

Do we start with the pause and then kind of work backwards towards the particular that was before the pause? Or is the whole a pause because everything is slowed down very much and that had to do with this movement? I think, yeah. Maybe you can add something. You were on the same boat. You're misusing the translator. Yes, I was in his group and Gerhard gave the example that, for example, he stands up from the pillow and then makes a pause, and this, so to speak, concludes this movement, and then the next movement comes and turns around.

[10:10]

Joe brought the example that when he's getting up, he pauses for Jerry, you could call him. Jerry? Gerard. He pauses and sort of completes the movement before he proceeds to the next. Like a robot. I wasn't in that group. Okay. And someone else said, no, then the break is afterwards. For me it's more about finding a movement in that pause. The pause in the movement. To pause on the movement or in the movement. On the movement. And not make a pause when the movement is over.

[11:23]

An outsider could listen to this conversation. When an outsider stands at a door and laughs. Oh, oh. Maybe the point is that with our thinking or with our head we see what we do physically. the point being it's about that in our thinking we are and body we are exactly there where and what we are doing yeah with the body and not the thing I mean while we turn around I do something think about something totally different okay

[12:33]

Yes? For me, it's a new discovery, this pause. Just today? No, for one, two weeks. Okay. And before that, it didn't mean much to me. Yes, in the last seminars we talked about it more often, so it was always a topic, but I could not start anything. She said that in the last weeks you mentioned these pauses in seminars fairly often, and so she had it quite a bit, but it really didn't mean much to her. Yes, and now all of a sudden, this pause is incredibly fun for me, because I feel it's like letting go of the moment, like erasing a painting.

[13:42]

And now suddenly the pause means something and is fun. It's like releasing the moment, like erasing the blackboard. Otherwise it was always, yes, perceiving, perceiving, perceiving, And before it was perceived, perceived, perceived, and the things like disappeared, but they were not completed. And now with this path it's more to let something go more completely, and so something new can come up fresher, also more new, so to speak. Thank you.

[14:53]

Yes, Peter? For me, the term valid cognition has to do with an objective measurement, judgment. Benchmark. Benchmark. On which you measure things. And the word ma in Sanskrit which I translated cognition it actually means measure. Now let me say that I think valid cognition I find useful in English.

[15:54]

Kind of useful, makes sense in English. But the literal translation of pramana is a perfecting, cognizing instrumentality. It would be a recognizing, perfecting... Perfecting, cognizing, or measuring. Perfecting, measuring, or perfecting, cognizing, instrumentality. An instrument that you can use to make something happen. And the instrumentality means it's instrumental in that it allows you to make a

[17:06]

perfecting cognition. But it's primarily measured by, the benchmark is, does it instrumentally lead to less suffering and enlightenment? So is it a soteriological fact? Okay. Could you explain soteriological, please? You said it so well in German. It's the same. It's exactly the same. It's a Christian word which means it leads to salvation.

[18:08]

But it's been adopted by philosophy and in Buddhism to mean that which leads to enlightenment. So all teachings in Buddhism strictly actually should be teachings which Their measure is they lead to enlightenment. More or less suffering. So all facts are not interesting. Only those facts which lead to enlightenment. I mean, we got to get in the game, you know. Do you remember Jack Webb? No, you don't remember Jack Webb. Sergeant Friday. The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

[19:12]

We should say that at the beginning of koans. The koan you're about to hear is true. I mean, really, it's not Bodhidharma and the Emperor. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Nothing... He's famous for saying... This is the 50s or 60s? Nothing but the facts, ma'am. Somebody would start to say, well, then I think this... Just the facts, ma'am. So that's what we're talking about here, just the facts, man. I mean, Peter. Okay, that was a bigger interruption than I intended. I'm terribly angry. So maybe all this chaos... Chaos? Confusion. Confusion, oh yeah. Um... happens or exists because I've never practised with this term.

[20:18]

What confusion? Your confusion? Yeah, mine too, yeah. Confusion, well, the bird of mallets. The term immediate consciousness does mean something to me and I practice with that. Thank goodness. I assume there is a relationship between immediate consciousness and valid cognition. Yes, it will sneak in. What came up in our group towards the end and what I think is very interesting and fascinating?

[21:23]

In our perception we have culturally determined blind spots. No. Yes, go ahead. Yes, Anna. To cite an example you always bring, we assume space separates. Separates. So the exciting question for me is, I've learned here there is a different view. Can I, through training, training my mindfulness, can I find these blind spots all by myself?

[22:39]

Can I help you? Well, yes, but just that you think, notice there's blind spots and imagine that there's something to be done about it is already help. Remember, this is, again, an autodidactic apprenticeship. Yeah. Could you please give us a few examples of what is a valid cognition, which we weren't quite sure. Just examples.

[23:41]

Okay. Are you asking me? From our group. From your group. Okay. Shall I say some things or shall we listen some more? If possible, from each category. What are the categories? Direct perception, valid inference and so on. And all the others. The Answer Man. Except I don't have many. We don't need a taxonomy of valid cognition.

[24:44]

At least not at this point. A valid cognition. We're talking about this koan. So in the context of this koan, the horns on the other side of the fence is a valid inference. Igor scratching at the door. So anytime you have evidence, and you make a conclusion from evidence, Ah, well, evidence. Proof? Would you say the same? What do you say in court? Beweise. Yeah, the same. We have two words, two English words for one German word, beweise. Also beweise, yeah? I don't know.

[25:48]

I don't have any evidence. I can't answer your question. No, you use evidence to prove something. On the basis of this evidence, we've proved that... But it's not an observation. It's not an observation. What's the difference I observe with the ears? What's the difference between observation and evidence? Well, in a court, you'd have to say, this person observed this, but it's not necessarily evidence unless he can prove it. Oh, I see. I never could have dreamed that evidence would be so difficult in German. We have different diversification.

[26:50]

I just didn't know it would be so difficult. Ego scratches at the door. That's evidence. That he wants to come in. Yeah. Okay. So the important thing to what we're trying to do. I'm not trying to build a philosophy. We're talking about the teaching of this Quran which says the ordinary food and drink of the pastoral monk is knowing things perceptually and inferentially.

[27:59]

Okay. Now, what's the point of this? It's like if you did exercises and you exercised certain muscle groups. You understand what I mean? You do this one to exercise this, you do that to exercise this. Okay, so what we're trying to do in this practice here, what Dharmakirti and the other kirtis are trying to do, is add to meditation the rationality to add to meditation, the rationality, and the fruits of rationality joined to meditation in order to extend both so that you can know how things actually exist.

[29:10]

Um, beides zu erweitern, damit ihr letztlich die Dinge so kennen könnt, wie sie tatsächlich existieren. Is that crystal clear? Is that crystal clear? Crystal clear. But what should be first, the meditation or the maybe philosophy? The meditation. The meditation. Also, was erst kommen sollte, ist die Meditation. But, as I said the other day, You can't separate the physical act of sitting down from the concept of sitting still. If you just sit down and fiddle your fingers and look around, this is not meditation. And when you sit still, when you have the intentional concept of still sitting, that the physical posture plus sitting still equals zazen.

[30:26]

that's the equation. And then that generates the possibility of a merged mind and body, joined mind and body, and a still mind and body. Okay. And then you can perceive stillness in each thing you look at or hear. So as soon as you recognize that zazen is inseparable from the concept of sitting still, then the intellectual aspects or philosophical aspects, the practical aspects, praxis-philosophical aspects become clear.

[31:38]

It's obvious they're necessary. Now, if you understand the Four Noble Truths as they're suffering And there's a cause of suffering. You don't get very far. You have to understand the four truths which are related to valid cognitions, of course. We could do a seminar on the four noble truths the two truths and valid cognitions. You don't get very far until you see that the four noble truths are More than the truth of suffering, the truth of impermanence.

[32:55]

And more than the causation is desire and attachment. But the causation is interdependence. It's these two philosophical ideas which give power. Legs. Legs? take the legs away of the four noble truths. By the way, there's an English expression that people use nowadays, American expression, to give something legs, which means to give it some power. Okay, now, the motivation in Buddhism, what starts out to free you from suffering, mental suffering, it also dramatically changes the relationship to physical suffering.

[34:37]

As I say, if you get hit by a hammer, it still hurts, but your relationship in the physical suffering changes. But the shift in later Buddhism comes to knowing how things actually exist. Because knowing how things actually exist, whatever we mean by that, which really frees you from suffering. And can be a catalytic agent which leads to the possibility of changing a culture of suffering. A national culture, a civilizational culture. Now, one of the questions that Nico mentioned was like, is something that's true, true for everyone?

[36:18]

From a Buddhist point of view, this is really kind of silly question. But you can say, yes, it's true, the sun comes up. for us in the East. But what's the East? Where is the East? Keeps moving around. And you can say, or as I said the other day, an apple is a fact. But that's kind of, who cares? I mean, to apply the word true to it, is this a true apple? But you can apply truth to agriculture. If you're a skilled farmer, You can make, grow good apples.

[37:46]

So there's a certain truth in how you pursue a process like agriculture. So you could say in science, some version of the scientific method is where we find the truth, not in the results of the scientific method. I mean, physics comes up with things that, you know, we know are true. There's elements and, you know, molecular biology and all. But really, often those things are nuanced and changed over generations. So the emphasis in Buddhism is on truth as process. Okay, so what in our process of living, thinking, acting leads us to less suffering?

[39:14]

If it leads us to less suffering, then we call it true. In Buddhism, we're not living in some absolute world. This is absolute truth. You have to have gods to have that. There's no absolute truth when there's no god. And from my point of view, absolute truth based on god is the biggest lie in human history. I have a book upstairs. God is not great. The mischief religion has caused through the centuries. Ah, okay. So... I guess it's 520, is that right?

[40:39]

Yes. Okay. On most watches it's... The point is, that what does this process... Let me finish my sentence, Peter, before you go. Peter, can you wait a moment until I finish my sentence? The point is, if we practice valid cognition, or pausing for the particular, and let me say that You cannot really practice with koans, probably, unless you've learned to pause for the particular.

[41:54]

In other words, how could you practice with emptiness, no holiness, unless you can pause for emptiness, no holiness? So now we're talking about pausing for confusion. Pausing for delusion and noticing it. Or pausing for what feels like a valid cognition. Now I've often said, almost through my sentences, I've often said that the practice of zazen and also mindfulness When it's actually working, you find everything precise and bright and clear.

[43:01]

Any scene is made up of a lot of bright particulars, almost as if you had a camera that had everything in focus. Okay. I think if you examine that experience, when you have it, you'll find that probably most of your particulars are valid cognitions. They're perceptual or inferential facts. Now, if you primarily generate a mind through Valid cognitions. You know how on a computer you can highlight the text, right? It's like in this scene, I highlight everything that is a perceptual

[44:19]

or inferential fact. If I get in the habit of that, it generates a particular state of mind that's clear and settled. that's the point of this koan so the first part is generate a mind rooted in inferential and perceptual facts it's not that there aren't other minds you're just exercising that muscle group And one of the entrances is to learn to practice to pause for the particular.

[45:35]

What I find amusing is ma, as I said, means measure or cognize. And in Japanese, ma means... to perceive the pause. It's a different word. It means to perceive the in-betweens. So you could say ma for the ma. Mama. Okay, you're released. But that was all for you, so... And yes, what else? In our group we have investigated what the special thing, or where the special thing, for example, of a crack in the temple differs from a crack.

[46:46]

In our group we looked into what difference is there between the sounds like the wood makes here in the house, the cracking in the wood, and someone coughing. Oh, so... We found that when we hear the cracking in the wood, we can very easily just perceive it and accept it as a fact. While the coughing activates us, stories arise.

[47:52]

We ask ourselves, who is this? What's going on with him? Do we have to have compassion? What do I know? When we hear someone coughing, other associations and things come up like, who is it and should I have compassion, do I need to do something, stuff like that. When you hear the floor crack, you don't rush out with a Kleenex. And one idea was that something in a room or in space changes. And it happens very easily that one wants to make a line and separate oneself from the coughing and that this feeling of inside and outside comes up. And part of it is fear. And I find it difficult to really get into focus this particular, I mean, with the coughing, this particular what I hear, to get that into focus.

[49:20]

Well, I think it's great that your group or you have, you know, you take examples of like the cracking of the floor and the coughing because, you know, that's really one of the secrets of turning word practices. As you bring this sense of emptiness, no holiness, or valid cognition, in this case not as a phrase, but as a possibility, or what is it? And then you hear the floor crack, or you hear somebody cough, and the information in your field begins to inform you. Do you understand what I mean?

[50:41]

It's why I can't work on my book. when I'm teaching. Because the only way I can do a seminar like this is I have to sort of inform every unit of my attention, attentional activity, With the koan. Or with the subject, whatever it is. And from, you know... few hours or a few days before the seminar until it ends, every perception I have is involved with the koan, whether it's driving a car or looking out the window, and it begins to tell me things. That's the only way I can do these seminars.

[51:54]

Only way I can come up with anything. And if I switch out of that to write on the book, I lose the seminar. So every practice period when I try to write in the book, if I give teishos, the book's finished. But if I don't have to give teishos or teach... in this kind of context, then every day I can just stay in the book. I love this new sort of two translators. You know, Peter speaks to me and you translate and then you translate and I'm still in alignment and Christa should get up and dance.

[52:57]

So you could do another translation, you know. Buddhist rituals developed out of this kind of thing. You know, the Tibetan dances are quite rather like that. We give you a great mask and a kind of costume and you can come. Yeah, but that's for three or four successors from now. Okay. Next? In our group, towards the end, the question came up. In our group, towards the end, a question came up. The direction of the movement. in which direction a certain practice should go or could go. You very often cited the example that when one hears an airplane an airplane in quotation marks, to really just hear the sound and not immediately associate it with a plane.

[54:24]

One practice is to just listen to the sound and not immediately associate airplane. And this introduction seems to lead to a very quick conclusion. And this introduction seems to be the other way around, that it points out this immediate inference, like seeing smoke and immediately... Yeah, that's exercising a different muscle group. One exercise is to peel the names off things. You hear the airplane, you make an association, you peel it off, the name. And that's to move toward a non-dual consciousness. But what we're doing now is taking deluded consciousness, deluded in the sense that

[55:34]

The job of consciousness, as I repeatedly say, is to make the world predictable. The job of consciousness is to protect us. Iconically from tigers, snarling dogs. And for that reason it wants the world to be predictable. Now, we know the world is not predictable. So you can have a state of awareness or non-dual mind and hopefully to various degrees we experience that in Zazen. But knowing that, now we can re-educate consciousness. So you can have a consciousness of consciousness as a field of consciousness, like I said this morning, the medium through which you know things.

[57:03]

But now you can have a consciousness also which... is partly dependent on being able to develop a consciousness consciousness. Now you have a consciousness of consciousness which is dependent on knowing the consciousness of consciousness as a medium or partially dependent on it. This consciousness of consciousness is conscious of the components of consciousness. Okay, what are the components of consciousness? The vijnanas, the skandhas, all percepts, confusion, deluded thoughts, you know, thought formations, etc.

[58:26]

Those are the components. And one of the essential components is the field of mind, where you're not identified with the contents, but the field. And when you can actually identify with the field of mind, And so the contents of mind kind of stop talking to each other. Because it's your identification with the contents of mental formations, it's your identification with mental formations which start mental formations talking to each other and you get this, you know, infernal dialogue. Internal and infernal. Infernal means devilish. Okay. So, once you identify the components of consciousness, they have a certain grammar.

[59:50]

They're tied together by cultural habits, by your habits, etc. But once you see the components, this is the Dharmakirti's It takes some time, let's say. Not all of us are going to just see the components of mind tomorrow or even yesterday. But if you know consciousness is a construct, You can begin to get a feeling for the components. And one of the key ways to do this to work with the language of consciousness the musical notation of consciousness begin to see all the notes, is to develop within consciousness an island formed by

[60:58]

cognitive, perceptual and inferential cognition. That develops a kind of coherent field of energy. Within consciousness. Kind of island within consciousness. Then from that island you can say, hey, that mental formation is just myth. That mental formation is just psychology. Or some attitude I have. That mental formation is borrowed. That mental formation is just a generalization.

[62:18]

And one reason you can see that is because it doesn't have the vitality, vividness of perceptual and inferential cognitions. Perceptual and inferential mental formations. So now you're no longer trying to replace consciousness with awareness. Now you're re-educating consciousness. Okay? This is called advanced Buddhism. Thank you very much. But as a beginner's Buddhism where you just sit and stay with your breath, isn't that the same?

[63:29]

Because you take this sort of island you talk about just of breathing awareness or just feeling your posture, this also can be an island. Yes, of course. That's the beginner's practice. This is how we start. The idea of having such an island from which you can see things as a psyche or a false perception or a perspective, that can also just be sitting and breathing consciously and having the possibility to go to every conscious breath and to ordinate there. In the simplest practices we do, the most advanced practices in Buddhism are implied.

[64:36]

So just doing Zazen creates a kind of, we could say, Awareness island or breath island. And that may be enough. And for most practitioners, that and its extensions, development are enough. But Buddhism developed to the point which it said, now use this breath island to transform consciousness itself. To transform the activity of consciousness. Yeah, something like that.

[65:39]

And it's really not, once you've got a good foundation in zazen and in mind resting in the breath, tension resting in the breath. Once you have the skill of one pointedness to rest attention on a particular or to rest attention in the field of mind it's a fairly easy next step to when you pause for the particular To notice, oh, is this a valid cognition? Or is this free of selfness?

[66:43]

So you begin to be able to notice within the momentary. And this is dharma practice. You could say dharma practice is to notice the momentary. Okay. Now, another muscle group I suggest you... mental muscle group that I suggest you exercise. As I've said often, it's closely related to what we're talking about, is to develop the habit of resting successively in the particular field of mind. And to develop the habit of resting I call that the particular field shift in my notes.

[67:54]

It's related to pausing for the particular or pausing for the pause. But if you generate... If you develop the habit of both and one or the other, it generates a different mind. For example, an example I often give, if I pause for the pause, I hear you, you know? Uh-huh. and the service, when I have that mind, or when we chant before the lecture, I can hear very particularly

[69:01]

Each voice, kind of separately, I can hear them each separately and together. But that doesn't help me give a lecture. But if I have now a mind which continuously shifts from particular to field, particular to field, another aspect allows me to start talking through that. So while I'm talking, I'm constantly feeling you as a field and feeling you individually. And sort of The dynamic of this two-fold field flows into me and generates much of what I say. So I have no idea, before I come into the lecture, about 50 to 75 percent of what I say.

[70:12]

And I cannot think it in advance. And even if I can think some of the details in advance, how it folds together and unfolds, I could never make a virtually never make a pattern. I was talking about this first and this second, etc. It just starts to unfold in ways that I couldn't have imagined. Because I'm drawing on the attention and energy and intelligence of each of you, which I'm not in possession of in my room, unfortunately. So this is a yogic skill or development through practice.

[71:18]

And it has to do with with discovering the modalities of consciousness itself, particularly in relation to simultaneous to awareness. Okay, so stuff like this, at least the basics of generating a mind through perceptual and inferential cognition is the food and drink of the patch-drobed, rock-sue-wearing laypersons. And getting a feeling for that, entering into the practice of that, then you proceed to the second part of the pointer.

[72:49]

And then into the koan. So really if you study a koan carefully, you're studying all of Buddhism and it takes time. Weeks, months, you know, one koan. You may go on to other koans, but you've already got the incubation of the first koan really working in you. And that begins to help with the hibernation and incubation of other koans. So really the more thoroughly you get one koan, the more fully other koans open up.

[73:53]

They're all clams inside the same pearl. Okay. So I'd better clam up. Let's have a moment of...

[74:31]

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