Well, I always like to look at things very basically. Not in order to be basic, but to give us a common starting point. But I don't think we can go into, you know, part of an afternoon why we establish ourselves through a narrative. Yes, in fact we do. And I spoke about it quite a bit yesterday. And we anchor our story in two ways, probably.

[01:16]

We anchor it to events. And we anchor it in the way an event or episode or story serves us. Anything we continue, even if it's a negative thing, serves us in some way. So if you want to look at anything you have a habit of doing, That you either like or don't like. Ask yourself what purpose it serves for you. And the more you can see how such and such a event or habit defines who you think you are, you can in the manner of some psychotherapeutic processes

[02:54]

Ask yourself who you would be, how would you think of yourself if this hadn't happened or you didn't define yourself through this story. If you can see how you identify yourself through a story, you can often change that identification or rewrite your script, your story. The things that have the strongest grip on us are the things we don't notice. The things we take for granted. So if nothing else, Zen practice is Buddhist practice.

[04:21]

There's simply a way to increase our ability to notice. Sukhira, she used to say sometimes in lectures, You don't really notice what I'm saying. What I'm saying is much more than what I'm saying. There's no way I can say it clearly enough for you to realize how clearly I mean this. Yeah, but you sort of skip over it. You don't get it. You don't realize there's a choice possible. You notice the parts of what I'm saying, he said, That you can fit into your own story.

[05:44]

No, that's normal. So somehow if I'm going to try to say some things to get you to notice it, I have to incorporate it in your story. Maybe make you think it belongs in your story. And then you think, oh, this belongs in my story. And then you find it's like a crocodile in the middle of your story. Eating up the script. Or it becomes a way for practice to take hold of take hold of you and change your story.

[06:47]

So one advantage of Sashin if you stay in place long enough to notice things And if the Sashin schedule is demanding enough, your story starts to crumble. Often in the early part of the Sashin, Who the hell am I anyway? What am I doing here? I don't belong here. That means your story is crumbling. I shouldn't be here. I'm going to start thinking about leaving. And you would certainly leave if there weren't all these other people in the room.

[07:57]

But part of your story is to sort of not embarrass yourself in front of people. So this part of your story keeps you in the Zendo. I don't want to be embarrassed. What would Gerald and Beate and the Roshi think of me? So your story keeps you here and your story... doesn't want you to leave. Your story keeps you here, but your story also wants you to leave. Pretty soon, if you're lucky, you really don't know why you're here. And you're in survival mode.

[09:03]

And then you're quite open. Yeah. Then you start to notice things. And you notice things outside your story, because your story isn't working any longer. Sometimes we discover then, often in Sashina's strength, we didn't... something new. A kind of power. Not a power of willpower or intention. But a power in being alive itself or something like that. Something you can't forget.

[10:14]

It's not simply a matter of intention. Some power to absorb and know and go forward. To accept. As I said, acceptance is something very deep about accepting. For accepting or for knowing? There's something very deep about acceptance. It keeps going underneath. It accepts and simultaneously goes underneath what you're accepting.

[11:21]

And we feel some power come up in us. Now, our narrative also hides choice from us. I don't know if I can make this clear, but I will try. Any situation you've been in usually offers you a choice. And the narrative itself's job is to hide the choice. There's a kind of truth surrounding the story which would require you to change yourself a little bit change how you

[12:34]

discover the world. But the narrative says you can only solve this through continuing who you are. So often we say, okay, so we go ahead and we get through it. And then truth comes and rattles our narrative train again. We find ourselves in a similar situation. So we go through it again. And we find ourselves in a similar situation again. Each time our tendency to tell our story to ourselves hides the choice that's there. I don't know how to quite say it, because one way I'm saying, by looking at your script, you can rewrite your script.

[14:13]

Now I'm saying you can just walk straight out of your script. And walk back into it. A kind of extraordinary freedom. To make use of the resources your personal history has given you. Yeah, but not... but to make use of them if you want. Now, it always comes up in Sashin about enlightenment. The best way to practice enlightenment in regard to enlightenment, is twofold. One is forget about it altogether.

[15:23]

Just take care of yourself. Do what makes sense. Follow the principles of Buddhism. Yeah, that's good enough. If you just can do a little good in the world, that's good enough. Don't be greedy. Sekiroshi says to light up one tiny corner of the world. Isn't that enough? Isn't that enough? Yeah, there's lots of corners of the world. We all have one. And the other way is to recognize enlightenment is only, is always present. The pedagogy of sudden enlightenment

[16:27]

The pedagogy of the sudden enlightenment is to really know it's never in the future. It's always now. So you can practice with, didn't notice it again. Didn't notice. Passed me by. Passed me by. Didn't notice it again. This is a good way to practice. Keep opening yourself in this way. Something happens with this pedagogue. This approach. Yeah. So our narrative, you know, is like a train. It's always taking us to the next station. Taking us away from the present landscape. And it takes us to the next station, but never lets us off the train.

[17:56]

Don't you want to get off the train? So you know you want to get off the train. So you come to Sashim. And by the fifth day, you're thinking about when you can get back on the train again. Yeah, I mean, the train's interesting. The scenery goes by. Yeah. Now I'm about to try to speak about something else I'm feeling my way into. In other words, I notice something that I might be useful to talk about. And I have to feel my way into how to talk about it. And then I have to find some way to talk about it.

[19:06]

Some words or something. Something. Okay, so what I'm looking at now is the difference between Something we call insight practice and sambhogakaya practice. Insight or insight? Insight. Now, insight practice or vipassana practice is more like to come into a contemplative or meditative state of mind into mindfulness and notice the activity of the world and the activity of the world is impermanence everything is changing and there is always a kind of suffering

[20:10]

Living and dying. And in this activity, there's no self to be found. Okay, so that would be a classic definition of vipassana approach. Now Zen practice tries to combine shamatha and vipassana in one approach. And of course to notice the activity of the world. through mindfulness, impermanence, and so forth. But then Zen tries to develop various practices based on impermanence, Where you notice not the activity of the world, but the stopped quality of the world.

[21:48]

And what happens when you notice that? You know, I know somebody who told me a story a few weeks ago. He's quite an unusual person. And he's an artist. And he studied with actually Moholy-Nagy. Nagy? How would you pronounce Nagy? N-A-G-Y. Oh, now we've got him. Yeah, where's our Akash? What? Nagy. Nagy? Moholy-Nagy? Yeah, Hungarian. He's Hungarian. Nagy. Okay. You should know it. Anyway, he was Hungarian born and lived in America. Okay. He studied with the wife. Yeah, but now I'm just saying about Moholy, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

[22:57]

Okay, so this Laszlo Moholy-Nagy is a Hungarian and he also lived in the USA. Yeah, and he founded the Chicago Art Institute. And this person I know studied with his widow, I think. And she would do things like giving a lecture. She would simply put an orange on the podium while she was talking. Or sometimes while she was speaking, she'd have a slide projector show the room in semi-darkness. And she had a slide projector set up. And throughout her lecture it would show slides. But they'd be completely random, nothing to do with her lecture.

[24:04]

And he said this was the most influential teacher he ever had. We got you into this state, you know, you'd listen to her and things are flashing, you know. So one time he needed some time alone. So, you know, being an unusual person, he decided three months on a glacier in northern Canada. So he went up into this glacial region in, I think, Canada. Was it Las Vegas? British Columbia, yeah, Canada. And he stayed for three months. Living in a tent and had supplies and things. And, uh... On the last week of his stay, suddenly there was a bear half in his tent.

[25:21]

And he looked at the bear, and the bear looked at him, And he didn't dare look away. And he said he was scared, completely scared. But he knew he couldn't look away. And for one full hour they stared at each other. And finally the bear sort of took his head and went off. This develops a certain attentiveness. He said he's obviously never forgotten this. But sometimes we feel this stopped space when just a friend looks at us.

[26:48]

And one time he was in Berlin and he feels some, especially after this experience, connection with animals. And he decided he wanted to see the tigers go out. And everyone said, oh, the zoo's going to close in 15 minutes or so. You don't have time. Half an hour. But he really wanted to go, so he went to the place where the big cats are. And after looking there, he went out behind there, and he says in the Berlin Zoo, the wolves are there. And he looked at this one sort of wolf and he suddenly felt that same space that he had with the bear.

[27:59]

Not only did he and the bear kind of just stop in some other kind of space, he and the wolf, but all the other wolves very slowly turned and joined looking at him. They were there in this other kind of space until the zoo closed. It's not a similar story, but I remember once I left, I walked across Central Park in New York about two in the morning. And I was cutting across to go to the Hudson Tube so I could go over to New Jersey where I lived in Hoboken.

[29:22]

The birthplace of Hoboken, the birthplace of Frank Sinatra. Yeah. So anyway, I'm walking across and you can cut right through the zoo. And I came and there was I went by the seal ponds. And they were all asleep. They were laying all over the place now. I stood looking at them and then suddenly one seal opened his eyes on me. And I just looked at him and he looked at me. She, I don't know, he or she.

[30:34]

And then two or three others looked up. And they looked at each other. And then they all started swimming and jumping and climbing up on things. It was great. It was a whole display for me in the middle of the night. Yeah. So for 20 minutes or so, I watched, maybe longer. And I said goodbye and everything. I left and they all went back to sleep. And, uh... Part of what, uh... made this story stay in my mind so clearly is then I cut over across the west side. And in those days they still had slaughterhouses over there. And you have this stench of blood and stuff. And they only slaughter at night because it sounds so terrible in the day.

[31:53]

So you could hear this kind of... and this kind of gurgle of blood. So I stood there about another 20 minutes or half an hour. Anyway, so back to this practice I've been offering you. Trying to make clear. To immerse yourself in particulars. Mm-hmm. to bring a continuity of attentiveness into the field of consciousness.

[33:00]

Now, I think the key, the dynamic here is you're bringing a continuity of attentiveness into the field of consciousness. This friend of mine, he had a field of consciousness. There was the tent, there was, you know, very stuff he was getting ready to do. And then there was a bear with his head in the tent. And the field of consciousness suddenly became a continuity of mindfulness, of attention. of attentiveness, held for him by the bear.

[34:17]

That's something different than just a field of consciousness. Now, our Buddha ancestors recognized this. Maybe they discovered it from the great teacher Bersatva. Maybe some animal taught them. But something happens when you bring a continuity of attentiveness into the field of consciousness. Yeah, and it's worth taking a simple practice like this once you see it and looking at it thoroughly. Now, of course, the real thing is to do it thoroughly. As I said to somebody the other day, the real division in practice is between those who do it and those who don't.

[35:31]

Being on the periphery of practice, understanding it, that's all fine. But the actual doing of it is what makes the difference. And the choice there is creating a life which lets you do it. I so far have not discovered any other gift from the world or to the world equal to practicing. So you're bringing, to look at it thoroughly, you're bringing a continuity of attentiveness to the field of consciousness. And the field of consciousness is knit together by habits of perception.

[36:54]

And it's laced by Your narratives. What's important to you and what's not important to you. Now, a continuity of attention keeps going through the narratives. It just doesn't... It notices more than just the narratives. It begins to break down and transform habits of perception. And actually transforms consciousness. Bringing a continuity of attention into the field of consciousness transforms the field of consciousness into a field of awareness.

[38:11]

Now, how can you notice the difference? I'm talking real events here. you find that in a field of awareness, you're not led into analytical or narrative thinking. Rather, even the kind of Subtle analysis, mindful analysis of insight meditation, the subtle analysis, mindful analysis of insight meditation is also stopped.

[39:16]

In a sense, the world feels stopped. Like the bear was staring at you. I don't know what word to call it. This afternoon I was experimenting with words. Circumambient knowing. No, I don't know. That's too complicated. No, that's too complicated. Adjacent knowing. Maybe that's okay. Adjacent knowing. Like our neighbor. What's our neighbor's name? His garden is adjacent to our garden. When the field of consciousness is transformed into the field of awareness, things feel real close, like your pillow.

[40:29]

You know how close your pillow feels at night? It's like the tree is like your pillow or something. It's real close and familiar. And you feel the volume of things, almost as if you were also inside the thing you're looking at. And there's some kind of cooperative knowing. And when you combine that adjacent knowing, intimate knowing, with your breath, there's often a kind of rapture that comes up.

[41:52]

Sometimes it's momentary. And I think you may feel it in practicing or in sesshing. Suddenly, for no reason, you're filled with happiness for a moment. Yeah. Sometimes it's just a little feeling. It's maybe a minor feeling. Sometimes it lasts for only a moment. Sometimes it actually kind of floods us. Sometimes it lifts us up even, makes our body feel different. And sometimes it starts to pervade everything.

[43:19]

These are traditional classifications of rapture, but they're also quite common if you practice. It's just a way of talking about our experience. And when you start to know these momentaries of inexplicable happiness, You know you've touched this intimate knowing. You know it's funny, these words in English. Ecstasy. Ecstasy. means out of place.

[44:20]

Ex and stasis. It's like obscene means off-scene. So ecstasy is somewhere else, out of place. Rapture means to be carried upward. To be carried upward. Another word used in English is to be transported. That's also to be carried away, to be transported. And exalt. Actually, exalt means to be carried away, and rapture means to be abducted, kidnapped. And this is strange, because that's not yoga culture.

[45:27]

But we find in our practice this merging with the specific, of transforming the field of consciousness with a continuity of attention. There's not an ecstasis, but there's a sort of instasis or something like that. You're more connected, not transported, you're imported. I think these words tell us something real about the difference between our culture and yogic culture. Because this bringing ourselves into particularity awakens the Sambhogakaya body.

[46:46]

awakens a Sambhogakaya knowing. A knowing transformed through bliss. And we strangely enough or perhaps accurately enough often find these tastes of happiness and bliss, staying still in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of our stories, they stay still or when we stay still, when we stay still and recognize the choices, the freedom we actually have in our life.

[48:10]

So now we can understand better this discussion between yin yang and dung shan. I didn't even practice the noble truths. Was there joyousness? Was there bliss in this practice? Everything was like a jewel, said Dungsan. Thank you very much. The devils in the presence of the Saturus, who believe that they are to be saved.

[49:40]

The devils in the presence of the Saturus, who believe that they are to be saved. The devils in the presence of the Saturus, who believe that they are to be saved. O JEN JEN MI MYO NO WA YAKU SEN HAN WO MIYO AYO KOTO KATASHI WARE MA E MO SHI FUJI SURU KOTO ETA RI

[51:32]

Satsang with Mooji Thank you. I apologize for having the schedule changed. But it's such a nice day, I thought you might enjoy a little break in the midday.

[52:40]

In fact, I first called Gerald and said, it's such a nice day, maybe I'll enjoy the afternoon. And we'll have the lecture tonight. And he called back and said, oh, no. No, he didn't really call back. But as you all saw us drive up in a new car, I can explain it slightly. I think many of you know that Marie-Louise's car was stolen in Rostock the other day. We turned our backs for 10 or 15 minutes and it was gone. It seems like half the population there are professional car thieves.

[53:45]

They were good at it. Boom, boom, the car was gone. So we didn't know what to do. And we'd like a car. I'd like to go to Münster this next week for the seminar. It's actually great to travel by train. But Zabutans and Zafus and so forth on a train are pretty difficult. So we agreed we have to have a car big enough to go to seminars and sashins. And a safe car. If I dare say so, safe for an infant. And we wanted something with four-wheel or all-wheel drive.

[55:08]

So we thought maybe a Subaru. And then Gerald told us, there's somebody who's quite friendly to us, knows us, who is the Volkswagen dealer in Freiburg. Volvo. Volvo dealer in Freiburg. We checked out some other cars and deliveries are, you know, maybe in December or January. Because it's all the new models now. 2001. So just by chance, we looked at this Volvo dealer that Gerald recommended. He said, well, we can get you a car by December, maybe. A little late for Munster.

[56:16]

Then we saw, what's this car sitting here? They said, oh, that's a mistake. It looked like a nice mistake for us. She said, but it's not a new model. It's brand new, but 2000, not 2001. They'd made a mistake in ordering for someone and the guy wouldn't take it, so they had it. So we said, what's it going to be? He said, well, I can give you 18 or 19% off. So we quickly figured out how to borrow the money and Monday, Tuesday's a holiday, we have to get the license plate.

[57:26]

So we had to get some special five-day license plate, which wasn't delivered in Freiburg until just before three. So as soon as we got it, we called Gerald and said, maybe I can make it in time. That's why you had a longer break. I'm sorry, but anyway, I'm happy to have a new car. It only happened once or twice in my life. So if I'm not here tomorrow morning, I'm out driving. I need to try out the headlights. Okay. So back to our lecture.

[58:26]

Someone asked me if I could say something more about the posture and the space in the posture. And I keep trying to think of how to put into our context this practice. And I always try to I keep thinking about how to put this practice, describe this practice in our context. That's why you hear me trying to find new terms in English. Like adjacent awareness. Because I just find the Sanskrit and Pali terms aren't very useful.

[59:51]

And unless you want to look at it in a scholarly way, it's very hard to even get one meaning that's useful, because they mean different things at different times and to different commentators. Yeah, and Sanskrit just has different language categories than we have. Und Sanskrit hat andere Sprachkategorien als wir diese haben. Okay, so I've long ago tried to find categories in English and hopefully in German with the help of superb translators. Also ich habe vor langem entschieden zu versuchen Kategorien in Englisch zu finden und hoffentlich auch in Deutsch mit der Hilfe von ausgezeichneten Übersetzern.

[61:01]

And of course it's a good way to study Buddhism, is to translate, maybe. Yeah, even from the first day, when she could answer people's questions quite efficiently. First day of translating, first day of... Yes. When you were a beginner at Zen. After translating, you could answer people's questions... Yeah, a little bit. So maybe it's useful to all of you because there's a kind of translation going on. Yeah. And I also find it interesting to think of it not just in our context but in the historical context of Buddhism.

[62:26]

And I think it's also helpful if you look at it not only in our context, but in the whole context of Buddhism. Because as I've often said, I think we are faced with somewhat the same challenge of bringing Buddhism into the West as occurred in the early days of Zen in China. Now, you may find that sometimes compared, I suppose to some other teachers, I present Buddhism in a rather complex way. But I'm trying to make it real for you. And so you can recreate this practice yourself. And the inner debate you have with yourself about practice When things come up later, you'll have some kind of, oh yes, something will make sense from, I hope, from what I said at some other time.

[63:54]

Because we're always debating what this means and finding reasons why it doesn't make sense. We're finding reasons. We're trying to talk ourselves out of practice often. And if you look at the early system of Buddhism, The more you get into it, it is extremely complicated. You study something like the ten Bhumis. It always sounds like a plane going through a sound barrier.

[65:03]

Yeah, but anyway, it's the ten B-H-U-M-I, boomies. I-E, okay. And each one is composed of numerous teachings which are lists which are realized in each bhuni. So here we have a practice which is trying to simplify this, simplify the practice but not simplify the teaching. And the primary simplification is this idea of keeping, holding to the one. Okay, now I suppose... So we can think about the holding to the one as a kind of space, actually.

[66:26]

Because when you bring your attention to an object, first of all, an object consciousness is an object consciousness. And if the object is formless, you have a space-like consciousness instead of an object consciousness. And so, I mean, when you take a very simple practice, And you look at it carefully, as I said. You see that a very simple practice that proceeds sequentially over time

[67:28]

It has as deep an effect on us as our heartbeat and lungs going over time. Das hat so eine tiefe Auswirkung auf uns, wie auch unser Herzschlag und unsere Atem-Lungen-Bewegungen über die Zeit hinweg. And when your attention is on an object, you're also involved in the past, present and future of the object. and the name and language of the object. So we start out with, because it's necessary, with one pointedness, with an object-based consciousness.

[68:33]

Based consciousness. But after you get used to being able to bring your attention to an object, As I said, you shift to the field of mind itself becomes the object. Awareness itself becomes the object. This isn't actually very hard to do. Once you see it, you don't have to go through a big process of getting there. You can do it, I think, almost immediately.

[69:34]

But the importance is to notice, to understand its importance. Okay. So this keeping to the one is also keeping to awareness, formless awareness. Which brings you more truly into the present than an object can. And your consciousness hasn't gone out to an object. It sort of is pulled towards yourself into a field of awareness. Now, that's supported by feeling your zazen posture as a series of spaces.

[70:47]

So I gave you instruction the other day of feeling your posture as the space of your legs and then the space of your gut or hara. And if you do this practice, after a while you get to feel the space of the body. As much as the body itself. And when we do slow kinhin, regular kinhin, You can continue that exploration of the space of the body.

[72:00]

So as I think I said, we step forward in the kind of sphere of breath. and lift our breath and mind and energy through our heel, up through our body. And it's like, especially, Kinyan's especially useful place, way, To feel, get used to this field of energy, space and breath. And feel really settled in your walking kinhin. So this slow qin yin is our basic continuation of zazen.

[73:16]

And a way to begin to know how to feel the space of the body, say like when you're washing dishes in the kitchen. You feel the space of your arms, space of your torso, and so forth. It's just as easy as you can feel your hand or your physical body. Just you've been taught to notice a form realm and not a formless realm. Zen practice and yoga practice in general is to move toward feeling a formless realm. And so strange that to me it's that the yoga is so rooted in the body but rooted in the body it allows us to open into formless realms.

[74:31]

And even to feel mind as a formless realm. Because mind located in the body can experience formlessness. Much more fully than the mind when it goes to objects or thoughts. Now you get it, I think you get it, that when the mind goes from outer objects to thoughts, And we have the extraordinary genius of language which works and expresses this relationship between objects and language. But that generates a particular kind of mind.

[76:01]

And when that mind takes over your life, you have almost no spiritual life. how to get ourselves out of that very useful but limited mind. Very useful but limited mind. Productive, useful, limited. Based always on editing and selecting. It edits out most of what's happening and most of the present.

[77:01]

And many of us, especially the ones of us who are used to being smart, Even if we have some experience that's rooted in formlessness, rooted in wide recognitions of how we actually exist, We still try to turn that into meaning. We try to find out, figure out what it means. Or where it comes from. Or how it relates to other things. Yeah, or how it fits in with the traditional teachings.

[78:22]

First of all, is it a traditional teaching? And then, oh yes, it's a traditional teaching and it relates to this Bhumi and, you know. You've just jumped in the ocean Swimming, you've discovered an inner tube. An inner tube. Oh, yeah, yeah. Or like Tsukiyoshi used to talk about the blind turtle. The one-eyed turtle. You know, they say these turtles, some of these turtles, they don't know if they ever actually die of old age. I think they can be a thousand years old. Maybe they only die by accident.

[79:22]

So this one happens to have only one eye. And it swims along and it sees a piece of driftwood with a knot hole in it. You swim to the surface and then you... And he sees the light, you know. And he says, Sukershi says, that's how seldom... We see how things actually exist. Through your practice, you've dived into the ocean. You've not only found an inner tube.

[80:27]

Both eyes are functioning. Maybe it'd be better if you only had one eye. And then you find the inner tube is attached to a big sailboat that's there. And you climb onto it. And then you go right into harbor and tie it up. And you say, what's the meaning of this boat? And I better get it licensed. So we have some big experience and we immediately try to tie it up to the dock. Just allow yourself some freedom to set sail into this sea of awareness. Just be present to what happens. Dogen said, and Tsukiroshi used to like to quote him, We like what's not true.

[81:49]

And we're very ready to believe what's not true. There's only rare practitioners believe what's true. If you try to tie things into meaning systems, into frameworks, you always bring them back into this consciousness, object, language world. where your self makes it into a story enhancing self. Maybe you just have to keep feeling to let yourself loose. And the space of the body is a way to feel.

[83:02]

The space of the body is a way to start letting yourself loose. And we bring and... And to bring ourselves into the formless world, not the form world. That's the secret of adept Zen practice. And when we've really got, you know, a real feeling, feeling of the space of regular Kenyan, We can open that up into walking Kinhin and fast Kinhin. So the whole space of the room walks with us.

[84:12]

And maybe you have to kind of keep, not look around too much. Looking around, you're not ever supposed to look around in Zen. What's this guy doing inside? Now, when you look around, what mind do you suppose comes into action? I'll let you figure that one out. So you start doing your kin hin and the whole room is walking with you. And each person is walking with you. And these practices of holding to the one began to have Taoist and Buddhist versions. This practice of holding to the one began to have Taoist and Buddhist versions of each other. And Taoism, which is much more explicitly sexual than Buddhism,

[85:17]

sees this holding to the one as a sexual embrace. Because the ideal is, in a sexual embrace, subject and object disappear. And the space of the two people merge into one space. So this image of holding to the one in Taoist practice is like you're always embracing space and the subject-object relationship disappears. Now, I could describe it in this Taoist way. To make it more interesting for you.

[86:34]

Or perhaps less interesting. But I would refrain from speaking of it that way. But still this sense of coming into a formless realm Again, the simple practice of a tension, of a continuity of a tension, brought into the field of consciousness transforming the field of consciousness into a field of awareness. This is the alchemy of attention.

[87:35]

It's really a kind of alchemy. You're transforming the very consciousness in which you live. And consciousness keeps Zazen mind out. Consciousness keeps dreaming mind out. And the mind of non-dreaming deep sleep. And in this field of awareness, The field of awareness. Zazen mind begins to surface. Blind turtles begin to surface.

[88:35]

In a way the deep mind of deep sleep which usually has to wait between your dreams, can usually surface in you. And again this opens up into a kind of bliss. Again, why, it may be momentary, etc., but it begins to feel it. It may be momentary, the bliss, And that's why, again, Taoism gives us a kind of sexual description, this holding to the one.

[89:42]

And this holding to the one, understood in relative and absolute, is the practice of the five ranks. The practice of the five means. The relationship of relative and absolute is a way of understanding this holding to the one in which both emptiness and form are merged. through refraining from naming, refraining from activating usual consciousness, and sometimes aided by simply breathing into your awareness,

[90:44]

And this field of awareness is supported by feeling the space of your body and is supported by coming through zazen to know this space which is neither within nor without. All this begins to work together. Even from the beginning of Zen practice it's working. But mostly you notice what's not true. You notice the overlay of your habitual consciousness. But as you practice, more and more spaces occur where you see into this wider mind.

[92:01]

And usually we get our first real taste of it that we can notice in Zazen and in Sashin. So you notice these things? You trust practice? You... Yeah, that's enough. When you have this feeling of zazen, of practice, as I'm suggesting, every practice begins to open it up.

[93:25]

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