So I'm wondering, you know, I thought maybe today I would review our practice a bit. And, you know, Dogen says, a phrase from Dogen, complete that which appears. We can just take that much, complete that which appears. Now this is a phrase we can use. An instruction we can use. And it's different than just notice that which appears. Because you also notice and in addition you notice and in addition you complete.

[01:10]

What happens then? Where does that put us? Now, I bring that up only as an example of Dogen's practice, teaching, which you can see that in the use of to present practice in that way, you can see again the background of the Abhidharma. So, you know, if we continue, I presume we're scheduled to continue the winter branches next year. So we've had three meetings on the Abhidharma.

[02:16]

Do you want to continue this? Or should we... next year concentrate on Dogen or concentrate on Koans? What would you like? Yeah, I mean, how the winter branches is going to go on? Will it start repeating itself after three years? Or will it go on until we all disappear into the sunset. So, what is Zen practice? Well, you know, first of all, it's rooted in meditation practice.

[03:30]

That's what Zen basically means. Now if we look at the Buddha's teachings, we can see it starts with these teachings. Extensive teachings. And the Abhidharma, as I've said, tries to define what these teachings essentially are. And then the next stage is how do we practice with these teachings? And they're rooted, they develop out of practice and enlightenment. How do these teachings which come out of practice and enlightenment return into our practice, return into and support our own potential for enlightenment.

[04:46]

So some And a basic and simple process like this has led to the Zen school. Which first of all emphasizes sitting like the Buddha sat. Okay. So what do we do at first? We sit and we practice mindfulness. I guess first most of us sit and then we learn something about mindfulness. Although sometimes it's vice versa. Then the next step is we sit in a way that we slip out of, release ourselves from ordinary consciousness.

[06:02]

And, you know, this happens, I mean, if we, I mean, you're forced into it in a sashin. I mean, really, sashins work when you, even sitting for long periods of time, you know, even a couple of periods in the morning, works when you slip out of... loosen the hold of ordinary consciousness. Now, at night you are not in ordinary consciousness. And in meditation now you're not asleep, but you're again not in ordinary consciousness.

[07:12]

But you can't really sit with any satisfaction or regularity if you can't sit. outside of the grasp of usual consciousness. So in effect you're learning to becoming familiar with and learning how to loosen the hold of consciousness on us. And I think you discussed yesterday maybe that you have some kind of zazen body then, or practice body. Mm-hmm. Now, in Zen particularly, we don't give you stages or much instruction.

[08:35]

We don't give you stages to follow or much instruction. Because if we give you stages or instructions, you're actually bringing consciousness in. So maybe the hard part for a lot of people in the beginning is not having something to do. You're just sitting there. But after a while, you get a feel for it. And it's actually... Strangely satisfying. And you may even notice it changes how you are in the day and how your relationships with people are. And so far this is a kind of, you could say, a kind of scientific approach to meditation. Now, as a way of sitting, it's actually been taken...

[09:39]

The refinement has taken a thousand years in the history of Buddhism to get to the importance of sitting this way. But you're not really at this point dealing with the Buddha's teachings, the teachings of Buddhism directly. But at this point in time, you don't really have anything to do with the Buddhist teachings. It's a kind of scientific approach. Maybe you could say that you could convince somebody. They might do it, whether they had any interest in Buddhism or not. And it's more of a scientific approach. It's something you could convince someone who has nothing to do with Buddhism. And this is often satisfying enough and transformative enough that it is enough for a lot of people. But it becomes enough in that sense in the framework of the person you are,

[11:03]

personal history you have and so forth. It makes things better, but not better through being different. And part of this is you start to... Once you develop this zazen mind, this... let's call it a mind of awareness. Now, instead of bringing consciousness to it, you start bringing this awareness to your consciousness. To consciousness instead of consciousness to awareness. In other words, that's the general conception a teacher has of the process when he or she is relating to the practitioner. And the teachers at first trying to

[12:34]

you know, stop the practitioner from bringing consciousness to his practice, her practice. And so if the student, the practitioner asks some kind of question that's a version of explicitly or implicitly, how am I doing in my practice? A good teacher coughs and goes the other direction. Because you're trying to bring consciousness and your self-referential thinking to your practice. So you begin then, I'd say the next process is a weaving of mind and body together.

[13:56]

So mind and body begin to have the same pace. This is primarily done through the breath. Okay, and then you begin to weave mind and body together with consciousness. Now, if you want... Somewhere in the midst of that, you start bringing teachings in. Now, sometimes some teachers like to explain everything and how, you know, in some detail what things are about.

[15:01]

And what kind of person we are. And that's often the teaching for lay people and not for meditators. Because lay people want to know how to be a good person and you want to instruct them in this and so forth. Yeah. But for the meditator or the person who's going to develop themselves through meditation, you only want to give them instructions for awareness and not for consciousness. And awareness is not discursive. So it can only deal with images and... a few words or a phrase.

[16:13]

Because awareness knows and is intentional, but it's not... It doesn't think. So you have to give it teachings in a form that awareness can turn them into intentions and a field of knowing. That way you will evolve as a person and as a And your lived life will evolve through awareness and not through consciousness. So consciousness is a partner, but the...

[17:14]

The main force in your life is awareness. Intuition, insight, things like that. There are versions of awareness. Okay. So how do you introduce a teaching? Now, in the late Abhidharma, in early Madhyamaka, there was a concern or a study of what should be the focus of... a focus of observation, a focus of practice.

[18:35]

Observation, focus of practice. Yeah, and sometimes in early Buddhism they'd focus on a stick of incense or a blue spot and various things. I knew a bank robber who... was in jail for a while for bank robbery, and he freed himself from jail. I mean, eventually, but freed himself inside. But he found a spot on the ceiling of his cell. And he just, without knowing anything about Buddhism, just began focusing on it because he had to spend a lot of time in this cell. And he began to have experiences which led him into Buddhist practice. He was a really nice guy. I still know him. But Zen emphasizes a pervasive object of meditation, of focus, a pervasive object to focus on.

[20:21]

It covers everything. It pervades everything. Okay, now let me go back a moment. Zen also has made the decision, and I think Majamaka and Yogacara make the decision, that the real problem is our worldviews, that's the real background problem of our suffering. You may have various personal problems, psychological problems, all kinds of things, right? But even if you solve those problems, if your sense of what the world is like is wrong, the problems come back again.

[21:33]

If you see the world as implicitly permanent or as a container, you can't really solve problems in a fundamental way. You can only kind of move them around the room. So if you look carefully at Zen, It's really about your worldviews over and over again. Is everything changing or not? That's really basically a worldview. So one object of meditation is a focus meditation is something that's co-extensive with everything. Which includes everything. For example, the five skandhas can be understood that way.

[22:42]

There's nothing that happens to you that doesn't happen in some category or some related way to the five skandhas. So this is an object of meditation which includes everything. Now it also happens to be an object of meditation which includes which you have to know something about. So it's classified as a pervasive object of meditation requiring knowledge. Now, you know, I'm just... You don't have to remember this at all.

[23:58]

I'm mentioning it just to say that there's some teaching behind what makes a wisdom phrase, for instance. Now there's categories of objects of meditation which are like Why don't I get along with my spouse? That would be an object of meditation which includes discursive thought. Those are practical objects of meditation which you can take into your lay life into the awareness practice within your lay life. Now, this use of the teachings in this way and this use of phrases works very well in lay practice. And the use of teaching in this way and the use of such sentences works very well in the learning practice.

[25:19]

Meditation practice in some sashin or semi-monastic practice is extremely helpful in establishing us in awareness. But as long as you can establish yourself in awareness and keep renewing that establishment, then most of your practice can occur in your lay life. Another object of meditation is one which includes its goals. So, just now is enough, a phrase I give you often. The phrase has built into it the goal of just now is enough. hat dieser Satz in sich eingebaut, das Ziel, es ist jetzt genug, oder bereits verbunden.

[26:38]

Diese Sätze, das sind Sätze, die funktionieren, weil sie das Resultat, das du wünschst, bereits beschreiben. Yeah, and then there's a similar, if you concentrate, say, on the earth element, you know, the fire, water, earth, so the solidity of yourself. These are all... This is an example of a pervasive object of meditation, which is what it's concentrating on. You are concentrating on your own solidity. It's not a goal, it is what you're concentrating on.

[27:38]

And this is one of the basic Abhidharma practices to concentrate on the four or five elements so you know another person. I relate to David in terms of his solidity. And he's got more than an average amount of solidity. Not in a negative sense. So when I feel my own solidity, I can feel David's solidity. And he makes me feel yours and yours and so forth. So this is just a way to really examine and enter into how we exist.

[28:40]

But this is a method derived from the Abhidharma epistemology. Now, I should stop in a minute or two. Okay. I think I should come back to fishing with a straight hook. Now, again, let me... Okay. You've developed in Zazen a mind of... which you successively free it from views.

[30:00]

So in a way, you're establishing one of these phrases or one of the teachings like the five dharmas. You're establishing it as a way to notice but not a way to define. So you want to bring these things into awareness, as I said the other day, so they're just sort of behind the parted curtain of consciousness. And they notice things. It's fishing with a straight line. You don't know what you're going to catch, but you begin to notice things that consciousness doesn't notice.

[31:08]

But your world views don't notice. So the teachings aren't so much meant to teach you as to awaken you to teach yourself. I think that's enough for today. Thank you very much. Nö, man darf sich gleichermaßen jedes Wesen und jeden Ort durchdringen.

[32:13]

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