So this is what I would mean by societal impediments or kleshas. And if you want to study this in yourself, I would observe where your attention goes. Just sort of take an inventory of the next few weeks. What captures your attention? And then I would also study what gives you a sense of well-being. And then I would also study what gives you a sense of self-worth. And how do you anticipate new doses of self-worth? Now, I'm not saying you should change anything. Just notice what you're doing.

[01:01]

Because where your attention goes is where your life goes. And if you want to make some changes, you have to change where your attention goes. So that's enough for the break. So let's have one minute of sitting. Well, What is your attention?

[03:36]

Where is your attention? This is the most basic condition and decision of life. Thank you for translating. Yes. Could you give us an exercise how during sitting observe the thoughts

[04:50]

It's not... Usually it happens whether you want to or not. But the basic mental posture of zazen is uncorrected mind. Or don't invite your thoughts to tea. Let them come and let them go. But observe them. Okay. Next question. What do you mean to observe them? In this case, if I don't think about the thought, I just interrupt you. I say, stop, and I try to think about my So he's not observing, he's just cutting off the thought.

[06:14]

No, just observe it. It's better just to observe it than cut it off. You don't agree. Can you do it again? If I observe it, I think about it. That's why it's hard to do what I say. Well, there's a certain skill to it. You're basically trying to observe without identifying with it.

[07:42]

Now, there are practices to cut off your thinking. But I think that that should not happen until you do a whole recapitulation of your personal story. And after you've done that, you don't need to cut them off so much because they dissolve by themselves. Zen practice is not something you do. It's more something you let happen under certain conditions. And the posture is one of the conditions.

[08:45]

So we pay attention to our posture. We actually do try to straighten our posture, but we don't try to straighten our mind. You can't do much harm to yourself straightening your posture. You can do actual harm to yourself by straightening your mind. better to discover your mind within good posture. That's enough. I mean, I could speak on this for quite a while, but I should stop for now. I just got a thought. You mean... No. Yeah, I'm practicing just being here.

[09:54]

And you mentioned that you must be a little crazy just to be observing with your breath and just being your body. So you actually need past and future to be somebody. Are you using that to be somebody? And if you don't use past and future, who are you? Deutsch. Also die Frage ist, gebrauchen wir Vergangenheit und Zukunft? Gebrauchen oder brauchen wir es, um jemand zu sein? Ja. Who are you? Why do you need to be a who? Well, in society there is a kind of really pressure that there is, you know, you need to be somebody.

[11:03]

I mean, that's why we identify so much better. Yeah, it's true. You have no problem being somebody. When you can sometimes take a vacation from being a who, And then when you have to do something, go back to being Gisela. Or sometimes be Manjushri. You have a choice of how to string the beads. Yes. I don't know if I get it right. Did you say yesterday evening that the most common question you are asked is, who is the observer?

[12:07]

I was thinking about, because I practice a lot with observer, different kinds of observer, I think I never had this question. And I was thinking why I never had this question if it's so common. I'm sorry to have made a problem for you. For me it feels the observer is just a part of my mind. Is it a mistake to think in this way? I didn't know exactly if I understood correctly what Roshi said yesterday. The question that is asked the most is the question who is the observer? and that surprised me a little bit, because I work relatively a lot in meditation with my observer, but I never asked myself this question, who is this observer, and of course I asked myself, why don't you ask yourself this question when it is so common,

[13:28]

No, the observer is just part of our mind. That's first. Second, it is not permanent. In other words, it changes. There's different kinds of observers. Third, it's not always necessary. So sometimes it's necessary. And fourth, you can give various kinds of identification to the observer. For instance, I'm convinced that medieval Europeans identified the observer in a different way than contemporary Europeans do.

[14:37]

And I'm convinced that Asians identify the observer in a different way than we do. And if you identify the observer in a different way, you change the karma receptors. In other words, you change the way you accumulate experience. So you change the way dynamics like unconscious and so forth work. So in this latter stage, you can maybe understand the suggestiveness of Hegel's statement. The freedom to become an artist of the self.

[15:40]

Thus as Dogen says, when all things are the Buddha Dharma, there are sentient beings and Buddhas. This is as much a choice as your choice of attention or direction. Yes? To talk about the observer, that's one of the things I noticed in practice, that it's possible to use the observer not as a point of pi, but as a point of saying, as soon as I can observe, that's not me. That, for me, is the most basic function. And then you can always step one, go back one step further.

[16:43]

So it's not so much that I feel that I am the observer, but I use it to not identify with what you observe. So it's more of a function than a place of identity. That's a very good intuition of how to practise. But one would say... I knew there might be a but. One of the things that scares me lately in practice is that when I have an open state, I feel very functional. But as soon as the other state comes in where I feel like not connected or disconnected, it becomes harder and harder to function in that state. And it becomes more and more like a sickness, like, you know, there's a tendency to just want to take long naps in the afternoon and just wait till it passes.

[17:49]

And that is scaring. Well... Deutsch. It was maybe the first part, too, in Deutsch. To the observer, my question in practice is that it is not at all about saying, I am the observer and who is this observer, but that the fact of the observer works like a knife in order to practically not identify with what you are observing, because at the moment when you observe it, it is like this for me, I am no longer there. So it is more a function, i.e. a process, than a place of identification. Another experience I have had in recent times is that in the moment when this open state of mind is not there, Well, to the first part of what he said, I said that he had, as you heard, a good intention, good intuition about how to practice it.

[18:58]

In the second part, if you start to practice and you begin to feel the contrast between nirvanic mind and samsaric mind, Then a samsarist's mind becomes to be more obviously a sickness. And you're more impaired by the delusiveness of it. Impaired means damaged or interfered with.

[20:19]

And I suppose it's somewhat analogous to in psychotherapy. There's a stage you go through as you begin to see your problems and feel a little free of them, you start feeling worse. Yes, I think there's two responses to the sickness of samsara. One is, this is the way most people live. So one just bears it and tries to observe it. Again, this basic accepting mind of Zazen accepts that too. So as you might say in mindfulness practice, now I'm angry, now I'm really angry. And you now say, now I'm deluded, now I'm more deluded.

[21:28]

But maybe you're too deluded to say you're deluded. But practice would be like somebody who's manic-depressive. While you're depressed, it's helpful to remember that sometimes you feel better. So you create some... Oh, sorry. Okay, could you just repeat? It's helpful if you are depressive that you remember that you are depressive. No, that you remember that sometimes you feel better. You have felt better. It's almost if you remember you're depressed, it means you're remembering that you could feel better.

[22:32]

So to have some faith and practice underneath everything. So that's all the process of accepting this samsaric sickness. But also, the second response is to begin to fine-tune your life so it happens less. That's probably the most important... one of the most important things for sure in practice is to not sacrifice your state of mind. If you have a job that requires you to constantly sacrifice your state of mind, you should change your job or...

[23:42]

change the way your job works for you or change your job. Yeah, there's some examples where you have to suffer, say that you have a parent who's seriously Alzheimer's and you have to take care of them. Well, this is then something else. It may make you sacrifice your own state of mind, but still we have to then find the means, capacity to do that. Yes. Before you had started to put your hand up.

[24:58]

Maybe you were just scratching. Yes. Do you see a connection, coming back to the matter of the observer, do you see a connection with the mantra of the Heart Sutra, the going beyond? You observe, and then there is one that observes the observer, and there is one that observes who observes the observer. You go from one metal level to the next, and then you explode into emptiness. Is that the meaning of the go, or one of the meanings of the going beyond? Deutsch? You must be... There is a relationship between the observer and the mantra in the Heart Sutra, where it is said to go beyond that. And if I observe, and then the observer observes, [...] Sounds good.

[25:58]

Yeah, gone, gone, gone beyond means you've gone beyond any measurable way of being. Doesn't necessarily mean you've gone into the infinite regression of the observer. And I think you can only carry that infinite regression back three or four levels. And then what really is the case? It's not the observer observing the previous observer. You begin to have a different kind of observer. The mind stops. That may be one way to stop the mind. There's various ways to stop the mind.

[27:12]

But if you just work with the observer, I think what's important, and this is, there's a major philosopher in the West now who, it's a very important point for him that the observer regresses, infinitely regresses. But I don't believe the observer actually infinitely regresses. You can have an observer, an observer, an observer, but at some point you actually have a different kind of observer. And what's more true and philosophically important is that actually we have many different kinds of observer. Because as soon as you start thinking of one kind of observer you have a kind of theological system. Even if the observer is the entirety of everything.

[28:22]

And that's more a Hindu view. Yes. What stays in my mind is what you mentioned, the trivial way where you have the possibility to decide where to go. And this in the context where I point my attention to, my life follows. I don't know who makes the decision, but it feels on the one hand quite good, but on the other hand it's scaring. Yes.

[29:36]

A report from the front. Do you have that expression in German, a report from the front, where the army is? Yes. And also the point that when you arrive in the presence, there is no control, there is no sort of security anymore. And that for this you need faith and confidence. Faith isn't a bad thing. But it's a delusion that it's insecure. The real insecurity is trying to be always secure. Nothing so insecure as trying to be always in control.

[30:39]

So the security of being out of control No, in English that sounds funny because it means you might be a wild man. The security... Well, Alan Watts put it aptly in the title of a book, The Wisdom of Insecurity. Yes? About that samsara sickness. Mm-hmm. Do you have control over it? Does one or do I? You specifically.

[31:45]

I'm always taking the medicine of practice. To the extent that I can to the extent to which I can know I'm engaged in samsara I am not sick very often. But samsara, you know, I'm always extending the boundaries of what I see as a samsaric matrix. So the basic difference is a degree of skill, not that there's a certain leap where you start having control if you're in it or not, but it's how highly you're skilled in avoiding it.

[33:06]

No. I mean, there is a certain craft to it, but But the important thing is your viewpoint changes on it. If you're viewing samsara from the point of view of freedom from samsara then when you're drawn into samsara it's a very different experience than when you're when your viewpoint is from within samsara. So it's not so much that you control samsara, but rather that you just don't feel identified with it.

[34:22]

And if you do get fogged in, does that make sense? Usually, if you're practicing regularly, the fogged-in quality, if you can stay with it, is usually a sign that you're on the edge of a breakthrough. Ordinary life is trying to control samsara. Yeah. Yesterday you talked about that there are different ways of enlightenment through body, emotion, mind. I was a little bit surprised by this. For me, I thought it would be an experience which includes all of it. There might be different access to this by using the body or the mind or something.

[35:39]

Since the subject of this seminar is the Buddhist understanding of freedom, then I should speak about enlightenment. Dogen says, the moon in the water does not break the water, nor does the moon get wet.

[36:54]

And Sukhiroshi commented on this, said, if you liked Sake a great deal before enlightenment, After enlightenment, you'll still have a hard time walking past the sake shop. And Linji, Rinzai and Dogen say versions of the same thing. Linji says, no matter what your enlightenment experience is, it still doesn't change your basic embedded habits. It changes your perspective. Is this the same with beer? I'm sorry, it's true.

[38:05]

But, you know... You go into a bar and you say, Ein Satori, bitte. Okay. You'd be surprised if the bartender brought it, you know. It's a Bodhisattva in disguise, you know. Slapped you across the face. You froze and awakened. There's a koan like that. Okay. Okay, let's confine ourselves right now to the enlightenment experience.

[39:08]

The enlightenment experience, again, is something that's just a human capacity. It's not necessarily Buddhist. So I really think we have to distinguish between what Buddhism means by enlightenment, or some other teaching, and the enlightenment experience. And as I said last night, I think looking at the paintings of Picasso and Matisse, you can see that they had different kinds of enlightenment experiences. And my own observation is that that enlightenment is either the body, you can have a physical enlightenment, an emotional enlightenment, or a mental enlightenment.

[40:15]

Now, I don't mean what Buddhism means by enlightenment. I just mean what people experience changes their life. A mental enlightenment would be you come to a contradiction in your thinking and suddenly you see right through the process of thinking itself. And for some people after that all their thinking is crystal clear. Quite relaxed and easy and open. And they're not fooled by things. But emotionally they still may be quite confused. They may have a lot of anger and so forth. And I also think there's one quite famous teacher in the West who's now dead.

[41:40]

But I would say he was physically and mentally enlightened, but not emotionally enlightened. He remained deceptive and greedy and so forth. while his body was quite luminous and his mind was really clear. So I think we have to be realistic about enlightenment and not turn it into some kind of God thing. It's fairly common. I'm sure all of you have had some kind of enlightened experience. You might not have noticed it even. But still, your life exhibits... qualities we associate with somebody who's had that turning around at some level in their being.

[42:44]

So, say that a person... has practicing in the Dharma Sangha has a physical enlightenment. What do I see happens to me? that I can feel and that they often tell me about. Their backbone may open up. They may feel a column of light in their body and a whole total different energy flow. They may even be scared to death by it. And think it's some, they may be going crazy.

[43:45]

But this doesn't affect necessarily their mental habits or their emotional habits. Gives them the basis to work on it. So if somebody has such an experience, my job is to give them a context to work on that, accept that mentally and emotionally, and allow it then to affect their emotional and mental life. More common, people have experiences of a mental enlightenment. They see through their thinking. That kind of experience is easier to lose. Because so much mental activity comes in and begins to cover over it.

[44:48]

So Zen practice in a Sangha is to create the situation where you support enlightenment experiences and you mature your enlightenment experience. And so that's why most practice is really the maturing of enlightenment experiences. It's a practice after enlightenment. Now, the decision, Dogen understands, and I think completely accurately, initial enlightenment is the decision to practice. Whether you mature that, whether you unpack that depends on a lot of factors. your character, your courage, your willingness and opportunity to change your life, to support this and develop it, and so forth.

[46:11]

There's also original enlightenment and actualizing enlightenment and so forth. but the Buddhist way of acknowledging and cultivating enlightenment. So we could call this seminar the Buddhist understanding of enlightenment, which is basically what the title as it presently is means, But we could also call it the Buddhist understanding of awareness. And as understanding we could substitute for the word understanding, we could substitute vision. Because the Buddhist understanding of awareness and enlightenment is also the Buddhist vision of awareness and enlightenment.

[47:19]

And the vision of enlightenment means that all the teaching of zazen, the way zazen practice is taught is based on a vision of enlightenment. Not That's a better way to understand it than that it's a practice to attain enlightenment. You begin to enact enlightenment. Do you have the word enact in the same way? If you want to be a certain way, you begin to act that way. Yes, beatitude. I had a funny and short dream this night about... Every seminar you bring one or two... I really start laughing about it.

[48:35]

The two of us were walking down the street. Into the sunset. No, no. Just the street. Oh, yeah, okay. At Iceland, I don't know, I didn't notice it at the beginning, but I never feel angry anymore. And you said, oh fine, that is an enlightenment. But the way I had to laugh because the way you said it, it was just, oh, yeah, let's have a cup of coffee. It was so normal. If we do that in real life, I might respond that way. And I might try to make you angry. I thought, don't tell this at the seminar because... Okay. They're all happy out there.

[50:01]

The Dharma is being taught. What do you call wisdom? Is it one of the observer you just talked about? Well... Well... Well, the translation of prajna as wisdom turns prajna into a kind of thing or knowledge. And I think we could define wisdom as that activity and way of being that returns to emptiness. Returns to emptiness.

[51:02]

And compassion then is that activity which returns to form. Now, we're going to have lunch at 1? Is the food ready at 1? The food is ready any time. Oh. Anybody hungry? So if we stop at 1, we would eat at 1 or at 1.10 or something. OK. So maybe we'll stop a little before 1. We'll see. The Buddha was asked, who are you?

[52:29]

Are you a king or a sage or something? And he said, I am awake. Which his answer means he was resting in awareness. And there were no other thoughts that he could say except, oh, I'm just here. So in the beginning there was awareness. But awareness can be directed and it can be developed.

[53:42]

So those are two important things you have to know, that awareness, there is awareness, And it can be directed. And it can be developed or diminished. And all of practice again falls into that. Or expresses that or... And that awareness is in front of you all the time or within you all the time. Practice is to notice that. And practice is to let that noticing inform your decisions. And find your well-being within that. and trust that awareness will be the best basis for developing your life.

[54:56]

Who could deny that? So if you accept that, then the question is, How can you begin to do this with as little compromise as possible? And compromise is also, from the point of view of wisdom, compromise means compassion. Because here we are together, we do things with each other. We're part of a society. So, we're always involved in some kind of compromise and adjustment. Now, if we understand that as compassion, it usually works pretty well.

[56:05]

If that compromise becomes really where we live, And then we begin to really find ourselves in the midst of greed, hate and delusion. Then these compromises are a great hindrance. So there's always this kind of relationship between the compromise or the leaking, as it says in the first koan of the Book of Serenity. And finding yourself, gathering yourself into awareness. Now, if you, if how you direct your, well, let me start again, okay. Awareness

[57:05]

has two main forms other than pure awareness. Intention and attention. So your life is going to be shaped by your intention and your attention. So your job in practice is to look at what your intentions are and where your attention is. Again, it's that simple. And if your intentions are narrow... or deluded, then your awareness narrows and gets distorted and samsaric.

[58:29]

If your attention is distracted or confused or deluded, likewise it undermines or destroys your awareness. So the all yogic practice is about redirecting your attention. So geht es in allen yogischen Praktiken darum, eure Intention neu auszurichten. And the first step is to read, and the most basic and kind of universal practice is to redirect your attention from identifying with your thoughts to your breath. Now there's three things I think you can work with. Yes, I've been pointing out recently the sense of location, Der Sinn des Ortes.

[60:06]

Let's call it the location point. Der Ortungspunkt. The identity point. Der Identitätspunkt. And the observing point. Und der beobachtende Punkt. Now these are the tools, maybe we could call them, of redirecting your attention. So, or it's noticing the structure of attention. Because awareness can infinitely divide. But in our experience, awareness falls into these categories. The attention point. Or the location point.

[61:07]

So if, going back, if you bring your attention to your breath, which is completely easy to do, as I say, an insect can carry the planet. So, It's easy to do, but it's hard to do for very long. Why is it hard to do for very long? Because your identification point is in your thoughts. And it's like a magnet. And although it's easy to bring the location point to your breath, It very quickly, like with a huge rubber band, snaps back to thoughts.

[62:24]

For instance, I can bring my attention point or location attention point to you. And without some practice, I'll very quickly start thinking about what kind of person you are, how I feel, whether I want a green shirt like that. Because my identification point is not in my breath. So as long as your identification point, wherever it is, it will draw your attention to it. So first we practice getting the habit of moving our attention point. And we try to bring the identification point along with it.

[63:35]

And then there's this third, the observer point. Which is deciding to bring your attention point to your breath. Now I think what you'll discover is if you become successful at bringing the identification point also into your breath, the observing point then begins to follow along with it. The observing point isn't some mirror-like observer that's fixed. You can't do much about the observing point because it's kind of hard to get at it.

[64:48]

But if your location point and your identification point are the same, that begins to move the observing point. Does that make sense? Now, the problem is that If you really believe you are your thoughts, if your energy is invested in your narrative unity, we could say that the self is the story seeking unity. The Western self is a story-seeking narrative unity.

[66:05]

And it either will repress things that go against the unity, Or the story will get, which psychotherapists help you do, widen it so it accepts the contradictions. Now, believe me, we have to do this. And as I've said many times, the main problem I've seen with people practicing Zen, particularly young people, is they use their youthful energy to join to Zen tools.

[67:09]

to block or distort their story. They start when they're 20 and by 30 they're only 21. Their story hasn't matured. And I think that enlightenment experiences can sometimes be quite deluding. I think of a scientist I read about recently. I'd never heard about him.

[68:20]

But he... The article said he's one of the four or five most brilliant scientists of... this century in America. And from around mid-30s or so, he was completely crazy. And in his 50s, he began to come out of it. And what he said was... What led me off into insanity was the insights I had into mathematics and physics.

[69:24]

I had a certain feeling when those thought, and they always proved to be right mathematically and in physics. So when I had the same feelings about politics and other people, I believed them just as I believed my mathematical insights. That wasn't the case. So he began to have a more subtle craft of making distinctions. And sometimes an enlightenment experience can be so convincing that it's delusive.

[70:36]

You begin to think you know everything or can apply it to anything or so. So let's come back again to bringing your attention to your breath. And you slowly over time keep bringing also your identification point to your breath. So if someone asks you, who are you? You'd say, breath.

[71:45]

Because you'd feel. I'm not Richard. I'm a breathing thing. That's exactly no difference than the Buddha saying, I'm awake. Mm-hmm. His identification point was in his awareness, his awakeness. He still got up and did things and begged and talked to his disciples. But in computer language, it's a nice thing. Pun. His default position was awareness. Awareness. Now, it's pretty hard to move your identification point to your breath if you can't believe your breath is you.

[73:04]

So that's why there's all this teaching about, based on the loka datu, Lokadhatu being the attention created world or the karma created world. Okay. So now these paramanus, which I spoke of last night, these extreme minuteness, so small that they don't exist except in combination.

[74:07]

Now this is already a very subtle idea. Das ist bereits ein sehr subtiler Gedanke. Das heißt, es gibt keine letztendliche Einheit irgendwo da draußen. Es gibt nur Kombinationen. Okay, if there's only combinations, it means we are participating in the combinations. Und wenn es nur Kombinationen gibt, heißt es, wir nehmen an diesen Kombinationen teil. So it's an interesting way of looking at the four elements. The solidity, fluidity, heat and movement. And the sense, as I said last night, that these come first. It's the our elements which make us choose these elements.

[75:30]

In other words, in a very simple sense, unless you were born, you wouldn't perceive anything. So once you're born into these four elements of solidity, earth, fire, water, etc., then you can know these four elements in the world. But it also implies There's a world out there that's much more subtle than that, but we know that world which our four elements bring up. So it's a mutually created world. Now, so that you can move your identity point to the world, we have a teaching about how the world is us. We have a teaching about how the world is us.

[76:49]

It's pretty hard to identify with a Newtonian container. or a space which is just empty. But when you begin to experience the space as connectedness, so the question is, how really, without being schmaltzy, do you realize all this is us? So, for example now, if I am looking at you, I keep coming back to these basic viewpoints.

[78:04]

Because your meditation practice and mindfulness practice all exist within viewpoints. So as Dogen says, when all things are the Buddha Dharma, When your viewpoint on all these things is Buddha Dharma, then there's practice. Practice, if you don't understand these things as Buddha Dharma, your practice is some kind of, at best, well-being practice. It will never reach the point of non-being practice. So a basic viewpoint is, you all know, of course, that you're appearing in my mind. And you have to simply, I sometimes think I shouldn't tell you this so often, but you have to simply remind yourself of this.

[79:32]

That when I see you, I see my own mind. Mm-hmm. When I hear a bird, I hear my own hearing. That's the baby, wakes up, looks around and sees the pillow but doesn't see its own mind. This is the first delusive, ignorant, So somehow you want maybe to lie down beside your baby and let the baby see your mind and you see its mind. Wouldn't it be nice if our parents had done that? So please develop the habit of knowing that everything points to the mind.

[80:55]

The mind directs our attention immediately outward toward things. And like Julius said, when he sees the observing mind, it makes him think not to identify with it. And like Julius said, when he sees the observing mind, it makes him think not to identify with it. redirect your attention back to mind itself. You would not appear if I didn't have a mind. And in fact, if we didn't have minds as a human being, none of us would appear or look the way we do.

[81:57]

Everything we do, the way we dress, the way we act, has been shaped in a field of mind. And you are generating one area of this mind. Okay. When you develop that as a habit, it's much easier for me to see you as us. And me as us. I also know I'm separate me. But I more and more through practice feel that that's secondary to us.

[83:21]

Now this is again Dogen's the coming and going of birth and death is the true human body. This is a statement worth staying with. I said one of the main practices of Zen is this focusing words. that redirect our attention. So we can direct our attention to this wonderful blessing statement of Dogen's. is the true human body is the coming and going of birth and death.

[84:36]

In other words, what makes the body alive is not limited to your heart and breathing. It's the entirety of the coming and going of birth and death. Okay. Now, for most of you, we've practiced with and studied the five skandhas. And the five skandhas are also a practice, a catalyst for recognizing that everything is us. that everything is us.

[85:42]

Again, when I look at you, I see my own mind. And I see that first. I have a feeling of connectedness with you, which is just different than if I don't have that habit. So grateful for you making my mind appear. Now, if I practice the five skandhas, And I see then, if you practice the five skandhas, you see the structure of mind. You see consciousness being generated. So you see the world arise in your consciousness. There's form. It's a feeling about it.

[86:57]

Then we have thoughts about it. Then there's samskaras, all the residue of mental impressions that join in forming this into consciousness. Now, if through zazen practice I can slow this whole process down so I can experience each skanda. Not only do I see you, my mind when I see you, I see the act of seeing and sensing generates my own consciousness. So this world is not a world which has a creator outside the system. It's co-created, which this word for the universe, loka-dhatu, means. And the more you feel that, you find the world is a magical show.

[88:21]

I don't know what other word to use for it. But it brings us back into touch with a kind of mystery. That everything is magically, uniquely appearing. And you know impermanence when you find everything is a surprise. And at first, the shift into that requires quite a lot of energy. It is sometimes an enlightenment experience. But once you are resting in this mind, awareness which arises into consciousness, It requires very little energy at all.

[89:29]

Everything just appears. And we really feel this freedom, which is the subject of this seminar. So why don't we sit for a few minutes? When you're translating, please feel free to change your posture if you need to. Because I know it goes on quite long sometimes. When we feel the world arising in our own senses, generating our consciousness, arising as our mind, a wonderful intimacy ensues.

[94:10]

Ensues means happens. Yeah. Intimacy and always present feeling of familiarity. A familiarity which doesn't contradict the uniqueness of each moment. And our identification point can move into our body and into phenomena. So we can say heaven and earth and I share the same root.

[95:23]

Myriad things and I are One substance. One body. And now attention and awareness itself develop through its new identifications.

[97:04]

And that evolved attention is compassion.

[97:07]

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