But even though, can you say you understand sleep? You know something about sleep, but do you understand sleep? And you could have lots of philosophies about sleep, and you could read books on the philosophy of sleep. It's not going to help you sleep. You have to make subtle adjustments in the whole of your life. And if you make, and you have to try it out and try this and finally subtle adjustments, yes, you start falling asleep. So I'm telling you, trying to say something about way-seeking mind. And as it's fully understood as a Buddhist practice, it's about as unfamiliar to us as it is to Asian people.

[01:02]

If I was speaking to Asian people, they wouldn't say, well, you know, there's intuition or something. They might, but it's not in the category of our ordinary way of thinking. Like athletes sometimes speak about zoning. It's almost become a fashion for some athletes to speak about being in the zone. Like in tennis it's quite common. You find yourself in a place where the ball is coming very slowly at you and you don't seem to be able to not miss it. Well, can you understand that exactly? Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't happen.

[02:30]

And you could say, oh, it's intuition. Well, maybe it's intuition to know when the ball is, but it's not intuition. It's another category of experience that arises through the kind of practice that an athlete does. But even the athlete who practices a lot can't control when they're in the zone. So way-seeking mind is something like this. It's a kind of mind that arises if you practice regularly. No, it's present to all of us whether we practice or not. Or it's part of us but perhaps not present to us. Mm-hmm. So anyway, I'm speaking to you about some kind of activity of mind, which is

[03:52]

which is maybe something like sleeping, when you can't sleep. Or maybe it's something like zoning. It's in a category that you're going to have to adjust all of your life to kind of suddenly find yourself present in it. And in Buddhism it's not easy to speak about. For instance, something, a hammerhead without a hole, represents... represents a way-seeking mind. Now, Buddhism would not have images like this if it was easy to explain. A hammerhead without a hole, you know, you can't do anything with it. You can throw it, but that's about it. But a hammerhead has some activity, but it's not something you can do.

[05:25]

Or Dogen says in a fascicle called Zenki. By the way, Dogen means way source. or way mystery like we gave this johanneshof temple a buddhist name gen rinji which means black forest temple yes where the hot zen forest, I mean, hot zen vault is. Anyway. Genrinji, Robin Hood. Genrinji, well, it means black.

[06:31]

Forest temple, this gen is the same as in Dogen. It means mysterious source. So something dark or black. And rin means forest, but also means the sangha. So gen rinji also means mysterious source, sangha, temple. So Durgin says, In Zenki, this section Zenki. Even when there's no undivided, even before undivided activity. Undivided activity. activity is when there is one suchness.

[07:37]

Or that activity which includes everything. So he says, even when there is, even before undivided activity. There is undivided activity. And the undivided activity before undivided activity does not interfere with undivided activity. So I mean, this isn't easy to explain. And this is not poetry. It's somebody trying to very exactly say what this is to the extent that language allows it. But it's really not very hard to understand. What's hard is letting it happen within you.

[08:46]

Doing Zen is not so difficult. Letting Zen do you is difficult. Someone said also, I believe, that this is like maybe a seventh sense. That makes me feel inferior. In English, we only have a sixth sense. But whether it's a sixth sense or seventh sense, yes, we should have... This is some feeling, something our experience. And it's related. But be careful you don't let the relationship take over and shut the door on way-seeking mind.

[09:53]

Okay, so I'm trying to present something to you. And it falls in among your own ruminations. Ruminations, it means to think something over. Literally, it means like a cow, to chew your cud. So I'm putting something, I'm suggesting something, and the way to practice for me as well as you is to just let it be chewed over. Don't try to understand it.

[10:54]

Don't try to explain it. Just let it be in you and let it interrelate with other things. This is the only way to understand anything subtle. to understand any subtle things. When Suzuki Roshi was young, I think his name was Toshitaka. And he was called Toshi.

[11:58]

So, little Toshi, young Toshi, who was a monk at so-and-so temple. What's funny? I didn't get the whole name. Toshi. No, no. Oh, Gyokujin So-an. Gyokujin So-an. Who the book Zen Mind Beginner's Mind is dedicated to. Okay. So, Gyokujin spoke about, used to speak about one good woman. Gyokujin spoke often about one good woman. And this woman was somebody he would go and chant for. And she used to get me to go with him to temples too. to parishioners' houses. And I realize now he was trying to get me to do some of the things he did as a young

[13:04]

It was very funny for me as a gaijin, that means a foreign person, particularly when I was like 25 or so, and Japanese people of that generation were about this big. Yeah, mid-hood. So... I know much more German than you think. So we would go to these parishioners and I didn't know why he didn't say, would you come with me to, what could I do with these, you know, but I would go with him.

[14:31]

I did it quite often actually. We would go and he'd do a service and chant and I would help him. And then what almost always happened afterwards is we'd sit in the living room and they would bring us glasses of whiskey. And luckily, the custom is for a Japanese woman not to stay in the living room, but usually go out to the kitchen all the time. So Sukershi and I must have killed more potted plants. So... Because neither of us could drink this stuff. You know, after we left, the rubber plants were going... You don't know what happens to these Zen guys, the rubber plants just...

[15:44]

And then they'd fill your glass back up, and then we'd have to... Yeah. So... Anyway, this woman, she took care she'd have to go with so-and-so on Roshi. She worked very hard always with chores all day long to take care of her son and her son's family. And she was always quite exhausted. And as soon as he started the service and the chanting, she'd fall asleep. So he'd do a specially long service to give her a chance to take a nap. Because he knew she needed a nap. So they'd chant specially long time and she'd But whenever it came time to ring the bell, she would immediately...

[17:23]

you know, in the middle of sleeping, ring the bell. And Sohen Roshi used to say to Toshi, she was so alert because she didn't stick to her problems, even in sleeping. And Sikhiro, she tried to teach me that, too. At the time I didn't quite get it, but this was part of what he was trying to do. You know, I was, when I started to, first years of practicing, I was a graduate student. you know, in the university. And I also had a full-time job at the university to support my family.

[18:32]

And I also tried to do everything at Zen Center because I thought I was going crazy and I thought, Only Zen will save me. But as a result, I'd fall asleep all the time in his lectures. It was very embarrassing because it was a group and I was in the front seat usually not sleeping at all. This is not an excuse for any of you to fall asleep. But, I mean, sometimes I'd really be, you know, below the ground. So he would always be working with a koan. And he would test me.

[19:32]

And after a while, I got so I could do it. He would be talking about the koan, and then he'd say, Dick, you read it. And I'd read it. And I got so, I could start right where he wanted me to read. Zen training is very funny sometimes. So when Shunryu, when Toshi was on this train thinking about this one good woman, he also was noticing in himself that he had learned how to wake up, wake up without an alarm.

[20:41]

And whenever he wanted to, if he decided to, he could wake up at that exact time. And he thought, it's like this woman who can ring the bell. In that moment he suddenly trusted his mind and body. This is also like taking the precepts. If we live in this world, we must trust this world. If we live in this mind and body, we must trust this mind and body. This is maybe a kind of precept. And this trusting mind and body, discovering the mind that trusts mind and body, is way-seeking mind. And it's not something you can think yourself to.

[22:15]

At some point you find, I trust my mind and body. And I will listen to mind and body. I haven't forgotten. So tomorrow we'll try to make the schedule. We can finalize it tonight at the meeting. We can try to make a schedule which... We have lunch earlier tomorrow. If the meeting doesn't go late, we can even start a little earlier. Because it would be nice to start the ceremony at 1 or 1.30, so we can all participate.

[23:19]

So we'll give this some consideration. So can we sit for a few minutes? Thank you very much, by the way. Your sasin will only deepen, truly deepen, when you're capable of genuinely trusting mind and body.

[25:40]

When you come into a deep trust of manifest in mind and your mind and body. How wonderful that practice opens up through trust. How wonderfully this practice opens up through trust. On north mountain rain falls.

[26:56]

On south mountain clouds continue to gather. On both sides of the river people rejoice. Thank you for getting up earlier this morning.

[28:24]

Except for me. I decided to try to get everything done for the ceremony last night so that I'd have less to do today. So I got most things done. Not everything. But that's pretty good, huh? Usually I... Excuse me, just before the ceremony. Anyway, but it took till two o'clock, so I thought I'd better look a little fresh this morning. So I'd like to start out with, now that you've slept on all this stuff, is there anything you want to speak about?

[29:38]

Oh my goodness, Peter! Yes? There is still a question open about the continuing observer and the continuation of an observer which you wanted to answer yesterday. Okay. Okay. In this koan I mentioned the Buddha and the pillar merge.

[30:55]

What kind of mental activity is this? This kind of statement and this kind of koan, you could say simply represents a non-dualistic mind or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's useful to work with the idea of non-dualism. I think that one of the

[31:57]

activities of practice in the first years is noticing the way in which we see a here and a there and feel the separation between myself, oneself and things. And I think it's helpful to notice that ever-present separation or dualism. And so the word non-dualistic or dualistic helps us notice it. But I do think we have a tendency to... have the variety of our dualistic world and then think there's this one thing, non-dualism, in contrast to all the dualism.

[33:24]

And in fact, it's more like the opposite. The non-dualistic way of perceiving, the non-dualistic world, is far more complex and varied than the dualistic world. So there's as many ways to be non-dualistic as there are to be dualistic. Yeah. But we have to understand this idea of dualism and non-dualism. Because it's kind of like the point in an hourglass. And we have to know that little point to see what's on the other side. So again, I will try to talk about this, but I'm sort of aiming things at it rather than describing it.

[35:09]

The most simple thing to ask is, when you say, it rains, isn't that the same as saying, who does it? Is es nicht dasselbe zu sagen wie, wer tut es? We say, oh, who's making these choices? Wer trifft diese Wahl? Well, you can ask, who is raining? Man könnte die Frage stellen, wer regnet? And our language, at least in English, always assumes there's a doer called the it that rains. Und in unserer Sprache, zumindest ist das im Englisch so, diese Sprache nimmt immer an, dass es jemanden gibt, der tut, der der Macher ist. Zum Beispiel... And again, my daughters being the most available, but not always most willing students. I sent one of them out in the rain to find the it. She said, Oh, Dad, don't be so zen.

[36:11]

And she said, Oh, Dad, don't be so zen. But in this koan of the pillars and... Buddha merging. So he asks, what kind of activity is this? So he's not trying to say, oh, this is non-dualism. But he says, part of the commentary says, just bring mind and objects into a single suchness.

[37:13]

Now, if you can bring mind and object into a single suchness, it means the observing self has disappeared. But you're still functioning. Now you can ask, who's functioning? Now, if we wanted to spend some time on this, had another few days, in case you all want to move in, we could work with suchness and... what it would mean to bring mind and objects into a single suchness. Which is your glass? This one. I don't mind.

[38:32]

I know. I don't mind either, but I thought I should be polite. Yeah. Well, I had to find one. So I think the best, the easiest way to understand it is that there isn't one I think once that we really get the feeling that there are different observing minds the question doesn't come up as much as when we basically think there's one observing mind. These ideas, they try to work with like there's a koan, everything returns to the one.

[39:52]

What does the one return to? And these koans are meant to probe these kinds of points. Okay. I've talked about this before. I was trying to see if I can think of another way to talk about it, but there's not too many ways to talk about this, so I'll have to go through what I've said before to some of you. Yeah, and let's notice that the other day I said that you can bring your sense of location to your breath.

[41:05]

This is quite interesting. Just this is quite interesting. That you have a sense of location, say, in your thinking. Then you can bring your attention to your breath. And your sense of location then is with your breath. But usually it doesn't stay there very long. And it snaps back to our thinking. Okay. Why does it snap back to our thinking? Because basically, we have a belief in permanence. Intellectually, you may know that everything's impermanent.

[42:05]

But if... your mind keeps going, your attention, your sense of location keeps going back to your thinking. Implicitly you are deciding that the most accurate regular, permanent, repetitive description of the world is in your thinking. If you deeply understand impermanence, you don't identify with your thinking anymore. Understand I mean It's the way you function. Okay, so what brings your sense of location back to your thinking? The sense of identity.

[43:06]

Okay, so the trick in... Practice is by repeatedly bringing your sense of location into your breath. Or into your body. Or into phenomena. Now those are the three things you're trying to do. You're trying to bring your sense of location to your breath, your body or phenomena. Das sind die drei Dinge, die man tut. Man versucht, das Gefühl der Verortung zu seinem Atem, zu seinem Körper und zu den Phänomenen zu bringen. Or all three at once. And then you're closer to Yunmen's merging of pillar and Buddha. Okay. Now, if you keep doing that, eventually your sense of identity comes with the sense of location.

[44:23]

And at that point, you identify with your breath as you. When you really feel your breath is you, Your sense of location does not go back to your thinking. So as long as your sense of... As long as you... You can't stay with your breath. It means you basically don't believe your breath is you except intellectually. You think the real you is in your thoughts. Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of psychological problems just because we think the real you is in our thoughts.

[45:32]

Makes a lot of business for a therapist. But if you brought, if you really thought your body And breath is you. You still have to work on your psychological problems. Or you still can. But they're simply not invested with the same kind of charge or energy. was when you put all your eggs in the basket of thoughts. The basket of thoughts keeps breaking the eggs, you know. Okay. Am I wandering off the topic? I don't think so. Okay. Okay. Now, so it's helpful in practice to notice the distinction between the sense of identity and the sense of location.

[46:49]

So the example I give is the Buddha being asked, who are you? Are you a sage? He said, no. Are you some kind of king or ruler? I guess he was an exceptional type person. So, must have been. So, and he said no. And so the person asking, well, who are you? I mean, it just, that's what you thought of first. When that begins to happen, you've begun to shift your sense of location and identity to your breathing in this case. Okay. So in the Buddha's case, he was just awake, so he didn't have some kind of reflective thought, oh, I'm, you know, I am the one who is awake.

[48:10]

No, awake. So translating the word Buddha as one who is awake... It's okay, but really it's a fundamental mistake. Because there's no one who is awake. There's just awakeness. Okay, so now you've noticed in a Kraft's What do you say in German? Handwerk. Handwerk-like way. That there's this sense of location and sense of identity.

[49:14]

And if you notice those two, you can begin to notice with some preciseness Und wenn ihr diese beiden kennengelernt habt, dann könnt ihr mit einer gewissen Präzision auch diesen beobachtenden Mind feststellen. Und dieser beobachtende Mind ist weder das Gefühl der Verortung noch das Gefühl der Identifikation oder das Gefühl eines Beobachters. Because the observing aspect can also see, know the sense of identity is moving. Okay, now the question is, is this sense of an observer moving? permanent and always the same in every case of observation.

[50:20]

In fact, it's not. The observing sense changes along with the moving of the sense of location and sense of identity. Just as in the discussion with Mahakavi yesterday, the observing sense in a different chakra makes the observer different. So if you have different observers that can be qualified.

[51:21]

And in fact, you can absorb the observer into the activity itself and then function through the totality of the activity. letting the totality, the activity, be in a sense the doer, which is also one thing that's meant by way-seeking mind. Then, of course, Okay. All right.

[52:21]

Let's look at a mind again. A mind, as I said, one of its homeostatic and self or own organizing. But one quality of a mind... Like sleeping mind, waking mind, sasen mind, etc. There can be an observing function. That observing function depends on the particular mind in which it arises. Now, if you identify that observing function and notice that observing function through language, it will tend to remain the same.

[53:49]

And then you'll think the observer is always the same thing. Because it's language defined. Okay. Now, when you have more experience of synesthesia the bringing together and mingling of the senses for example, when you drop the thought shield so you're not defining your body through the thought of the body And you're not now defining your body through the experience of the... what shall I call it, the sensorium, the sense body.

[54:52]

Your senses don't have fixed boundaries. So you suddenly don't experience yourself as having the boundaries of the physical body you see in the mirror. Now, this is a lot of words to describe something. It happens fairly often in meditation. But, you know, I'm trying to be clear about it because I have to... I don't know. This is my job. So... When you say that you have this wide body, which isn't limited to the visual, physical body, it means the thought shield has been dropped.

[55:53]

So now you can still have an observer of that, but the observer is not language-based. So the answer to who does it is just each mind does itself, either with or without an observer. I should have said that in the beginning. So that's the riff on observing self. Does that help you at all? And better? No, no, I'm just kidding. If you have some questions, maybe I can improve how I speak about it. Or maybe I can change my mind or I can change my mind I was thinking about this moving this identity and sense of location and feeling different differences different identities different

[57:29]

Minds. And I am thinking about if I repeat this experience, will there be a repeatable kind of mind? So, you know, the difference in the chakra, will it be always a kind of the same difference? Yes, yes. But not exactly the same. Yes. And then I was thinking about, okay, then it's just part of minds. Yes. You experience that. Yes. And how is it if you experience the totality or the whole of all these parts of minds?

[58:36]

And when it's there... Ambitious, aren't you? And it feels like suddenly there's just not that... It's experienced well that there's no boundary to the body, it's suddenly the mind itself gets boundless. Because it's a kind... I mean, that would mean to experience this part of the mind, it's a feeling of all at once and also a kind of everything. Okay, Deutsch. When one learns the individual identities and realizes that it is a changed state of mind, it is also a changed observer.

[59:49]

My first question is, connected with the chakras, that is, in each chakra, when I repeat this experience, I will have a similar, I will have a repeatable experience. And then he said, yes, not exactly, but roughly. And then my next thought was, when I think about it, so these are all just parts of my mind, when I think about how well an experience is to experience it in the entirety of the mind, I have a feeling that on the one hand everything is at the same point all at once, not only the body, as he described it, this feeling of expansion of the body, which is more of a normal yogic experience,

[60:53]

Okay. Your understanding is good. And your understanding, you couldn't have this understanding without practice being part of it. But Your understanding is getting ahead of your practice. And this is not necessarily helpful. You should remember this. I have two questions. The boy at the back first. The first question is, when there is one mind, exists one mind, like he or she told, one mind, one big mind, all minds are put together.

[62:02]

I still wouldn't call it one, but yes, all. The second question I have is the boundless body. When you showed me his boundless body, I saw only his boundaries here. So I don't understand really. I feel myself sometimes in meditation, but I think it's not my body. It's some kind of mind or energy. German. The first question is, is there a spirit that you wrote where all the spirits are? The second question was about the body, where the boundaries are. I just looked here. I can't somehow... The body is the body. Where are the extended boundaries? I can sometimes feel them, but is it my body, or is it my spirit, or is it energy?

[63:05]

Do you remember the corpse that was lying in front of me? That we brought to life. And what... This was earlier in the week. Before the seminar started, we took... Before the seminar, we took... The definition of body in Buddhism is what makes that corpse alive, not the stuff of the body. So body and mind... are used almost interchangeably in Buddhism. And when we're emphasizing functioning more than awareness, we call mind body.

[64:15]

The moon is way up there, but it affects our reproductive cycles. It's our body, part of our body. And in your body, you have lots of space. Most of your body is space. The actual amount of... Atoms is a very tiny percentage, minuscule percentage. And the atoms are mostly space. And next to your body is mostly water. So there's a lot of space in this room too. What's the problem? Some of it is inside this circle and some of it is outside this circle.

[65:33]

The big difference is is that our senses only allow us to perceive the grosser aspects of form. But sometimes in zazen, when you kind of let your senses perceive be absorbed into zazen mind, we could define consciousness as that aspect of awareness which organizes sense perceptions into a three-dimensionality. And when you do zazen, your sense impressions begin to give you a multidimensional sense of the world.

[66:48]

And then you begin to feel like your boundaries disappear. Okay. And you can't call this actually one body or something. You can only call it activity. Because there's really no boundaries to even call it one. So we have bring mind and body into a single suchness. Now, this is not very far out, but it is if you try to go to work with it. So you may have some experience like this in your meditation. And this experience may become... If you practice regularly enough, may I dare I say sincerely, without other parts of your lives kind of partitioned off and following different rules,

[68:15]

If you begin to bring your life together in one practice, this kind of thing we're talking about today begins to seep into your life and begins to be present all the time. But again, it's not something you At first you don't notice it. It's present for a long time before you notice it. Because it's not in the categories in categories that are noticeable. But you begin to notice your functioning is different. And your immediate thinking is different. Okay. So we should have a break soon, but I think we should say something just before the break, maybe about the precept body.

[69:32]

Since we're taking the precepts today. And if some of you would like to take the precepts very specifically as part of the ceremony, not just along with the ceremony, so then you should speak to Gaurav and Gisela. Or Geralt and Gisela. You don't have to speak to them both at once. Okay. Now, one of the things, the big break, Dogen was very traditional. And in that traditionality, though he made one of the biggest breaks with Chinese Buddhism.

[70:42]

And which I spoke about earlier in the week, he dropped the... monk and nun precepts. This is so unusual that, as I said, when Thich Nhat Hanh and I were in Japan, He could not believe Japanese monks didn't take the 250 precepts, and then 252 I think, and women the 350 precepts. Women are more complicated. From his... What a sly look. We say he looked like he swallowed the goldfish. That's true. Wir sagen, ihr schaut, als hätte er den Goldfisch geschleppt.

[72:09]

That comes from cats, you know. You go and the goldfish is gone, you look at the cat and the cat... And during the 30s, American college students had some fashion of swallowing goldfish. Anyway, so much of the world's Buddhism views Japanese monks and nuns as essentially lay people. Because they only take the 16 Bodhisattva precepts. Okay. Dogen was partly, it seems, influenced by this Zenji tradition of natural Zen, natural wisdom, before...

[73:14]

in the centuries before he was born. But without spending too much time, let's just say Most simply, the idea comes back to what we can call the precept body. Okay. Using the word body as close to the... In zazen, sometimes, you will experience what we could call your original body. Shall we say, you don't find your boundaries.

[74:34]

And as I said, it's a body which seems to accumulate happiness. It's called technically the bliss body. One manifestation of this, it's almost like you could peel the skin off And what would be there, we could call that the bliss body or original body. Sometimes the Samantabhadra and Sambhogakaya bodies are portrayed in very black-blue. And they're almost featureless. And the blue-black represents emptiness. Or the persona having been peeled off. Now, this kind of body, a body of gratitude or bliss or happiness, or a spacious feeling body, that feels unique and original, it feels like it's the source of all your bodies.

[76:04]

It has a physical manifestation. Usually, the more you know this body, your own body becomes quite soft and pliant. And you may have a taste of it after zazen. If you feel your skin, it feels like a baby's skin. We can call, let us call that for this discussion, original body. We can also call it the precept body. Why? Because it can't break the precepts. If this spacious body body of gratitude and bliss, suddenly thought about stealing something, it would collapse.

[77:19]

It won't accept contradiction. It won't accept that kind of That body, if you tried to think about murdering somebody during that, that body would disappear. So that body keeps all the precepts, 250, 350, 10,000. So in that sense, if you are meditating, the precept body is thought to be the... root or source body for both monk and layperson.

[78:20]

One decides to dress that in the clothes of their profession. But inside they still know that precept body is there. They can feel it. And the weaker type person decides to put robes on it to keep reminding you that the precept body is there I'm one of those weaker type people Yes? If in that precept body you take Young's glass, is that sealing or not? If you take my glass, if you would be in this precept body and you would take my glass, would you be stealing or not?

[79:32]

out of the room. If I had a bad cold and my intention was to give it to him... So I took his blast, intentionally saying... This would be breaking the precepts. But if I lovingly want to share the same glass with you... This is keeping the precepts. But since we're talking about glasses, I think it's time for a break. Thank you very much. It's 10.30. We'll come back at 11.

[80:42]

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