Teaching like Buddhism says, let's look at how we actually exist And make wisdom constructions. All right. So I use the example of the corpse. That the coming and going of birth and death is the true human body. Now, no baby thinks that. Of course, no baby thinks that way. But to me it's a fact. But can you make this a form of consciousness? Yes, as a wisdom practice you can. If every time I look at you, I think you are also me. I'm beginning to extend the boundaries of what I experience as me.

[01:19]

It's quite simple. I also see you as separate. But at the level at which Atmar talks about knowing the person next to him who he doesn't speak to, The more I just naturally think, oh, you are also me, or something like that. I have to use some words. This is another way of working with what is it. What is it is, oh, we're connected, not separated. Okay. Now, to do this is a ritual. It's to create a, I'm trying to look for language maybe, a receptacle.

[02:21]

If you bring your attention to the present moment, you're making the present moment a receptacle for your energy and attention. Does that make sense? You've created a kind of a little container here and you're pouring your energy and... attention into it. So you're creating the present. The present with your intention and energy into it is a different present. And you're evolving the field of the present. Now if we imagine that receptacle Is a receptacle of awareness.

[03:27]

And we imagine, oh yes, in this receptacle of the present is not for the sake of this discussion, is not just consciousness. is also awareness. So we let consciousness kind of slide like water into the sand. And we let awareness come more into the present. And we begin to feel the people around us more. we feel immediately more connected with phenomena more like we really belong we feel more at home and this awareness ah yes, awareness really is the body of the Buddha because when you the more in zazen you become to know awareness, and it begins to be a wide field, by definition we call that the body of the Buddha.

[04:49]

And when it's in its wide feeling, we call it the dharmakaya, the body of Buddha as space. When we concentrate that down into our specific subtle body, And we feel that in our backbone and in our, let's not make it too complicated, our subtle body. We call that the Sambhogakaya body. So in this present moment, by looking at it as a receptacle, And filling that with awareness.

[05:49]

And feeling how body, speech and mind go from consciousness into awareness. And body, speech and mind are now the body and speech and mind of Buddha. In this awareness of this receptacle, we've created, generated a Buddha. And now we transfer ourself into that receptacle. by dissolving dualism. Now, if I'm looking at, if I've developed my energy, my energy body, by keeping bringing my energy to each moment, When I bow to you, I can dissolve not my personality but my energy.

[07:00]

And this is dissolving dualism. And you feel a moment of timelessness. And so, going back to Hang Ji, standing alone, Yeah, I talked about that, this solidity of the mountain. Unchanging. He means dissolving dualism, because at that moment you feel like nothing is changing. And dissolving dualism means emptiness. And emptiness is understood as our essential... Nature. And the essential nature of a Buddha is emptiness. Emptiness is the biggest way of saying, what is it?

[08:09]

So we go from yes to no to emptiness. Mu. Emptiness. Not just no, but emptiness. I look at you, I say emptiness. So now I've generated this Buddha body. I transfer myself to it. And then I let it all dissolve back into an imminence in everything. And that's a basic tantric ritual. That's what we do when we do this Buddha. So if you all want to help me, Because what is this Buddha?

[09:15]

It's stuff. It's dry lacquer and wood and stuff like that. What makes it alive? Us. And where did it come from? Someone's vision of what a Buddha could be. So that Buddha is just a physical representation of someone's vision of a Buddha. And there is, if you look at it, there's a tremendous solidity in it. There's a feeling of settledness in the face and maturity and in the body. So in a way we go from a vision to this physical object. And the physical object we can think of as a receptacle. So we can also say, ah yes, this represents this awareness body. Buddha means one who is aware.

[10:23]

So the statue represents the awareness body. But it represents it because it's a possibility within us. So the ceremony is to develop in each of us this feeling and say, we take this feeling and put it here. And this Buddha becomes a reminder of this feeling which we dissolve back into ourselves. If we want to, once a year or so, we can renew this feeling in this Buddha. And it's basically no different than bringing awareness into this present moment.

[11:25]

But we have here what I would call a sight-specific Sangha. No, you all live in different places. But I want you to feel that there's also a place where this Sangha is physically manifest. Here and also for some of you in Crestone. And in our lineage. And in all of us, each of us as representations of this lineage. So if there's a, we create a physical site for this practice. That, that This physical sight is only a receptacle for our feeling for practice.

[12:34]

And the center of this sight is this physical object. But its whole importance is it represents this awareness body that we can sense in ourselves. So in the ceremony we uncover it. I get some ink and I paint an eye on it. And after I open its eye, then we offer it some food and stuff like that. A primitive ritual. But it's, and we don't chant usually because it's a happier, chanting is kind of solemn, we don't chant. The atmosphere is a little bit like a party. Because we're saying, hey, come and live with us.

[13:34]

Once a year we'll invite you again to live with us. And to remind ourselves of the living Buddha, we'll give you some food. And I say, please take your seat here. And I'm also saying, take your seat here. And it says, yeah, we will try to show you our practice. And will you please show us your practice? It sounds really a little childish. But it's basically this essential tantric ritual to recognize each moment we're creating ourselves. As a Buddha or as whatever we are.

[14:43]

And I like what Sukhiroshi used to say. Each of us is always showing what kind of Buddha we are. And that's a nice way to look at people, too. Oh, Melita's showing me what kind of Buddha she is. Not too bad. Of my pal, you know. And if you look at people that way, they're more likely to act a little bit like a Buddha. Okay, so let's sit for a couple of minutes and then have some tea and... So let's see in this ceremony if we can have a little taste of dissolving consciousness into awareness.

[17:36]

and generating a feeling of a Buddha in this awareness. And then offer that feeling a seat here at Johanneshof. If we can do it, we're entering a stream of 2,600 years at least. Going back into India. Going back to this 16th century Edo period figure.

[19:03]

And coming up into our life here at Johanneshof. And our Johanneshof. which isn't just a statue. That was fun last night.

[20:15]

The only problem I had was when I started to dance, I put my champagne glass down somewhere and I couldn't find it this morning. I thought I'd finish it after Zazen, but it was gone. And I was always surprised at what good dancers everyone is. Yeah, yeah. You know, I rarely go to parties, but when I do, usually there's only two or three people who dance well. So I mentioned that to somebody last night. And they said, several people agreed, oh, it's Zazen teaches you how to dance.

[21:20]

Or sitting still somehow, or Sashin. Maybe we should open a dancing school. Yeah. In the meeting we will have this after our morning session. For a meeting, for a little while, I guess. I'll put out the plans. I'll show you the plans. for those of you interested in the models of the building.

[22:30]

It looks like we'll start building in April next month of this year at Crestone. And I see I got one of my Crooked cucumbers returned. I put... Both. Both? Okay, good. One I have to send to somebody to see if it can be reviewed in the New York Times. Because still the attitude of the New York Times is, all that stuff is California New Age or something. They're wrong, but it's all right. Okay, and it's interesting, the picture of Tsukiyoshi on the cover that you see the back of his head. So one of those copies I'll leave in the library here, and the other I have to send to New York.

[23:34]

So maybe yesterday's ceremony would help if I told you something about the tradition of portraiture in Zen. They're called Chinzos. Which also happens to be the name for the bump on the top of the head of a Buddha. Mm-hmm. And we have to remember that, you know, until very recently, no one ever saw what they looked like. You can get a sort of idea if you look into a lake or something, you know.

[24:53]

But it's hard to primp. Do you know the word primp? Primp? Print means to stand in front of the mirror and fix yourself. It's hard to print leaning over a lake every morning. And they did have in China, of course, brass polished, but still it's not really too good. But they did paint portraits of Zen teachers. But they only painted them after they died. So they were painted not so much the way the teacher might have looked, but the way he looked to his disciples.

[26:14]

So it became a way of sort of looking at yourself. Because you saw yourself looking at the teacher. And they were meant to be realistic as well. There was a subtlety in calling it a chinzo. Because on a human being it's supposed to be invisible. So there's the implication that you're Seeing the ordinary body, but also the subtle body is present.

[27:16]

So there's this feeling of the emptiness body is there also. Like this Buddha has this bump. And he has a third eye in his forehead and also a third eye in the bump. Now, the sense of the pictures being realistic was meant to emphasize that... that this was not a magical teaching or to kind of de-emphasize the superstitious side. When this tradition goes back a long time, like the author of the Sando Kai, which we chant sometimes,

[28:23]

Shido, who was born in 700, they have found his... Shinzo, and he's wearing robes just like Gerald and Gisela do, pretty much. And he was an actual person. And, um... And the putting in of the eyes was very important. I've noticed if I watch politicians on television, they look like they're speaking truthfully. I think sometimes they are, but not always. And if you look at them, I don't see any tremor in their body or anything in their face or body that suggests they don't experience themselves as speaking the truth.

[29:52]

And I think they do that by dissociating what they're saying from their eyes. So their eyes are not present to what they're saying. When I watch their eyes, they're a second behind what they're saying, watching for reactions. So I get the feeling that they're letting their mouth say what they're supposed to say. And they have to disconnect their eyes to do that. So this... we have this long understanding that when you put in the eyes, you put in the truth of the person. So this sense of this ceremony that we did yesterday is this part of this

[31:10]

creating an image of a person is related to this creating an image of a person after they die but an image which also relates to we could say the nirvana body because the emptiness body is also the nirvana body. And when a person who has this kind of dharma experience dies, I have some advice for later. What they do is shift their... they shift their identification from their physical body and conscious body, to their awareness body, and emptiness body, and then let their physical body die.

[32:33]

And an experienced person is quite used to doing this because you gain the experience of shifting from gaining the experience of dissolving dualism. To dissolve the subject-object feeling makes awareness come into presence rather than consciousness. So this practice is always a practice to die. That's why it's such a joyful practice. And helps you dance and things like that. Because we could see all the skeletons dancing last night.

[33:50]

Rib cages, skulls. Piano bone feet. Piano bone feet. So you have to, if you read Dogen, where Dogen talks about life and death and blah, blah, blah, you have to recognize that he has the feeling that his nirvana body is present in his samsara body. So the nirvana body that he's going to die into is always present. Does this make sense? Kind of sense? So the portraits have this feeling of being made after the person dies as being a bringing of their samsaric body back from their nirvana body so that we can relate to it.

[35:13]

So it's kind of nice on Sugarshi's book that you only see the back of his head. So it means you have to get on the other side of the book to see him. At least you have to read it. Okay, so that's that. Does anybody have anything you'd like to bring up? This morning I had something, I don't know if it's stupid.

[36:15]

I don't know either. When you said yesterday to identify yourself with your thoughts, then you're in trouble, or identification. But isn't it that as soon as you open your eyes and you see you in the tree, or needle or the curtain or the trees that you already identify immediately? What is the difference between realization and identification in that sense? Deutsch, bitte. Yesterday, Bekhoroshi said, I identify myself in thoughts. It became clear to me, as soon as I open my eyes, my eye consciousness is there. And isn't it immediately an identification?

[37:19]

oder findet da nicht durch die Ohren auch die Identifizierung statt in Gedanken, im Bewusstsein? Was ist der Unterschied zwischen Realisation und Identifikation? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I'm flapping my lips. And they're taking the form of words.

[38:30]

And those words are are I don't think they're thoughts, but they're related to thoughts. Yeah, because my experience actually is that I'm feeling and then speaking, but I'm not thinking and speaking. This may be a small distinction, but you know, it's my feeling. And you know, that's interesting, it's come up in this seminar. And Ralph brought it up pointedly yesterday. How do we make this distinction between thinking which generates a consciousness which separates us from the immediacy of the present and thinking which doesn't do that?

[39:46]

Okay, so there's antidotal thinking. In other words, we have habits of thought And we confront those habits of thoughts with antidotes. So if you look at a tree, which you usually think of as a tree, and you say, this is also me, And when you look at a tree, which we generally think of as an object, and we call it a gerund treeing, in English gerund is when you add an ing to a word you look at an object and you instead of saying it's a tree you say it's treeing it's the process of being a tree bauming

[40:51]

Okay, what you're doing then is you're using thoughts and language as an antidote to our habits. And if you do that, it not only erodes the permanence of views, But it tends to melt your mind into the present. Maybe I have to try to be more precise, but generally I try to speak about... I say there's no problem with thinking.

[42:06]

There's the problem with believing in your thinking and identifying with it in such a way that it creates a consciousness which separates you from awareness and separates you from coincidence with the field of the present. The immediacy of the present. Is that a clear enough definition? Does that make sense? Anybody have... Yes? Could you say again how awareness and consciousness relate or come together in the immediate presence?

[43:21]

How awareness and consciousness come together in the immediacy of the present. Okay, can I do a little A riff, an aside for a moment. There's a new operating, or not so new, but recently brought to people's attention called Linux. And it's an operating system you can get off the computer for free, off the network for free. It was started, I think, by some Danish guy who lives in America named... Finnish?

[44:24]

Finnish. Linus Thorvald. And so he says he's only created about... five or ten percent of the one percent of the core code. And it's mostly been created by people all over the place. I guess there's about a thousand people who contribute regularly and more thousands who contribute occasionally. But it doesn't work on Macintoshes, but it only works on... I don't know. Anyway, supposedly it's much more crash-free than the commercial software. And any time you have a problem, your computer freezes, you type into the internet, unless your computer, you have another computer to type into the internet.

[45:43]

And you say, you know, my computer is frozen and this has happened. And in the next hour or two from Bulgaria, China and San Francisco you get fixes sent to you. So you've got about... You know, you've got a thousand or more high IQ types solving your problems for you in the next five or ten minutes, half an hour. And I think it's actually a genuine, it's a concept of Sangha.

[46:45]

Now I don't know if it would work to create a web page, a Sangha web page to define thinking in relationship to awareness. Because we have to keep going back into our meditative experience to answer these questions. But in any case, I think it's quite interesting. I think it's called nowadays OSS, open source software, something like that. And again, it's to me an example of this. My sense, for example, that women have been mostly limited in our society to bringing up sons and daughters.

[48:11]

And the adult... intelligence of women has not been brought into the adult world much until recently. And I think a simple thing like this Linux operating system shows how much more powerful it is when you get everybody in a society working on something, or large numbers of people, not just people who are on the payroll. And these people working on this have the kind of talent and skills where they could make, as we say in the United States, big bucks. And they prefer to develop this, you know, free of charge.

[49:26]

So that's what we have here, a free of charge sangha for the most part. So what I'm saying is I really think we do have to work together to come to some sort of definitions of these things. So, I mean, I think, just to respond specifically to what you brought up, the more you develop a feeling of awareness and develop a life

[50:33]

And the paramitas and the precepts are, you could say, are a way of developing... A life that absorbs awareness. One thing is, awareness can't lie. So you have to follow the precepts for awareness to come into your life. Do you understand that? Because when you lie, you divide consciousness. As soon as you're doing something that's deceptive or deluded, awareness isn't there.

[51:55]

Or it's way in the background saying, what are you doing? Because awareness is based on non-dualism. Okay. So again, the more you have some experience and feel awareness in your life, then you'll find out the answer to your question. So, before we end, I'd like to say a little something about this in another way, but I'd like to respond to some more questions. My question is, can you say that awareness is consciousness over the boundaries of personality?

[52:55]

Over the boundaries of personality spread consciousness? Yeah, if you want. But I think you have to... The point I make is that every emphasis, every emphasis in the mind Okay? Tends to develop interiority. Emphasis? An emphasis. Every emphasis develops an interiority. Okay, does that make sense?

[53:58]

That interiority develops into an unorganizing or self-organizing activity. So then that a self-organizing activity, tends to create a mind that persists in its own In other words, if you're talking about a consciousness, consciousness tends to persist. Okay, now let me give you a simple example without all these funny words. You wake up in the morning and dreaming mind has its own kind of thing and it wants to keep going.

[55:07]

So it hears the alarm clock and it decides that the alarm clock is actually a telephone. And you don't receive phone calls before 7 a.m. So you go back to sleep. So this is the clever persistence of awareness in denying consciousness. And once you actually wake up, like in Germany, you don't wake up, you stand up, right? So whenever I hear that, I imagine all these Germans suddenly standing up. All over Germany, people suddenly stand up.

[56:12]

And once that happens, sensory input comes in. Dreaming mind is not open to sensory input. Or in a different way it's open to sensory input. But once sensory input comes in, it's very difficult to go back to sleep. And then you have a consciousness which persists until you're exhausted. Or you've had three beers or something. And then consciousness begins to... Okay. Or five. Okay. Okay. So I tend not to use the word consciousness for a consciousness which extends beyond the boundaries of personality.

[57:21]

I would tend to say, when consciousness begins to extend beyond the borders of personality, if we put it that way, then you have an awareness which has a knowing similar to consciousness, but it's no longer consciousness. Okay. I actually think it's important to try to make these distinctions. Otherwise, as we develop our practice, it gets quite confusing if consciousness means many different kinds of knowing. Because it's a different physical experience of awareness than consciousness. Like I've often pointed out, you can feel the difference between borrowed consciousness, secondary consciousness, and immediate consciousness.

[58:42]

Okay. We were talking about that we are fundamentally Yeah. Functionally connected. Yeah. And it meant a lot to me, and I want to understand what the relationship between those states is. If they don't hinder each other, like where the death, or if you can see from the one state, from mentally alone, the other, but not the opposite. Something like that. Yeah. um um Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

[59:58]

I don't know how useful it is for me to try to describe this, but I'll do a little tiny bit. Because again, I'm trying to take English words and put them together in various ways to try to suggest something. Weil ich also englische Worte nehme und sie auf verschiedenartige Weise zusammenstelle und damit etwas auf etwas hinweisen bzw. etwas andeuten, nein, vorschlagen möchte eigentlich. But to really be clear about it, I'd have to have a kind of Heidegger-like... attention to detail. Like what? Like attention. And part of this has come out of my asking myself, what the heck am I and we doing establishing Crestone and Johanneshof?

[61:23]

What does it mean to set an institution down in the middle of a society? And I'm also responding to a friend of mine who has practiced a long time, who feels that individual practice is possible. but Sangha practice is not possible in the West.

[62:24]

Because he feels that the, as I went over a little bit earlier, the way that personality functions, individual personality functions in the West, Er hat eben das Gefühl, dass die individuelle Persönlichkeit, wie die individuelle Persönlichkeit im Westen funktioniert, dass wenn Leute zu eng zusammenleben, dass dann sozusagen Metapersönlichkeiten geschaffen werden, die wiederum gefährlich sind. which actually in the practice week a number of the discussion groups independently and individuals came up with this sense that is Sangha kind of fascism? Yeah, which is a legitimate fear in today's world and in Europe given our history. And I would try to make a distinction that Sangha generates a shared mind rooted in differences.

[63:39]

But not a common mind where each mind conforms to the other. I can make such a distinction. But is that distinction going to stick together? in our practice as a sangha. And in fact, even if it does stick, can it really have any effect when we're all constructed a certain way in something, what happens is not in our control exactly. But then we have these examples of this Linux operating system developing on the network.

[64:51]

And I happen to believe that we will not pass then to the next generation without Sangha. And I believe we won't develop Buddhism unless we all do it together. So I have to ask myself, is my friend right? Hmm. So I really want us to try to be clear here in Crestone of what it is to develop Sangha. And scale is a big part of that, size.

[66:22]

It's interesting to me that this building, the older part of the house, was a 200-year-old farmhouse. Something like burned down, but before that, yeah. Yeah, it was a 200-year-old farmhouse that I believe the ancestors of our neighbors burned down. Because the man who lived here was a follower of Rudolf Steiner. weil der Mann, der hier gelebt hatte, ein Anhänger von Rudolf Steiner war. So this guy with confidence rebuilt the building in 1911, 1915, and continued his anthroposophical views. Und mit großem Zutrauen hat dieser Vorfahrer, also 1915, dieses Haus neu erbaut und mit seinen...

[67:24]

And then I believe young women came here to go to school. Including Gerald's mother. Right? She came here and she said, I've been here before. Well, some of the women who came here then married local farmers. And infiltrated the neighborhood. With wisdom. And so thus let us live here happily. So there's progress. Okay. So my basic feeling is that what we know as civilization developed when people learned to live together on a large scale.

[68:36]

And I think that the Western society developed its, where we live now, when they developed the idea of autonomy. The separate, the person who's an individual, separate from others. And we've discovered that the best way to support that is to have people live separately but work together. And we pay a high price for that, because I think one of the things of these serial killers and all are about people who live alone. Some of them are quite normal, nice people at work.

[69:45]

Okay. So I would say our Western culture is about living alone, but functioning together. Okay, now if we try to reverse that, I would say Sangha is about learning to be fundamentally alone. But... No, excuse me. Our Western, to put it, is we live together. It's hard to sort it out.

[70:58]

But we in Sangha, you tend to live together, but you... Sorry, it's hard for me to sort it out right now. Yeah, okay. May I just start over? Well, I think you have the idea without my trying to redefine all the words. So what do I mean by living fundamentally alone? This is basically the question, right? I mean that your experience of being present has an intactness even when you're with people that's similar to being alone. So if I'm sitting here with you Although I feel very connected with you, I feel very little different than if I were in my room by myself.

[72:27]

I feel connected but alone because I don't live fundamentally together with you. I live functionally together with you. Because fundamentally I relate to awareness, not to consciousness. And when you see a statement like... The face before your parents were born. Or original face. Or original mind. These are all statements in Buddhism, in Zen especially, that say our reference isn't our togetherness as children of our parents. But we take our reference point, a mind before our parents were born.

[73:44]

This is very different than a psychological view where our mind is rooted in our parents' mind and our culture's mind. If I made any sense here, these phrases like original mind, original face, all mean you're relating to a mind deeper and more extensive than your cultural mind. And this is also rooted in the courage and the experience In meditation, of coming to know, coming into experiences that are not shareable, that you can't ask somebody else about, oh, did you have that experience?

[74:57]

Or they may have had the experience, but neither of you can speak it, you can only feel it. And the more you have that kind of experience, In fact, you can never be lonely again. You can miss somebody, but there's not a dependency that we experience with loneliness. Because you're never alone again. Because you're always with yourself. So it's strange I say fundamentally alone, but I mean you're alone with yourself, so you're never alone.

[76:03]

Right. We sit like a pretzel and we talk like a pretzel. We don't know which is... Is that my left foot? No, that's my... No, is that my right? I don't know. And you can see thought coverings if you just do this. Touch a particular finger. You don't know which one it is because your mind isn't in your hand. You're seeing your hands from outside through thought covers. Yes. So you're perceiving thought coverings rather than yourself from inside.

[77:20]

It's fun though, huh? Okay, so what else? We're supposed to end at... 11.45? Well, the meeting will be at 11.45. Okay, so shall we have a... If we have a break, we'll... No reason to come back, so... So shall we cross our legs and hope to die? Okay. I'm sorry. You don't have that expression in German.

[78:22]

It's untranslatable. You know the expression in English, to cross your heart and hope to die. When little kids, they say, yes, I really did, I crossed my heart and hoped to die, which means I'm really telling the truth. Is your mother, is your parents really taking you to Germany? Cross my heart and hope to die. So sometimes when people ask me about Zen, they say, what is it? I say, you cross your legs and hope to die. Nirvana body, come and rescue me. So please sit comfortably.

[79:24]

Anything else? Yes. Oh, I was wondering when you would come back. Yeah, I noticed you're working on the parameter of patience. Can I translate that? Yesterday you said that with Zazen you can't solve personal problems. I said you can't solve personal problems? Oh, yeah, that's what I meant. No, I would say probably the opposite. I said neurotic suffering. I said, Buddhism is about existential suffering, not ending neurotic suffering or physical suffering.

[80:42]

In other words, conceptually, I think that's the case. My question was meant as if all the problems let's end as ultimately end in existential suffering. Come back to existential suffering. I think yes, basically yes. So I think conceptually it's important to make the distinction that Zen is a practice to free you from existential suffering. and not specifically from neurotic suffering, nor does it free you from physical pain.

[81:45]

Now, his zazen is quite good, but if I give him a real hit on the back of the neck, he's going to feel physical pain. But since he's been training with Joe, because of his long practice, I can trust him not to hit me back. So there's less physical pain for me. Yeah. But in fact, if you use... In other words, here's the problem, one of the problems. Buddhism has no tradition of how to mature the personality in a Western sense.

[82:49]

And we have to teach and practice a Buddhism that allows us to mature as Western individuals. This is a new development in Buddhism, in my opinion. And to say one of the biggest mistakes contemporary co-opted Buddhism makes And one of the biggest mistakes... Co-opted means... already westernized. Or a mistake of being too casual in using terms is to say there's such a thing as Buddhist psychology. You can sort of say it is, but I think it's much healthier and accurate to say there's no such thing as Buddhist psychology.

[84:05]

As you've all heard me say many times, there's a Buddhist mindology, but not psychology. I have young, gung-ho, Zen practitioners come to me. How do you translate gung-ho? Loaded with psychological problems. Who think Buddhism is going to solve all their problems. And I suggest they go see a therapist. Oh no, Buddhism is going to solve all my problems. It's just not the case. There are many things it's much better to work with a therapist with than try to work with in Zazen.

[85:17]

And since half of you are therapists, the other half can see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll turn my back and you guys... May I ask something? Yes. But the Abhidharma was sometimes described as a sort of Buddhist psychology. Who described it as that? People... They didn't even have the word in those days. Yeah. The contemporary words, of course, but that's not the case. But that's a mistake in translating it that way. Yeah, good. If you look at the Abhidharma, it's all about how the mind functions. It's never about psyche. So, if people think they can come... Soni, will you see the problem?

[86:25]

Okay. Now, in fact, though, you can use Buddhist practice knowing something about psychology, you can use Zen practice in a way to explore yourself psychologically. Now, one thing I did not go into is why personality is different than in Zen practice, why personality is different than personal history. And why you work on personality as the latter part of your practice, not early. And I will not explain it now. Because there isn't time And you can come to another seminar and ask me.

[87:51]

Okay. But it is also the case from my own experience and observation that if you change the way you function through Zen practice If you genuinely change through practice. In other words, I would put it, you're doing non-being practice, not well-being practice. So I will try to give you an example of that before I end what I mean. Okay, something else? Yes?

[89:02]

You said yesterday, answering about the evolution of consciousness, that we don't really know if awareness is there before we become aware, that if we do believe that, then we're believing in some permanence. but these little aha events of becoming more aware of things or of understanding more. Now, sometimes this blissful both newness and, of course, it couldn't have been any other way. Or to quote one of the new thinkers, physicists, it seems like the universe was meant to be looked at. Could you say something about that? After you say something in German, please. because otherwise there would have to be something permanent.

[90:13]

In addition, I said that sometimes these little aha experiences of starting to recognize something or to understand and so on, that it has such a feeling of joy, both new and natural, it can't be any other way, as if you already had it. Since the universe, multiverse, is an interactive process, And there are no entities. There are only interactions. Then naturally, since looking at the universe is an interaction the universe was meant to be looked at.

[91:18]

But still, the way he says it, he's saying it almost like there's an entity there that we're looking at. That would be, strictly speaking, a deluded view in Buddhism. To look is just another interaction. And the looking changes the universe. It's not passively there waiting to be looked at. Nor when we look do we see what was there a moment ago. We see only what's there when we look. So Buddhism's view is something like trying to put it in a language.

[92:33]

A multi-fold... A multi-fold... Inner-folded... Something or other. Yeah. So, when you have aha experiences, you've had an aha experience. Aha. It's not necessarily revealing something that was there before. It's something you've generated at that moment. Which changes what was there before. But we have the habit of seeing something and thinking it was there before. But that's still different than what I'm speaking about awareness.

[93:44]

Now if you walk, as I've said, trying to give some definitions of awareness, if you're walking along with a bunch of packages at Christmas time, And a tongue dynasty vase. And you slip on the sidewalk in New York.

[94:05]

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