easy to understand difficult to practice and he says not mind, not Buddha hard to understand easy to practice so Okay, so again, we need to go into, you know, to really practice, we need to go into the details of these simple things. Yeah, like, again, some depth in this simple movement of lifting and relaxing. So we can notice that accepting, being open, cautiously or trustingly, is a complex act, actually.

[01:20]

And involves all of our psychology and habits and fears and so forth. And it's a simple territory in which we can actually discover our power. Und das ist ein einfaches Territorium, in dem wir unsere Kraft entdecken können. So this part you say you have a feeling for. Und so sagst du, für diesen einen Teil hast du ein Gefühl. But once you have accepted what you do with it, it also requires some additional act. because our life is movement and intention it's like maybe the present is a table and your karma are the cards and at each moment the cards are on the table

[02:30]

And then how do you play them? The playing of the cards is the second part. That could be actually just more active acceptance. So the first stage is noticing, just noticing what's your life at this moment. The next step might be just relaxing into that, settling into that. Or absorbing it. Or dissolving it. Or feeling a sense of taking it to the next step. There's not exactly words I can put on this, because it's really a kind of rather natural act that we make conscious but we make it conscious as a process we let happen and it's inseparable so you can also have acceptance and intention

[03:44]

Someone else wants to bring something up? Is there really anything who can be completed? Well, it depends what you mean by complete. Can I just check with the translation a little bit? So we are careful we don't mix it up within the German words. Some people more understood the word completion as a sense of perfection, which I feel is a different quality.

[05:07]

I mean, the perfect teaching, part of Zen is a traditional teaching called the perfect teaching. It's in contrast to and inclusive of sudden teaching. Or you have the paramitas which means the perfections. But perfection in Buddhism always means to complete. So if you understand completing something as finishing it and comparing it to something that could be more finished, that's not what it means.

[06:09]

I think it's best understood as a feeling of completion. I think of a painter. He's painting. You can paint forever. But at some point it feels complete. You can't exactly say why. One more brush stroke seems wrong. Or as I always say, if I pick up this bell, I can do the simple motions so I feel complete. If I just grab the bell like that, it doesn't feel complete. If I have... This is one action.

[07:13]

Yeah. And now I've got a lot of actions mixed up in that. That's okay. And you... I mean, if we go to a sports analogy, you think it's an athlete like a runner. just runs. But the people who are the best runners, one of the main things they do now is they visualize every step and every part of every step. And then they run in the middle of that visualization. That's much more like a Dharma practice. So if I do this completely, rather allowing myself a sense of completion, I know I'm going to move my arm, and I can feel it in my arm, and it goes over and it rests on the bell.

[08:29]

That's a feeling of completion. Now if I just pick it up like this, that doesn't feel so complete. I think you'll notice when you pick up something, you bring it into your center, you feel more complete. So you bring it in like that. And if you hand something to a kid often and they really like what you've handed to them and they're not completely distracted and you're just trying to distract them they often pull it into their body and then they look at it. But they're also letting their body feel it. So when you do that, there's more of a feeling of completion.

[09:44]

Again, I think in this practice you notice small things and you allow yourself to feel completion. in the small things you do. And then that begins to extend to many things you do. So again, if we go back to Dogen's Genjo Koan, to complete what appears, to various degrees, I'm open to the feeling in this room. Now I choose what to be open to. By choosing what to be open to, I'm choosing what causes me. The second noble truth is that everything is caused. And but we can choose what causes this.

[11:08]

Or we can have a craft of what we're open to causally on each moment. And the skandhas, which is a wisdom teaching, is one of the things that we can bring into, in a simple way, what we're open to. Now, this is not the time for me to teach the five skandhas, but for those of you familiar with them, the second skanda is feeling. Now, the third skanda is perceptions. Now, for instance, I have a choice to be open to perceptions. I can be open to her voice. I can be open to what I'm seeing. And the brightness of the snowy windows.

[12:09]

But I choose not to be open to that as the primary cause. As a primary cause, I'm open to the feeling in the room. We can say a non-graspable feeling. It's not something you can get your hands on exactly. But you can sort of get your body on it. So I choose to keep allowing on each moment a feeling coming in. And that's also much less threatening. If I let perceptions come in, then immediately comparisons and thinking and stuff goes on.

[13:25]

Now, part of the teaching of the five skandhas is the more you move up the skandhas, the five, the more you open yourself to the activity of consciousness. and associative thinking. That's okay. Sometimes I want to be open to that. So sometimes I have to shift in myself to internal associative thinking so I can know what to say next. or what I might say. So I can be internally open to associative thinking and externally open to feeling. I still notice the bright snowy windows as a feeling but also as a perception. But it comes second to my just feeling the room.

[14:42]

Does this make sense? Yeah. And when you change, make a change like that, you're changing what causes you. And the more you cause your life through perception and consciousness if those are your building blocks you build a certain kind of world. But you can also build a more subtle world But you can also build a much finer world. Okay. Yes. I have the following dilemma with practicing the present moment.

[15:52]

You spoke a lot last week about that the present moment is the only moment that we can live, actually. And the whole teaching is to live in the present. But when I really try to get a feeling for it, I always have this feeling coming up, it's disappearing. It's a feeling of there's actually no moment, no moment, no moment. And it's a little bit like you spoke about this runner who is going more and more deeper into every step, but suddenly the whole run disappears. So there's no feeling more. And what I mean by dilemma is when you say you can have this... widening feeling of the presence.

[16:58]

I know what you mean, or I have a feeling in my normal consciousness that everything is getting wider. But when I really try to focus on it and to concentrate on it, I have the opposite feeling. I have a collapsing feeling into there. There is no presence, actually. That's true. This is good, you just don't like it yet. Deutsch, bitte. Wir haben in der letzten Woche schon damit gearbeitet und Roger hat viel über den gegenwärtigen Moment gesprochen. about the fact that we can only stay there for a while, and the whole teaching is based on that and makes sense for me. But when I actually try to practice with it, I have more the feeling, and Roshi has specifically talked about how this moment can open up and become wider and brighter,

[18:07]

And when I practice it more specifically, I come to the following dilemma, that it becomes narrower and narrower, and that I come to the feeling that this moment exists. It's almost like a series of non-moments where I put something like I remember how he spoke of the runner, when he goes back every step and analyzes every step, the run disappears and for me it feels at least so that he no longer knows that he is running and where he is actually in the case where I am. Is there something I missed in the German? So generally we have, let's say that this is the past. This is the future.

[19:12]

And usually our present is actually something like that. So this is the past. And we can say future anticipation. And that's a kind of cause. And we can say past causes. And usually our past causes and our future anticipations completely control what we call the present. And I would say most people don't know a present free or independent from past causes and future anticipations.

[20:13]

The present is a staging moment where you take the next train to the future. And you don't have time to put down your bags. Okay. So what we're trying to do in practice is first of all end up start with something like this. At least in Zazen. And then you're eventually trying to create some kind of present that's more not such clear boundaries. And the past flows, so you can't say it's just the present because the past is flowing into it.

[21:34]

And the future is flowing out of it. And it's connected by intention. Not by a sense of some kind of predictable next step. Now, this is a huge change when you come into this. And then you have a succession of futures. I don't know if that makes sense, but practice is moving from this to this. And what's characteristic of this is, just as Beate says, is a dissolving actually into nothingness. And you have a choice at this point.

[22:39]

And this is why the word for rebirth actually means in Buddhism to reunite. So one of the characteristics of rebirth I met with a group of people who are, for the most part, researchers in out-of-body and near-death experiences. And people who've tried to do scientific studies of communication The other side. The other side, which is here. You don't have to translate that accurately.

[23:41]

And they also have lots of ideas. Mostly deterministic ideas. About what's going on. Because nobody knows what, you know, there's no way to predict or forecast what happens after death. It's said that the Buddha himself said, we can't know. I mean, there may be a theory of rebirth, but we actually can't know. So what Buddhism does say is that there's no entity, if there is rebirth, there's no entity that transmigrates. Or reincarnates, karnate meaning re-embodies.

[24:52]

But there is possibly a rebirth of consciousness. Now, a lot of people in the West who practice Buddhism want to believe this. And you want to believe it on faith or something. And I don't say you shouldn't. And you may have some experience that confirms this. Well, anyway, let me go back. I was meeting with this group of people, discussing whatever evidence there is, and there's quite a bit of evidence of survival after bodily death.

[25:56]

Or certainly subtleties that we can't explain easily. But if you... want to look at this, it's also good to look at some of the complicated things you get yourself into. I think one of the funniest is the Chinese belief. Which versions of it are present in Japanese Buddhism, too. Which is that there's some kind of... When a person dies, part of the deceased hangs around the gravestone. And part of the deceased is up in some spirit world or heaven.

[27:00]

And if you don't bring enough flowers, incense and food to the gravestone, the part that's hanging around the gravestone gets pretty irritated. And tells the part, who's in heaven, stop protecting that guy. So if you want your ancestors or people you're connected with to protect you, you have to keep feeding the part that's hanging around the gravestone. Well, I don't believe in a mechanistic universe. But this requires too much of a stretch for me to imagine it's likely. Do you want to continue?

[28:09]

Sure. Do I want to continue what? You can say anything you like. Translator has her rights. Well, there was a conference recently in Heidelberg organized by this Professor, as I mentioned to you a couple of times, on exactly this issue. And he brought in Bert Hellinger, the systemic family therapist, the role of the deceased in the family systems. It was really far out in the sense because he brought in an anthropologist who had done research in India. There's one tribe, some indigenous people, like when somebody dies in an accident, something happens to the family system because the spirit of this person with this traumatic death experience hangs around. So what they do, the spirit of this person person who died in this traumatic way goes into a shaman, and then the shaman acts out all the suffering, and then the family has a chance to say goodbye and to make peace.

[29:15]

And that really seems to be beneficial to the whole village. And he had made videotapes and everything, and I mean, it was goosebump stuff. So whatever that means, I think it's very challenging that family therapy actually deals with the role of diseased in that sense. So there's something. Okay, so Deutsch, bitte. Did she know how to do that? In Heidelberg there was a huge conference on the subject of the role of the deceased in family systems. Family therapy has found that they do play a role and that they have to be brought in. Apart from Bert Henninger, who most of you know, There was an anthropologist who brought a lot of audio material from India from a very small tribe.

[30:21]

So if someone in the family has a traumatic death, for example, a young man is beaten to death by a landslide, you know that this will bring a lot of misfortune for the family. and then rituals are done for weeks, where the shaman now makes himself available as a medium for the spirit of these deceased and that one then tries to limit this traumatic experience for this person, by really giving him clothes for the journey and the mother, for example, can say goodbye and the wife and the children and such things. That's actually the question, is there something in the field of that diseased person or is it a psychological process? Or is it something from the family itself?

[31:36]

Because this is also different, if they do it for themselves or if they do it for the person who has disappeared somehow. The person who has been left behind or the person who has died? German, I mean English, please. German, I mean English, please. German, I mean English, please. she's saying it's she agrees that it's more probably something psychological so the family you know doesn't need to kind of perpetuate something of the trauma and pass it on to the succeeding generations I think all of these traditional cultures way of dealing with death

[32:54]

Certainly is a way to deal with the family situation. And it seems to be particularly the case that something has to be done when the death was early, tragic, etc. But then there's the next step. We agree it's a way for the Chinese, for instance, to deal with the deceased. But the next step, is there a field of non-local consciousness or extended consciousness which somehow contains still the deceased? Now, this you can't answer very well, but there's some interesting things that you can say about it.

[34:23]

And the third is, is actually the deceased continue in some... or some aspect of the deceased continue in some long-term way and then... also not just exist in some spirit world, but then be reborn into the world. Western science, because they have no model for it, has completely dismissed this. But there are certainly the largest percentage of people in the world believe something like this. Yeah, they might all be wrong. And I'm sure to some degrees they all are partly wrong. But are they partly right?

[35:38]

And what's interesting, and I'm not an expert on this for sure, and I personally have no interest in reincarnation or rebirth, I can barely manage this life, and I'm here. And... But what's interesting is when you do look at the anthropological evidence, or at least stories, people are reborn or continue in a spirit world in ways that conform to the belief of the group.

[36:49]

So if you believe that really your ancestors are going to be reborn in one of your children, that seems to be more likely. And there are tribal or cultural groups in India, for instance, that believe that if someone dies, they're going to be reborn in your child or in two or three of your children. If your grandmother was a particularly strong personality, she might be reborn in three of your children and two of your grandchildren. And usually they have a same-sex rebirth, but not necessarily reincarnation.

[38:00]

But not always. And then if the person has died accidentally, they sometimes actually mark the body to see if that mark will be on the reborn person. And there's statistical evidence that this seems to happen. The birthmarks appear exactly where the wound was, or the gunshot wound was on the person. I don't want us to get too far out of knowledge. But, you know, it's something Buddhism touches on. It's not intrinsic to Buddhism, but it... something we talk to touch but some cultures and like Tibetan culture believe you're reincarnated quite freely not in your own blood lineage, genetic lineage and maybe intention has something to do with it

[39:16]

I don't want to come back as my grandchild. I'd rather come back as Manuel. Okay. Now... I'd say one more thing that I think is interesting. Yeah. Do you suppose Mahakali's coming back? Yeah. Okay. There's an opera, one of the most startling pieces of evidence for something going on that we don't understand Is this a new type of operation on an aneurysm, a brain tumor, or a stroke? By draining the blood out of the person's head. And you can only, I guess the brain can only survive about four minutes without blood, without oxygen.

[40:41]

But if you cool the body and cool the blood by running it out of a vein here into something that cools it down, a refrigerator... That reminds me of a joke about somebody who went to a psychiatrist because their husband thought he was a refrigerator. And the psychotherapist said, if he wants to think he's a refrigerator, let him think he's a refrigerator. It's harmless. She said, well, okay, but when he sleeps with his mouth open, the light keeps me awake. Okay, so the person's blood, this woman's blood, is taken out and put in a refrigerator.

[41:48]

And then they have 45 minutes in which to complete the operation. In this particular case that I had explained to you in some detail without fainting this vein somehow wasn't quite large enough so they opened up the one on the left side. And that took some extra time, so the operation took 50-some minutes. But she seemed to, but she recovered, it looks like. Then they tip her up, and all the blood drains out of her head. And then they cut the head open and operate on the aneurysm.

[43:16]

What was extraordinary is the woman remembered everything that happened during the operation. So things the doctor did that he denied at first, but nurses said he did do these things. She remembered all kinds of details. Including aspects of the operation. We can't imagine how that's possible. There's no... I mean, your blood is drained out of your head. How can you be conscious? And this friend of mine, Charles Tart, has done experiments where people of out-of-body experiences read a number that he's put up on a shelf that you can't see. They're down here, but they tell you what that number is. And they've tried this kind of thing because so often out-of-body and near-death experiences Explain what they see while they're supposedly dead from some high up point in the room.

[44:31]

I don't know. But anyway, it's things that are anomalies you can't deal with, but you can't explain away. If you want to simply disbelieve them, that I don't think makes sense. If you don't want to believe them, but allow for a certain mystery, I think that's better. But I know before I started meditating, I used to have experiences of being somewhere up in the top of the room. I just thought it was funny. So to put all that aside and come back to Beate's question, one of the things Buddhism has done, and there's a certain politics in it,

[45:38]

And the rebirth in India was partly a kind of understood as the attempt to get a better rebirth and a higher caste. And a kind of political posture of Buddhism in India was against the caste system. And so part of the explanation of rebirth in Buddhism in contrast to reincarnation was to say there's no entity that's reincarnated. Part of the overall teaching of no permanent self. So various images were developed. Like a flame lights another candle.

[46:52]

that there's not the same flame, but there's a continuity of light. But that was also used for living itself. That the candle light at the first watch of the night is not the same flame as the second watch of the night. So our own living consciousness is constantly changing. You hit one ball into the next. It's not the same ball, but the movement goes. As the physicist Feynman says, we can't even explain that, really. Or the image of a river flowing. It's always not the same. Now, so what Buddhism essentially did, what I call it, there were two ways of dealing with the idea of rebirth.

[48:22]

Which was part of the cultural belief of India where Buddhism developed. So you can't completely, you have to work within the culture you're in. As we have to do here in the West and in Europe. So one is they reframed rebirth as different from reincarnation. And they pulled it back from the moment of death into the present moment. Now, it's thought that at the moment of death... So, let's say, what passes in... If you look at the rebirth theory...

[49:39]

What passes in rebirth is your dispositions, your moods. Your consciousness in the sense of its dispositions. I think the word is sankhara. Sankara. It means that if you're in a good mood at the moment of death, you can kind of forget about the karma and start a nice rebirth. But how many of us can be in good mood at the moment of death? It takes a certain practice. And that's one reason if this is the case that Buddhism would explain that people who die by accident car crashes have a much more disturbed situation. Now, to continue this in a little way, just to finish the basic idea, Buddhism assumes a double conception

[51:00]

The male and female conceive conjurally a child. And then this embryo, which at least in English, it's an embryo for eight weeks and then it becomes a fetus. And the embryo is waiting for a prior consciousness to enter it. And if this prior consciousness enters the womb, It's like a second fertilization.

[52:25]

And if this doesn't happen, there's more likely to be a miscarriage or something like that. But to understand where this is waiting, because it doesn't happen instantly. Some people believe it has to happen instantly. There has to be no moment between the next birth. the rebirth and the death. But the Tibetans believe you have 49 days to make up your mind. Who you want. And my daughter Sally, when she was two or so, said, I remember waiting and deciding that I would choose the two of you. I tell that as an anecdote, not as evidence. Okay, and so every seven days you can lose, I don't know why it's in a week, you know, but anyway, a Christian week, the Tibetans, every seven days there's a kind of, has to be a small rebirth of the deceased, because it kind of has to, in each seven days has to find...

[53:55]

a new womb, a new embryo. And I suppose if it's too interested in an ideal birth and something perfect, And after 49 days it hasn't found a receptive womb. Then the deceased consciousness goes into some spirit world where it has a longer time to look around. I don't know, that might be true, but how do we know? Yeah, now they say that certain clairvoyants can kind of understand these things. But I'm sorry, my practice isn't that advanced.

[54:57]

But I'm sorry, my practice is not so advanced. I'm very bad in mathematics but somehow I feel this could be right that you incarnate several times because the world population is increasing. Yeah, no. Obviously there has to be multiple incarnations if all of us are because there's more people alive today than have ever lived in history. I feel overly divided, actually. I didn't receive enough from the past. Anyway, so there is some mystery of survival after bodily death. And various cultures make theories about it.

[56:23]

I think the theories are harder to accept than the fact that there is some mystery. So I should finish this up, I think. What time is lunch? 12.15. So I want to say a few more things in a few minutes. So basically what Buddhism reframed rebirth to say that at the moment of death if you can have a stable, clear consciousness and be aware of certain subtle energies that are present in the moment

[57:41]

You can assure a good rebirth. But that's true of each moment. Right now, there are many possible futures. And the more at this present moment you can dissolve, going back to your question, dissolve the constituents, because at the process of death For a Buddhist, there are various teachings about it, and I won't go into them. Of how you're present with a person who dies. And what the person is supposed to be doing. is dissolving their four elements, fluidity, solidity, etc., doing this in their feeling and mind, dissolving the vijnanas and dissolving the skandhas.

[58:57]

So you can look at the Heart Sutra as a menu card of how to die. But it's also a menu card for how to dissolve yourself into the present moment. So the present moment arrives to you. As perceptions, feelings, consciousness and self-love. And what exactly appears is what happens to appear to you at this moment. What you happen to notice. Different of us notice different things. So different presents are appearing to each of us.

[60:06]

And different presences appear to us individually at different moments. But we can't make a comparison. We only have to accept what this present moment is for us. And the more we've developed mindfulness, the fuller what appears will be. And we let that fold into us into our associative thinking past causes And into our intention and compassion. And then, as at the moment of dying, you can dissolve that further. Or you can fold it out into form, into compassion, into planning to do something.

[61:22]

And that's basically what Dogen means by the genjokoan. And it's basically the dharmic presence rather than the karmic presence. It must be time, as Gerald says, for lunch. So let's sit for a moment. You can practice with this feeling by doing it on your breath.

[63:02]

The feeling of each present moment settling in you with each breath. You have to start somewhere. with these practices. And the breath is always a wonderful starting point to let your mind caress your breath and let your breath caress the present and the world. So if we're half an hour late... Now, I've been, um... Uh...

[64:42]

this morning and last evening, trying to go over some basic things that most of you are familiar with. But I've been trying to go over them in more real detail. I would say the real detail, characteristic of practice. And I've been trying to go over them... with an accompanying conceptual detail.

[65:49]

So that you can see that in even a simple thing like coming into your posture, If it's thoroughly understood and if it's thoroughly observed and simultaneously understood it is an instance of the whole of Buddhism. Okay, so what I emphasized this morning was the coming into our sitting posture.

[66:59]

is a way of acknowledging and working with our karma. And that using the posture to open yourself up to your karma is the whole process also of reliving your karma. Yeah, of, you know, as I say, in the chicken stock of Zazen mind instead of the beef stock of ordinary mind, You re-cook your karma. And you actually begin to experience it differently. And the more you sit... And this doesn't happen in mindfulness.

[68:25]

This is an example of what doesn't happen in mindfulness practice but does in zazen practice. And you find yourself not only in a flow of past experiences, memories and unconscious things that come up, You also find yourself in a flow of non-conscious experience. Experiences you were never even conscious of or repressed. They just were outside your perceptual framework. Or they had no handles that allowed you to remember them. but in the subtle mind of zazen which overlaps sleeping, dreaming, waking many more things are drawn into our present and as I always say you're reshaping yourself

[69:35]

So you shouldn't cut this off with some simplistic Zen instruction to cut off thinking. This is comparable in the present to the Buddhist tradition of recalling past lives. Now, as you, as I said this morning, begin to sit up through your karma, And you begin to more and more enter into truly immobile sitting. You're no longer sitting. Something takes over your sitting. Something sits you.

[71:07]

The ideal posture takes hold of you and performs itself beyond your own posture that you accept. Now, this is a continuity with what I call everyday practice. But if you sit enough, something, it's strange, the posture begins to sit you. And you can begin to trust the posture itself as a teaching. The posture itself starts to teach you. That doesn't mean you always sit absolutely immobile. It means you more and more have a taste of this immobility.

[72:13]

And a certain percentage of the time, more and more the direct experience of it. And it really feels like your mind particularly extends throughout your backbone. And throughout your body. So that as beginning breath practice and beginning zazen practice is a process of weaving mind and body together. Adept practice is now you really feel a unity of mind and body.

[73:13]

And you're still enough, often still enough, to really develop the skill of observing your own mind and body. Of developing a big observer. That's not the observer that accumulates your personal history. This observer is free of your personal history. Much more detached and clear. You begin to feel everything with a clarity like you're seeing your own mind as you might see clear water filling the room. And you begin to have the capacity to see essence of mind. The bright background of mind.

[74:20]

And at first it seems like, as I've said, a kind of brightness. And a kind of background. Yeah, and as I said, it's... Brightness isn't the right word. But there's no word for this. It's not found in the dictionary. But brightness is a good enough word. Although, as I say, it's sometimes maybe like... the gray water of a lake in the afternoon.

[75:22]

Yeah, but we can still call it brightness. And it's strangely enhanced by being able to sit immobily. And it's also enhanced by the roots of... that arise from practicing the precepts. It says in this little section from the Flower Garland Sutra, the mind supported by the roots of goodness. And in practical terms that means you've begun to free yourself from conflicts and ambivalences.

[76:25]

And this practice of completeness is also one in which completing each small act, completing the present moment, It's when more and more you feel clear about what you do and feel. It might be wrong, but your intention was clear. So you may have more skill in fulfilling your intention. And it's not so good if what you do causes suffering. But still there's quite a big difference in whether you intended or thoughtlessly created suffering.

[77:29]

And the suffering is caused by a lack of skill in how to be with others in the present. You know, I think of something Wittgenstein said. somewhere in a journal he said the great thing of the revelation of this that year this is Ludwig Wittgenstein the philosopher he said the discovery of this year was the influence on my ability to think logically about logic.

[78:34]

If I tried to live rightly. And what's interesting that he said, he didn't say, I can think more clearly and accurately if I live rightly. He said, if I try to live rightly, and that's what the roots of goodness mean, the roots of goodness. So this immobile sitting and to observe something so fragile as the background of your mind The field of mind itself is simply not possible if you feel conflicted. Because the nature of this unity of mind is that it's not in conflict. And immobile sitting brings you more into this feeling.

[79:57]

It's not just a matter of stillness. And you can begin, as I said, to notice within the inventory of mind In other words, if you're sitting still, you can take an inventory. And one of the fruits of adept zazen practice is to develop a non-interfering observing consciousness. In other words, again, the kind of best example of that is normally as a beginner you sometimes have an experience of samadhi. But as soon as you notice you have an experience of samadhi, there's no more experience of samadhi.

[81:22]

Sayonara samadhi. You don't have to translate sayonara because everyone knows. Anyway, but for the more skilled practitioner, one can observe samadhi without interfering with samadhi. And that's an essential yogic skill. So you can observe your mind without interfering with your mind. And that's not a fruit of mindfulness. It's a fruit of still sitting. And all of Buddhism is based on this, what you begin to know through still sitting. To practice Buddhism does not require this still sitting.

[82:31]

But if you want to recreate Buddhism for yourself, assure the teachings in yourself and be more likely to communicate them directly to others, this arises through still sitting. Maybe I should say again, immobile. More and more there's a stillness throughout our body and a stillness deep down within us. So it's not difficult at all to take an inventory of what appears. There's some kind of associative thoughts. There's a mood or two floating around.

[83:38]

And there's thoughts. And there's images. And there's a few percepts. No steps from upstairs. Perhaps a car and a bird. And then still within that inventory there's the background of mind as part of the inventory. And that's always there as a condition of mind, otherwise you couldn't separate a thought from a feeling and two thoughts from each other. As the page is necessary for the printed word. But as you begin to notice the background of mind, it's an ability to stabilize yourself in the background of mind.

[84:41]

And now having the yogic skill with body and mind more merged, That you have the ability to precisely feel the physical aspect of a state of mind. If you can't feel that, like you can, and you can experiment with it, as I very often say, By bringing a dream back, by feeling the sleeping mind rather than worrying about the contents of the dream.

[85:42]

So we have a chance to practice this very often. But in zazen, to be able to really begin to have specific physical sensations for mind, a different physical sensation when you're looking at the contents in this inventory, the contents of mind. And another physical sensation when you shift to noticing the field of mind or background of mind. Now you could say the background of mind is always there. But it's not an essence of mind.

[86:46]

It's not original mind. It's only when you begin to notice it that the page behind the printed word begins to have a life of its own. It's like the page moves forward and becomes the foreground and not the background and begins to create the words that are on the page. And even begins to edit the text. And says, all this paragraph is based on a deluded idea. The essence of mind doesn't support deluded ideas. So this paragraph has to be rewritten. But even when you're doing zazen, Some process like this is going on.

[87:51]

I'm sure you've all noticed how, if you have a problem in your life, think it through in zazen mind, you often come to a different conclusion or feeling than if you think it through an ordinary mind. And usually the solution you come to in zazen mind you might have to recognize it's impractical. But it still is more in tune with your inner requests. Yeah, and it has a more integrated with your life feeling. So already in ordinary zazen practice this quality of essence of mind is at work. So essence of mind begins to come to the foreground and you identify with it.

[89:05]

And then you can really see the contents appearing out of mind itself. They're really appearing now in the present. Of course, they're conditioned by your associative experience, your past experience. And it's conditioned by percepts. But it's also conditioned by the mind itself. As if I clap my hand. The cause was my two hands coming together.

[90:08]

The cause was also my mind deciding to do that. The cause was also your ears hearing it. But the cause was also the air. If we were on the moon, you wouldn't have heard anything. To pick a particular sound, we... was also a condition of the air. And it even had a causal factor of its own, the way the sound forms itself. So when we look more subtly at causation, We see the mind itself as a factor in causation. And it's more now like thoughts and feelings float to the surface in our mind than that they come from outside.

[91:17]

So this kind of realization of the background of mind as essence of mind and this background of mind now as essence of mind, and to some extent we can understand this as original mind, this mind begins to have a life of its own. It's not just a background. Now, that's an example of what I mean, the difference between seeing mind as given and seeing mind as generated. Now, some of you might think, well, gee, my size isn't there yet. I still... flooded by thoughts.

[92:28]

But I think it's important for you to know the potential, the possibilities of meditation practice. And if you know this, which I just spoke to you about, for example, even in beginner's practice, And beginner's practice is often so rich. The first few months sometimes transcend the next five years. Because you're open to so many things and it's a contrast with your usual mind. And you see that something like the dynamic of essence of mind is already working in us. So again, I make an example of the continuity and shift within zazen practice. From karma practice to dharma practice.

[93:50]

From well-being to non-being. From acceptance to the potentiality for transformation. Yes, I may think that takes a little moment to absorb, to actually acknowledge in ourselves this depth of mind, this accessibility of mind,

[95:12]

The way mind itself can be a force in our life. And how we can use Zazen as a way to begin to observe our mind. And realize mind itself. Mm-hmm. No. We don't want to go half an hour over. Gerald reminded me that one time in Creston we did the ordination ceremony at midnight. Is that really true we did? You were there too?

[96:18]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_73.75