Various things. So in a sense, we're always practicing the Four Foundations of Mindfulness if you're practicing Zen at all. But you're not practicing it as a teaching. Now, I'm using teaching, this is all teaching, but I think you know what I mean when I say as a teaching. Now, as a teaching, you practice it in a particular order. And that order is actually important. It's not a casual thing.

[01:08]

Do it when you want, you know. Make hay while the sun shines. So if you practice the parts of the body, you practice observing the contents of mind, You're not really practicing the four foundations of mindfulness. I don't mean that you're not practicing. It's very good to practice those things. But something happens that's different when you do it this way. Okay, now, as I said, Sophia is learning to walk by walking.

[02:11]

We learn to practice by practicing. But you don't really learn to dance or be a professional runner by just walking. If you want to be a dancer, depending on what school you want to dance, you have to learn certain things, develop certain muscles and so forth. Not very often are people artists just because they draw a lot. Okay. So, when I spoke about the Four Foundations last time here, it was in February again, wasn't it?

[03:35]

I emphasized my entry at that point, or my emphasis, was the articulation of the body-mind. And the relationship of that to feeling and in contrast to emotion. Okay, so now what I seem to be doing, I don't know exactly what I'm doing, is I'm emphasizing the development of clarity. Now, why do I say I don't know what I'm doing?

[04:36]

Because I like to not know what I'm doing. It's one of the reasons I am so stupid about learning German. I really like not understanding. It's very tiresome to understand things. It's kind of... It's nice just, you don't know what's going on. It's great. But also, if I'm going to talk about something like clarity, I really need clarity. As I've said several times, you're helped in doing. If I want to talk about, say, the theme of clarity, I don't know if the ingredients are going to be here to really develop that.

[05:42]

I was able to develop the practice of appearance with this group of Austrian psychotherapists I met with now for 12 years, about I was able to develop the practice of appearance very well. I could really feel that people got it and we could go to go further in it in a way that was kind of wonderful. But when I was in Munich, it was difficult to do. I couldn't go as far. It was only a few days later, but I couldn't do it. I mean, what we did, and Christian and Sophie were both there, was okay.

[07:27]

Anyway, it was still different. Okay. Okay. So let's just take, okay, so there could be two themes. No, I don't know. Again, I don't know if we'll do both. For example, when I first was practicing with the early days of security, In various ways, of course, we talked about or practiced the four foundations of mindfulness. And I always had a problem with the fourth one. So I said there mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feelings traditionally, mindfulness of the mind, and mindful of mental objects.

[08:54]

I couldn't really get it. Objects weren't mental. They were physical. And I could have gone to Sukhiroshi and said, oh, so the four foundations of mindfulness is to develop the Wayan teaching of the inner penetration of mind and the Dharmadhatu. I could have gone to Sukhiroshi and said, the fourth foundation of mindfulness is what? That is a teaching to develop the interpenetration of mind and the phenomenal world. And he would have said, oh yes, finally.

[10:02]

At last. But I just didn't get it. I wasn't there. I couldn't have asked that. I could sort of intellectually understand that Objects are also an aspect of mind. But still, I couldn't take the English philosopher Barclay's position. that everything is only mind. And often in those days, particularly, Yogacara was translated as mind only.

[11:16]

And some Westerners emphasize that as what was meant in Yogacara. So the general confusion and misunderstanding of Buddhism by translators and commentators in those days contributed to my misunderstanding. I just couldn't... I don't know if I... The habit of substantiality was so great... ...the feeling that I lived in the world...

[12:19]

And not a real sense of how the world lives in me. I just couldn't see the point of... treating objects as mental objects. In other words, Sukershi could have said that and he could say that. I just took it, okay, but it doesn't really make sense to me. So the point I'm making is we can hear things and kind of like put them aside. Den Punkt, den ich hier mache, ist, wir können Dinge hören und sie dann auf eine Art zur Seite legen.

[13:32]

Sort of like reading a science book and you come to parts, the math is too complicated and you skip. Es ist wie wenn man so ein wissenschaftliches Buch liest und dann zu Teilen kommt, wo die Mathematik zu kompliziert wird und dann überschlägt man es einfach. Or reading a book where there's parts which are too psychologically disturbing and you fall asleep when you come to it. Or you kind of gloss it over and go on to something else. Just to sort of sum it up, I would say that I didn't have overall background in practice and sufficient shift in views

[14:34]

To make sense of certain teachings. so that the third foundation of mindfulness observing mind and observing mental objects sort of was the same to me. I hadn't developed, for example, the simple habit of whenever I see anything, it points to mind as well as the object.

[15:40]

And then, for example, until you have that kind of certain teachings just won't make sense. So we're trying to, by practicing Buddhism as lay people, If you want to practice within the dangerous anticipation of a hoped-for enlightenment, Then, as a layperson, you have to practice in some ways with more structure to your practice. than you would in a monastic situation.

[16:49]

And I've come to think that enlightenment is a dangerous idea. First of all, it's understood in a as the best of all possible goods. And Voltaire could make fun of it. What does Voltaire say? That the optimist says this is the best of all possible worlds. And the pessimist says the optimist is right. So we think of it, people tend to think of it as the best of all possible goods. And so they practiced Buddhism.

[18:04]

Think this is where you find it. It's somewhere around the building. And they devote maybe some years to practice. That they practice in the context of their life, naturally. And they don't really take on practice As if there's no alternative. So then after a few years they feel like they failed. They haven't had an enlightenment experience. Or they think the teacher took them for a ride.

[19:10]

Do you have an expression like that? To dupe them or fool them or something. Yeah, and most of us actually have enlightenment experiences already but we, for the most part, we don't know We don't really notice them in a way that allows us to transform our views. So lay... practice is a mixture of taking certain things and really trying to develop them

[20:19]

And I would say there's a few that you need to do 100%. One is the recognition that every act of perception points at mind. So what happens if you can develop certain habits like that? That doesn't change anything you do, you still perceive objects and things. But it creates the ground for a certain kind of understanding. It creates an opening for the kind of shift in views that we call enlightened. Es erzeugt eine Öffnung für den Wandel, für den Wechsel in den Ansichten, die wir Erleuchtung nehmen.

[21:48]

Is that comfortable? For an hour. For an hour, oh yeah. I could get you a chair or a pillow. You can sit here if you want. Okay. Okay. So, here, as a teaching, maybe we're talking about developing clarity. Or an established body-mind. Or an established or interpenetration with the phenomenal world. Okay, you're simply not going to do that by just concentrating on your breath.

[22:58]

So certain teachings are meant certain teachings, assume a developed practice, and then, based on that developed practice, carry you into a certain... transformed way of knowing the world. Or to freedom from suffering. Yes. Okay, now I left some space here for some kind of general reason here.

[24:22]

Here we could have uncorrected mind. And here we could have sudden stress. And here we could have sudden stress. Our basic practice is uncorrected mind. And Zen practice in particular is a sudden practice. But that doesn't mean you don't also practice these things. Suddenly, I don't understand. Suddenly. Yeah, I don't understand sudden... Boom!

[25:28]

So what we could say that we have here is this... from this general territory of practice, where everything you do is basically the four foundations of mindfulness, from this we have... it helps develop this. And this I've developed this. So I wanted to, this is a kind of dumb little chart, I think. But I want to give you the feeling that most of the time we're here.

[26:37]

You do some mixture of practices you've heard about. And sometimes you turn them into real specific practices. something very specific you do. Now you might, if you happen to be, have the right kind of intent, you might develop some of these 100%. You want to take You're practicing here, but you want to sometimes take something and really explore it further.

[27:39]

Okay. That then creates the possibility of really taking on specific teachings. And as I said, Much of our teachings are developed so that one teaching covers the whole of the teaching. Und wie ich gesagt habe, unsere Lehren sind oft so angelegt, dass eine Belehrung das Ganze der Lehre abdeckt. So developing this area of practice requires doing some specific things really fully.

[28:50]

And then taking on specific... one or two or a few over some years specific teachings and really doing them thoroughly that's one way to think of your practice okay now This is more traditional Buddhism. This is more Zen. Yeah, but none of the substantial major teachers of Zen ignore this at all.

[29:55]

It's all part of the teaching. It's in all the tohans. But let's say our basic practice is uncorrected mind. Okay, then what's sudden practice? Sudden practice requires a certain fierceness or craziness. Fierceness. No, we're discussing the suddenness.

[30:56]

I translate it with Pletzli, which is boom. Boom, okay. Boom is fine. But the boom practice. So David suggests... You break the sound barrier. Boom, boom. Suggests something like immediate, but I don't know. Yeah, immediate... Immediate is more in this realm. Actually, it's... So I guess someone said to me the other day, maybe it was in Munich, maybe it was one of you, I don't remember, about some kind of, something about practice that he wanted to, they felt they understood it, but they didn't quite get it. If you're doing sudden practice, you put yourself in a situation I'm going to solve this or die.

[32:04]

Anyway, you have that feeling. I'm going to arrange my life so I can fulfill this practice no matter what the consequences. That makes, when you just hear about enlightenment happening like that, makes it sound easy. We lay people can do that. But actually, it's quite pretty much a monastic practice. The monastic situation is set up to do sudden practice. Just spend your whole day on one thing that you can't quite make sense of.

[33:06]

or weeks or months without any other consideration. That's how you do sudden practice. To concentrate on something where you can't quite understand it, but you feel you're right on the edge of it. And you just stay with it until you resolve it, or don't resolve it. You don't know if you can. If you're sure you can, it's not sudden. Yeah, and some people actually kind of freeze. Their mind freezes.

[34:25]

They can't do anything. They can't function. Some people actually freeze in their posture and they can't get up for some hours. If you're in that kind of situation, you need somebody to come up to you. hey, I have some food for you or something. You need somebody to take care of you. I'm exaggerating not much. So, but So sudden practice really requires a certain, I would say, fierceness or determination. And faith in the practice.

[35:36]

But faith in the practice, which goes beyond whether it's a good practice or not. Even if you think Buddhism stinks, I'm just going to do it 100%. If you're still looking around, well, maybe Sufism is better. If you do it well, that's fine, but then do Sufism 100%. You have to put all your eggs in one basket. And every time people give you eggs, some nice painted Easter eggs, you say, oh, go in the same basket. Do you have that idiom, to put all your eggs in one basket?

[36:38]

All in the same cart? Then there are no eggs. I think we should take a break. But let me say that what makes it... Now, the koans are sudden practice for the most part. Koans hope to put you in a situation where only wisdom will resolve the problem. your understanding, complete your understanding. But koans assume, most of them assume, right in the text, that you've done a number of practices as teachings. Yeah, so my point is, if you do some of the, some teachings

[37:57]

as close to 100% as you can. At least you have that attitude. And a direction works as an end point. Then you have a much greater likelihood of making sudden practice work. It can work from your deep intention, not from necessarily putting yourself in a crisis situation. So this is part of my effort to make adept practice possible for laypeople. I always, my little joke is, you know, and we say, kids say, if you say something and another kid doesn't believe you.

[39:41]

If one kid says something and the other doesn't believe you. So we say, cross my heart and hope to die. It's true, cross my heart and hope to die. Do you have to say anything like that in Germany? So I say, cross my legs and hope to die. Okay, let's have a break for half an hour. What time is lunch today? One? Okay, and that's half an hour later? Okay. I thought we were going to make lunch half an hour later. It's half an hour later. Okay. 45 minutes, actually. Okay. Okay. Thank you for translating. You're welcome. Okay? Okay.

[40:44]

Hongji. Hongji. You remember him. Hongji. Hongji. who lived from, I don't know, 1170, something like that, to 1070 to 1157, something like that. In China. Anyway, the late, the early 12th century. And he's one of our ancestors in our lineage and quite a big influence on Dogen. And he says something like, constantly mindful We could stop there.

[41:54]

Constantly mindful. Mindful. no longer accepts distraction. Comprehending your sense faculties from top to bottom. comprehending and exhausting, he says, your sense faculties from top to bottom. casting off the empty kalpa.

[42:55]

Kalpa is an eon or infinitely long period of time. I think a kalpa is a length of time that a bird dropping a feather on Mount Everest would wear it down. Or something like that. I don't get it. I don't get it. So casting off the empty kalpa. Letting go off the steep cliff. Now obviously that's a reference to sudden practice.

[44:16]

Exhausting your sense faculties from top to bottom is a reference to something like the... poor foundations of mindfulness. And so is being constantly mindful until mind does not accept distraction. Then everything flows in brightness and clarity. Yeah. Now, you can just take that as Zen talk. But for practitioners, they know exactly what he's talking about.

[45:25]

So the question is, yeah. I'm not trying to fool you, you know. I'm trying to give you a sense of what our ancestors meant by practice. I'm trying to give you a sense of what our ancestors meant by practice. And I'm not trying to fit Buddhism into the contemporary world. I'm trying to practice it fully. I'm not as... I'm not so good, but as fully as I can anyway. And I'm trying to practice it as it's been practiced in every age. not dependent on the particular time.

[46:33]

The particular historical period. I want to practice it as if you're my timeless ancestors. And timeless descendants. So, it's, again, pretty simple, this practice. The secret is the thoroughness of which you do it. Very German. Good.

[48:00]

So we're all in this, we're all sort of in the middle of the, the middle three. The general, the uncorrected and the specific. I think most of our practice is there. What I'm saying is, do you want to extend it into really taking on a teaching? Do you want to extend it into sudden practice. So we have this koan that I think Paul Rosenblum spoke about in this last session he did here.

[49:03]

Number 54. Why does the Bodhisattva of compassion Why does the Bodhisattva of compassion have so many hands and eyes? And the introduction says something like crystal clear on all sides. This is a reference to this experience of clarity which this is trying to teach us.

[50:12]

This teaching, Four Foundations, is trying to teach us, show us. This is an actual teaching. experience. Crystal clear in all directions. And you have to start somewhere. And the seed is starting with each breath. Again, as I said, not breath as a generalization, but specifics of each breath. It's not an accident that spirit and inspiration and so forth are all words for breath. So the experience of clarity in all directions starts from being clear, can start, most easily starts

[51:28]

Discovering clarity on each inhale and each exhale. So that's our job. Now I think we... Oh, pay attention to your inhales and exhales. We can say, you know, you hear, oh, I'll pay attention to my inhales and exhales. That's some kind of words on the surface of the practice. Yeah, it's like looking at a mountain and climbing a mountain. Here we're climbing the mountain, perhaps.

[52:50]

So you bring a feeling, find a feeling of clarity as mindfulness on each inhale. and each exhale. And you begin to feel the shape of the whole breath. It's kind of like a figure eight. And the next line in the introduction to the koan says, first it's crystal clear on all sides, something like that, and it says, unobstructed in all directions.

[53:57]

So he's first of all pointing out experience of your immediate situation of clarity. And he says, unobstructed in all directions. This is a reference to everything Everything seems familiar and friendly in the world. And that's hard to me to explain that, because if it's even something bad, it's sort of like, oh, an old friend. Not because it's bad, but just because, I don't know, you have a cut on your hand.

[55:04]

Oh, I have a cut on my hand. You don't particularly want a cut, but it's familiar, and that's just okay. You may not necessarily want this cut, but it's just the way it is. Then the introduction says, and the earth trembles. So it's not just on all sides and in all directions. But the earth is somehow connected with us. The earth trembles means we're a participant in it. We tremble, the earth trembles. And then it says something like spiritual power is manifest. And working in all things. Okay, that's a big deal.

[56:22]

I mean, that sounds like a pretty big deal. No, it's still a lot of bullshit. I mean, she didn't... She says, um... Or is the compilers of this and Hong Ji's original compilation of koans is the kind of basis for this Book of Serenity, this Shoyuroku? There's no reason for him to fool us. I don't think he could care less about fooling us. He's just an extraordinary, realized person who's trying to practice with his friends. And his whole life was the effort to do this.

[57:36]

I take this introduction as saying something serious, trying to talk about something that's not so easy to talk about. And Chino, the famous Korean Zen master, What's his name? Chinul, C-H-I-N-U-L. Chinul. Chinul. Chinul, a famous Korean Zen master. He says practitioners must see the subtle workings of their fundamental mind. I can do that. And how do you know when you're doing it?

[58:52]

How do you know it's... makes any sense to continue on a certain line of experience. The answer is all in a practice like this. And the answer is there are though only when you do the practice, the teaching, thoroughly. I'm not trying to give you something impossible to do.

[59:58]

You do it in small parts and you try to do it thoroughly, that's all. If you write... three pages a day, you have a thousand page book at the end of the year. And you know, every writer I know who accomplishes a lot basically does something like that. A few pages a day, that's all. Every day. Unfortunately, I'm not there. But instead of writing three pages a day, I practice several things a day as thoroughly as I can.

[61:00]

It's not, you know... We're us. We can do it. If you want to. And if some of you want to... Just a few of you want to, you make it possible for others. So the koan is, again, why does the bodhisattva compassion have so many hands and eyes? And Da Wu says it's like reaching for your pillow at night. How can such a silly answer How can such a stupid answer be important?

[62:23]

Well, you have to get the recognition that this is a worldview. Or an effort to find a true view of the world. So the introduction gives you the hint by saying, crystal clear in all sides. This is a world view it's describing. So how do you act in a world where everything is interconnected? where everything is hands and eyes. So he says, why does the Bodhisattva of compassion have so many hands and eyes? The koan says this is using A question as a screen.

[63:43]

No, well, yeah, but more like to screen food or something like that or to reflect something. Siv. Filter. Filter. Filter, yeah, something like that. It means, okay, instead of saying, like, why is the universe interconnected? How do you act in a universe that's interconnected? That's just a mental statement. It's not in the territory of our activity, of our experience. So instead of saying it that way you say it in some kind of way that's not quite saying it, but you can act in it as experience.

[65:06]

So we're establishing an image of the world. Wir bauen also ein Bild der Welt auf. We're not calling it a universe. Und wir nennen es nicht ein Universum. Yeah, we're saying, we talk about it by saying, why does the Bodhisattva have so many hands and eyes? Wir reden darüber, indem wir sagen, warum hat der Bodhisattva des Mitgefühls so viele Hände und Augen? And you know the Bodhisattva compassion has 11 heads and sometimes a thousand arms and eyes and the palm of the hands. It sounds like a weird image to us, like something monstrous, like a Spider-Man. Yes, but we tend to think of things as entities, and this image comes out of a culture which thinks of things as relationships.

[66:22]

So how do you act in such a world? It's like reaching for your pillow at night. That means you're not conscious. You're just reaching for your pillow at night. Okay, so now let's go back to the four foundations of mindfulness. It starts out with the expectation that you bring attention to your breath. And it assumes that you've developed a posture. In which you, you know, it might say you understand the three contemplations.

[68:00]

Which means you've stilled the mind. You have the habit of seeing everything as you've exhausted your sense faculties. You see everything as pointing to mind. So you're bringing attention to your breath. And to, as I said, to each inhale and each exhale. It might be long, it might be short. You don't take each one as the same. Each one is different. And you do this not just to count your breaths or something, but here you're doing it to find a brightness and clarity on each, on your attentiveness.

[69:17]

And you don't do this just to count your breaths, but here it's about finding a clarity and a light. On each inhale and each exhale. Each attentiveness in this attention. And you get the habit that you can do that continuously. Now, one of the practices I've mentioned in this context repeatedly to all of us is the effort to bring your attention to your breath until it naturally stays there.

[70:23]

Now, normally it goes back to our thinking. Again, I'm sorry to keep repeating myself, but why does it go back to our thinking? Because it's through our thinking we identify ourselves. And we have a need to keep identifying ourselves. For some reason, we have to tell ourselves who we are every few seconds. You're not going to forget. And we also establish our continuity in the world through our thinking.

[71:29]

If you seriously lose thinking continuity for any length of time, ten minutes or something, you think you're crazy, you think something's seriously wrong. As I said earlier, I would say that this is not just you're so self-interested. But you have a mind stream, a mind stream, a mind continuity. that needs fuel. And the fuel is you're thinking about yourself.

[72:34]

And you have to think about something. so the most handy thing is yourself but you can also listen to music or read or something like that I won't go into why I think we've developed such a mind but it constantly needs fuel And it kind of forces us to think about ourselves. We don't want to think about ourselves sometimes, but this mind says, hey, think about yourself because I can keep going then. What I'm trying to say is that if we establish consciousness as our main mode of being,

[73:40]

Consciousness needs something to be conscious of. So you have to keep feeding it stuff to be conscious of. It's almost like a hungry beast. Here's some more things. But we've really defined ourselves, defined our world through consciousness. And I haven't read this piece that you gave to Marie-Louise in German. But it sounds like the stupidity of an intelligent person.

[75:00]

A lot of very intelligent people are very stupid. For example, people who think that a computer can simulate intelligence. That's just stupid. Excuse me. But they think consciousness is all there is. So according to what I get from that article, The guy says, since you can establish that the body knows what it's going to do before the mind, the thinking does, because the body knows what it's going to do, what you're going to do before your thinking knows what you're going to do.

[76:12]

There's no free will. It's just totally stupid. There's certainly free will. But free will doesn't work just through consciousness. Like Chi Niu says, We have to know the subtle workings of our mind outside of language. Okay. But it's hard for us to really get our sense of continuity and our thinking out of our consciousness. So this is the first step of the four foundations of mindfulness. It assumes you're really going to get so that your mind is joined to your breath. Not joined to your thinking.

[77:39]

Okay, so your mind is joined to your breath. And when it does that with, not in a general way, but in the specifics of each breath, you not only find a continuous, you not only find a continuous presence of clarity, You find that as well as you find mindfulness and clarity go together.

[78:51]

The experience of mind is an experience of clarity. Like if you look at this glass. And you have no distractions. You just see this shiny water and shiny glass. And that's the brightness of your own mind you're seeing. And you feel that brightness on each breath and you feel it on each thing you look at. So it's a process really of purifying the mind.

[79:56]

The mind can't hold distractions anymore. Okay. Now, I've often said, people said, how the heck am I going to stay 24 hours concentrating on my breath? It feels like this kind of weird effort. Okay. Well, the example I... The way to understand it, I think, is to recognize that we're mindful of our posture all the time. You don't have to always be conscious of your posture. Your posture is a kind of consciousness.

[81:01]

How you're sitting, standing, etc. Okay. Well, your breath becomes like that. Your breath is just a way of being conscious. Okay. So a kind of clarity and union with the breath has occurred. Mind, clarity, breath, union. The development of that is the first step of the four foundations of mindfulness.

[82:04]

And you don't really go on with that, with the practice, until you've developed that first step. That's the difference between making this a teaching and just making it some specific thing you do in the general territory of practice. Okay. Okay, now what's the next step after bringing attention to your breath? The next step is the four postures. But that doesn't mean, oh, I've got the first step, I'm going to pay attention to my breath, now I'm going to pay attention to my posture. No, you have to bring the first step into the second step.

[83:19]

Okay, so you've got this feeling of breath, mind and clarity are joined. You're no longer establishing your clarity and your continuity by thinking. And your identity is always disappearing and reappearing. Because I'm constantly being identified by the situation and identifying myself through the situation. Now, I remember Charlotte Silver blew me away one day. When I first met her, at the same time I met Suzuki Roshi. We were in the seminar. And she said, she didn't say stand up, she said, come up to standing. I'm sorry to say so, but I had a kind of, let's say, enlightenment experience on that.

[84:53]

What a simple thing to say. But before then, I stood up mentally. I went from standing to... from sitting, say, to standing. And I sort of put my body from one end point to the other end point. But when she said that, I found that I actually went through a whole series of places coming up to standing. of little position. There are no two end points, sitting and standing. There was a whole series of places.

[85:55]

And then I found when I came up to stand, my mind shifted to my body, and my mind came up with my body. And then I discovered that standing wasn't one posture. Standing was a constant, a moving posture. And what Charlotte is very similar to what this Four Foundations of Mindfulness is expecting, is the way this practice would put it. and why there's a specific order here from an assumed developed sitting posture to joining mind and breath and clarity

[87:05]

to the four postures in which we live, which are walking, standing, sitting, and reclining. So what does that mean, just using the example of standing?

[87:44]

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