I want to go in a slightly different direction than I've been speaking, partly because I talked yesterday about students and teachers and so forth. And it's something I feel a need to talk about. At the same time, I don't talk about it very often or very clearly. Because I've decided to mostly let you guys figure that out. And we customarily assume that at the basis of all discussion, the structural process is egocentric.

[01:16]

We could discuss that for a while, but I won't. But that assumption makes discussing teacher and student-disciple relationships more complicated if I'm the teacher. But I don't particularly care whether you have me as a teacher or some other teacher, or whether you have several teachers. Though I do think you need a home-based practice and home-based teaching and teaching. Now, a teacher in Buddhism is Extremely important, but we don't have any models for the relationship.

[02:38]

And it doesn't mean, as some of you think, that if you have a teacher, you're not doing it alone. The nature of practice is that you do it completely alone and with a teacher. It doesn't stop you from doing it alone. And it's not doing it alone instead of doing it with a teacher. You've got to practice as if you were completely on your own.

[03:39]

And then also, if possible, you have the companion of a teacher. In Tibetan Buddhism, the teacher is considered so important, it becomes the four treasures instead of the three treasures. Instead of the three treasures of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha it's Buddha, Dharma, Sangha and teacher And the teacher is not a guru in the Indian sense or like Bhagavan Rajneesh?

[04:41]

Sorry, I have orange underwear on. And a teacher is not a parent or a spouse. And it's not a parent in the sense that it's somebody you eventually have to break from. And it's very specifically related to the teaching, not to all aspects of your life. So the question of how to make your path include another person is the question.

[05:43]

And the effort to make it include another person, even if the other person is less smart and younger than you, is really important in Buddhism. Yes, that's all I'll say about that. Now, Buddhism has usually, and I'm going to try to give some general definitions of Buddhism here. Buddhism has of course been shaped for us through the texts chosen to translate, the commentaries, analysis and the translations themselves.

[06:58]

And the first influence of Buddhism in the West came through missionaries. Catholic and Protestant. and they influenced the initial descriptions of Buddhism in the West. And the next level probably of influence is those people who wanted to make Buddhism rational and scientific. That Buddhism is ultimately logical and reasonable. And the same emphasis tries to make Jesus Christ into an ordinary guy who happened to be good or something.

[08:13]

Now, Buddhism is highly logical and highly pragmatic. But it's not verifiable. Excuse me? It's not verifiable. Hmm. You can't prove it's true. It's realizable but not verifiable. It's not verifiable in our ordinary sense, our ordinary common sense. because it's not based on common sense reality.

[09:34]

It's based on a reality realized through a sense common to all the senses in a high state of concentration. So the sense of Buddhism as being verifiable and logical and rational and so forth in all its aspects Also comes from Asian teachers who were influenced by the West and trying to make Buddhism clear to the West. Okay. And then the categories in which we look at Buddhism, the most common being that it's somehow transcendental or transcendent, and that it somehow deals with a centralized and universalized truth.

[11:07]

And those are categories we apply to. Western religions don't really apply too well to Buddhism. And I'm trying to give you a sense of what you're getting involved in. Buddhism is foremost a path, a path, a way. And Buddhism can't be passed from one culture to the next by missionaries. You can't really bring the teaching to one person, or a few people can't bring the teaching from Polynesian Island and convert the population there.

[12:22]

Buddhism has passed through numbers of people living in a Buddhist way which begins to influence the society. Now, mainly Buddhist teaching, Buddhist realities have been discovered through the daily life practices of lay people and monks. And you can't derive those practices, figure out those practices from reading the teachings. You can read Buddhism as much as you want, the teaching of Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths and stuff, and you wouldn't think up a sashin.

[13:47]

Nor would you think up oryoki practice as a way to eat your lunch. So one thing I'm trying to do in Sashen's here and in the seminars is bring the details of Buddhist life together with the teachings That's about as much as I can do. If you're going to continue your practice, you need to bring Buddhist way of life into your life And into the lives of others.

[14:49]

And find ways to practice with each other. That's why it's really important for groups of you to decide, like has happened in Berlin and the Vienna Gang and others of you, to find ways to practice together. It's only in discovering how you're going to practice in your daily life and with others that Buddhism will actually take hold in you and in the society. So that's why Sangha Sangha, the community of practitioners, is equal in the path with Dharma and Buddha.

[16:09]

So the path exists, and Buddha means you do it completely alone. Sangha means you do it completely with others and Dharma means you do it both you have to know how to do it and we can include doing it with a teacher or in Zen the emphasis on lineage we chanted the names of the lineage this morning So really the overriding religious concept in Buddhism is the path. And the path also means other people. And the path is also understood to be the way Buddhism is most clearly a religion.

[17:34]

A teaching for all people. because the emphasis on it being daily life living your actual experience means from an ordinary busy person and an adept siddha have to find ways their teaching comes into their ordinary life and anyone can participate in it So on the one hand you have the idea of realized Buddhahood or Buddha mind balanced with the pervasive presence of Buddha mind in everyone Expressed in the full moon and the crescent moon.

[18:47]

It is in the crescent moon which you can see the fullness of the moon and the full moon which includes the crescent. I guess we could say the path is your own life informed by consensual reality and your own meditation practice informed by Buddha's teachings.

[19:50]

and bringing your own life and consensual reality together with your meditation practice and Buddhist teaching is the path. And when you bring that together in a realizable, visible life that you have, it makes it possible for other people. Is that sort of clear? Now I should in some ways probably be speaking to you about basic breathing practices and so forth.

[21:20]

That's what many of you need. And much of what I'm talking about you can only get a taste of. Definitely more of a taste of in sashimi than you can, say, in a seminar. But also... The background of the basic practices is necessary to understand, I think, in order to do these basic practices realistically and fully. So let's talk about concentration a little bit.

[22:33]

Okay. Again, I've been talking about one-pointedness. Now, Neil and a few other people have had discussions with Ulrike about one-pointedness and the translation of that. I'm not sure you should have been having discussions about it. It's interesting. My impression is that you're Buddhists here and normal Europeans up at the house. It was a few times I've gone up to the house and there's been quite a lot of talking going on up there You're not doing so much down here So maybe the emphasis on Buddhist life and the details of Buddhist life in Sashin, you need a little relief from.

[23:52]

So this is a good place to practice. We can be Westerners up there and Buddhists down here. And maybe you just need a little distance or relief from this Buddhist life. And so it's quite good to practice here at this place because you can just go up into the house where you can then be a Westerner. So maybe House Distiller was very smart and designed this way. Now I'm probably not as strict as I should be and I should appear from under the rug shouting, Shut up! Shut up! Ah, but anyway, please try not to talk so much. And when you're cooking in the kitchen, it's supposed to be limited to cooking, to conversation essential to producing the food.

[25:01]

But I think you define essential to producing good food a necessity to produce good humor. Okay, would you want to say something about the discussion about one-pointedness and so forth with the translation? In German. I'll just pretend I understand. Janil first used the translation of one-pointedness, which my dear neighbor here to the right today has whispered to me as a translation. The commonly used translation in German Buddhist literature for one-pointedness is one-pointedness.

[26:15]

And I also looked it up in the dictionary, pointed also means pointed. One pointed is one pointedness. And I have read very little about Buddhism in German, so these traditional translations are almost not common to me and so I try to translate more from the context. And this is often not covered with the usual terms. I briefly discussed this with Niel and I think also with Harald. Harald then also said, maybe you could say, EINGERICHTETHEIT. And then I have this German again, what did I say? EINGERICHTETHEIT. I tried again, as best as I could, to re-translate this translation into English, to talk about the Ume Roshi, which we should now use. That is, of course, again difficult.

[27:28]

And he says, in any case, that it does not have much to do with spitz, like a arrow that you shoot or something like that. but it was more about bringing the energy, the concentration, to a point, to condense it to a point, so that you could extend it on the other side. Once the priest said, maybe one should say one-pointedness, one-plantedness, i.e. one-stumpfiness. One-stumpf. One-stumpf. Yes, and according to my understanding, this term really moves between uniqueness, something that you bring to the point, and ultimately again extends to a field. And that creates such a tension, such a pulse.

[28:33]

And to find that in a German word is quite difficult. That's why we decided to continue using the English word. Or to simply use one of these possible translations at the appropriate point. Because once it is more in the sense of a point, sometimes more the direction meant, sometimes more the field. And I don't think I've translated much about things like that, but I do it more intuitively. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it doesn't. Okay, have we about covered the territory? Well, what we do at Crestone, trying to do at Crestone sometimes, is the group meets without me every other time.

[29:36]

And part of the attempt in this meeting without me is to see if there's a common understanding of the language of Buddhism. And that's something you can really do together. And each other's misunderstandings help you sharpen your own understanding. So this kind of discussion is important and valuable. For example, to give an example of the importance of getting these things straight, is the four foundations of mindfulness. They are usually translated like mindfulness of feelings. And to capture the actual meaning of that, it really should be translated feelingfulness of feelings.

[31:03]

It doesn't mean to know your feelings through your mind. It means to know your feelings through your feelings. And to know your body through your body. Now, some of you are just coming to that point in your own practice now of knowing your body through your body or letting your body talk to you. But when it's translated mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of the feelings, etc., you just don't get it. And if your practice becomes sensitive and into the details, The four foundations of mindfulness don't make sense.

[32:24]

They're not foundations of anything. Now, Ulrike has heard me say this many times, and she's translated it many times. And didn't you say in this recent lecture in Hamburg that you got a feeling for it that was, after all the times you translated, you got a feeling and what was said that made you get a feeling for it? You can say it in German. When Roger spoke about it again in Hamburg, he referred to the five skandhas in this description and suddenly said, yes, this feelingfulness of feelings simply means that you can only recognize your feelings from the skandha of feelings, from the second skandha.

[33:30]

So suddenly it made a click for me and then I understood it better. You want to remind me in English? I think it relates to the five skandhas, what I said about the five skandhas. Yeah, you said knowing your feelings not through mindfulness but through the feeling skandha. Yeah. And... So that made you get it? Yeah. Kind of feelingfulness of feelings was kind of intuitively I understood but not completely clear, so... But that means understanding the feelings through the feeling skandha, right? Okay, now... Maybe this is too much detail for you. You see, the problem with Western Buddhism has been, in my humble opinion, as if we draw a square. And we put on this square, we put world views and the unconscious.

[34:33]

And on this two points of the square we put primary psychological and personal processes and secondary psychological and personal processes. Now, I'm not going to try to develop this picture. I'll just keep it simple. And then we put out here, are you still with me here, these two points, worldviews and unconsciousness or unconscious processes. We put another point out here which we call meditation. Now that meditation practices affects your world views and affects your unconsciousness. Okay, and we could make it more clear and say the vipassana part of concentration affects your world views and the shamatha part of concentration affects your unconsciousness.

[36:09]

But this meditation emphasis of Western Zen Buddhism does not affect much your primary or secondary psychological processes. That is most affected by the development of an understanding and keeping in view of the five skandhas. And the six paramitas, the six perfections. And other things, the four immeasurables. of friendliness, generosity and so forth Okay I'm not going to try to teach those things now I've done it enough of the skandhas and the paramitas but this side of Buddhism particularly in the West is necessary if we're going to have a balanced development of practice

[37:57]

Because practice is not just about enlightenment, it's also about your personality and the way you perceive. Okay. I would say that to practice Buddhism, there's four qualities of the past that are necessary. One is the ability to feel shame. And I would distinguish shame from guilt in saying that shame aims at the future and guilt aims at the past. And I don't know how these words work in German or English, shame and guilt, but in Buddhism what I mean is that... Do you say that much?

[39:04]

...is that shame means guilt. Oh, I don't like that I did that. I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to act or be in the future so this won't happen. And in a more subtle sense, I'm going to actually redo this karma at deep levels. No, it doesn't mean, oh, I did that, I'm a bad person, and I'm stuck with this badness.

[40:08]

So the first is the ability to feel shame. The second is the ability to feel compassion. In other words, to recognize that you can feel what others feel and you don't try to protect yourself with feeling. You don't try to deny that feeling. Okay. Compassion also means the ability to suffer with others while also feeling joy. It doesn't mean other suffering brings you down. If it brings you down, you can't completely feel it.

[41:27]

So you're able to completely feel it and not stray from joy. That's not easy. I don't mind having no head. What? You know, it's getting too strong. We need powers to fix it. I think it will take a long time. And the energy to face them.

[42:55]

And fourth, the ability to feel at home wherever you are. Or the ability to feel at ease. So, going back to the definition of one-pointedness. And the value in your own practice alone and together of getting these things pretty straight.

[44:06]

Now, I think that while one-directedness is included in one-pointedness and vice versa... One-pointedness is actually a better definition, more useful, to have one-pointedness include one-directedness rather than the other way. Because of the particularity of one-pointedness is one aspect of the whole range of practice. Okay, and one practice samadhi is also understood as on each occurrence samadhi arises. With each situation, with each moment samadhi arises, it doesn't mean you just use one practice to reach samadhi.

[45:44]

The last thing I would mention is a little something about concentration in general. The idea of concentration is almost as important as the idea of path in Buddhism. But what we mean by concentration is difficult to describe. And that's why I'm emphasizing, why it's so difficult to understand, uncorrected state of mind.

[46:53]

Uncorrected state of mind often feels like, for many people, the lack of concentration. And let me just say there are different kinds of concentration. Okay, there's concentration where you see things in detail, in great detail. There's concentration that you can sustain. There's concentration that's more connected with what I call soft mind which allows you to see gates that you didn't see before. In other words, a gate could be considered like a rika, seeing, knowing your feelings through your feelings, what that actually means.

[48:09]

You hear the words but you don't see the gate. So there are many gates that come up for us in practice. And sometimes we don't see them. Sometimes we see them. And don't realize that seeing them is sometimes going through them. And sometimes we're afraid to go through them because we don't want to leave our friends behind. Even though we find them on the other side. Okay, then there's gates in which you can sustain transitions.

[49:29]

There's concentration in which you can sustain transitions. And most important, there's concentration without a reference. Concentration usually is a concentration on something. We could call sometimes concentration which doesn't need a reference, doesn't need to be concentrated on anything, is called non-concentration. You can't discover non-concentration or concentration rather reference through concentrating on something. So you have to negotiate this funny territory of uncorrected state of mind.

[50:44]

Now there's also concentration that is also detached. And this is the concentration of the first jhana And it's often described as like the way a box and a lid fit together The lid completely fits the box but it's separate from the box And this means concentration that touches everything.

[51:45]

Concentration in which subject and object disappear. Concentration in which subject and object disappear. Concentration in which you feel touched by everything and at home in everything. Now these more formless forms of concentration can't be learned exactly through effort. They have to be discovered through a soft, subtle state of mind. In which you are disciplined but not too interfered with. So I'm trying to give you that atmosphere in the sesshin, where there's some discipline, but you're not too interfered with.

[53:00]

So I want you to learn how to do the sesshin. and learn the path aspects of this way of life and at the same time I want you to profoundly leave yourself alone to profoundly trust yourself as you yourself are the path I think it's a deep trust that most of us never touch or even know about. But I think you can do it. I know it is a path that's accessible to us.

[54:18]

And I think we're helping each other. Hmm. Okay, so now tomorrow I'll... Tomorrow's the last day, right? Sashin has been long enough after tomorrow. But you know, my deep desire to continue practicing with you So of course I can't completely finish tomorrow. But I'll do my best to make sense of what we've talked about so far.

[55:23]

And what I've heard you talking to me about. With Ulrike's help, we'll get through. Thank you very much.

[55:42]

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