Now I know I'm... Good morning, by the way. Guten Morgen übrigens. Guten Morgen. I know I'm supposed to speak about mindfulness to you or with you. Ich weiß, ich sollte mit euch über Achtsamkeit sprechen. But what I'd like to do is speak mindfully with each of you. Yeah, I'd like to be able to not just tell you about the four foundations of mindfulness, but I'd like to be able to speak with each of you in a way that's useful to you in regard to mindfulness. Yeah, I don't know how to do this.

[01:01]

But if I get started, maybe we can find out. Now, last night a couple times the question in various ways came up of why do we practice. Well, from a Mahayana point of view we could say it's to break the habit of permanence. We can be conscious of the habit of permanence of seeing things as permanent. as seeing things as entities.

[02:25]

Now, let me, just so that we, again, all of us somehow get on the same page, as we say, the easiest way, I think, to shift from seeing things as entities is to get the habit of seeing things as activities. Now, I just said that, just now. But we could spend a whole seminar on that sentence itself. To break the habit of permanence by seeing not entities but activities. But I'm not going to spend the seminar on that.

[03:29]

But, you know, if at some point when I say something like that You'd like me to come back to that, then later after the break we have some discussion, perhaps we can. Okay. So, for now you can just take and explore in whatever way you can, The suggestion that you notice that we see things as entities, and you contradict that by developing a habit of seeing things as activities. No, I'm speaking about the craft of practice.

[04:29]

Not understanding of practice, etc., but my emphasis is on the craft of practice. And I'm emphasizing that because, you know, people in the Dharma Sangha and the people I practice with in Europe and the United States are pretty, yeah, your practice is quite mature. Yeah, the view you have of practice is quite good. Now, to mature that view requires the craft of practice.

[05:31]

Okay. So if we want to break the, let's say we take as a goal to break the habit of permanence. Now you can use that phrase as a fulcrum to explore things. You can use that phrase as a fulcrum to explore your activity, your thinking, your views. And you have to find out how to use such a phrase, again, in your own language, in your own thinking, etc.

[06:57]

And if Buddhism is anything, it's about really knowing that everything's changing. It's easy to know that everything's changing. But to actualize that in your life is not easy. More perhaps it is easy if you have a deep enough intention to do it, and insights in how to do it. Yeah, for example, again, it's easy to be conscious of that everything changes. But the very job of consciousness, which knows that everything changes, is to establish the world is relatively permanent.

[08:06]

So perhaps consciousness established that everything changes is permanent. Then puts the idea on a shelf somewhere and pays no more attention to it. So how are we going to pay attention to it? Well, we pay attention to it. That's so funny in English. You pay attention. You pay attention. Does it cost anything? You give attention. Anyway. So on the prologue day I spoke a lot about attention. What is attention? Well, the Satipatthana, the sutra, the Satipatthana sutra, there's two versions, the long and short version.

[09:28]

But anyway, it's basically usually defined. as the four foundations of mindfulness. And we can think of it as the basis for one of the four foundations of mindfulness itself is a foundation for all of Buddhist practice. And the Four Foundations of Mindfulness is not only, as I said last night, not only a practice with its own fruits, It's simply a way of being alive.

[10:29]

It's a way to articulate and develop your whole life. In the realm of Buddha's activities. Now again, as I said, you know, the Buddha is not an entity. The Buddha is an activity. The Buddha... was a Buddha, an awakened person, because he engaged in the wisdom and activities of awakening.

[11:35]

We don't have to live 2500 years ago or so to engage in the activity of awakening. We can engage in the activities of awakening right now. Why not? I mean, you got something better to do? Mm-hmm. And the four foundations of mindfulness are one of the fullest descriptions of the activities of awakening. And unless you have the confidence that the activities of practice are the activities of a Buddha,

[12:36]

You won't establish practice in yourself in a deep way. And we won't establish practice in the West in a deep way. Yeah, and I don't know, some talk in the early 90s that Dalai Lama said the turning point in the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet centuries and centuries ago The turning point of what? Of the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet. He said that before this turning point People understood Buddhism quite well.

[13:58]

But they hadn't accepted the idea yet that it was possible to realize it. accepted, Buddhism didn't take hold in Tibet. Now, I think words like the historical Buddha and Buddhahood close us out, sort of. So let's put it in more accessible words. The activities of a Buddha. So it's extremely important that you realize when you practice you're engaged in the activities of a Buddha. Okay, so how do we notice, for example, the habits of permanence?

[15:16]

You have to be mindful. Or you have to be able to pay attention. Okay, now again, what is attention? Is attention just consciousness? I ask you to examine that. I mean, again, I'm just flapping my lips, you know. And if they have any meaning, it's because you've got to explore these things in yourself. We really, in our culture, for various reasons, because we think we're born and created and so forth, We don't explore consciousness really. As I said the other day, in medieval Europe they had a very primitive idea of what the human body was like.

[16:31]

And now we take for granted. We've got many ways. medical doctors and science, which we know, understand the human body quite well. Certainly by comparison. But we don't understand consciousness so well. And is consciousness mind? Is consciousness awareness? I mean, the words that else just float around like spirit, soul, self, ego, who knows what they are? The reason those words float around is because we don't explore with any clarity our own experience.

[17:52]

So we have to create some language that allows us to speak about things. Because language, whatever its faults or merits, it allows us through words and through phrases to focus our attention. To focus our attention. And words can capture, imprison our attention too. Yeah, and we have to notice how our attention is imprisoned by words. concepts and words. But if I say our word, our attention is imprisoned in concepts, That's a concept.

[19:17]

And perhaps by seeing it as a concept, we can free ourselves from the concept. In other words, I'm saying, again, get ourselves on the same page. To be free of concepts is a concept. So we need to use concepts in a way that can free ourselves from concepts. And we need to use concepts and words and metaphors to focus our practice. So again, let's come back to, is consciousness and attention the same thing? Well, let's for the sake of today and tomorrow say it's not the same thing.

[20:20]

And is it different in emphasis or different in kind? For most of us, we probably never ask this question. But somehow, right now, I'm sitting here, you know, you're sitting there, and Consciousness filled my, is it my consciousness? My consciousness is so mixed up with your consciousness, I can't claim ownership. Mein Bewusstsein ist ja so verwaschen oder so vermischt mit eurem Bewusstsein, dass ich da gar nicht sagen mag, dass es meins ist. Dogen says, what's he say? He says, continuous practice which actualizes itself is no other than your practice just now.

[21:40]

okay that sounds good except the continuous part is a problem how do you make it continuous continuous practice which actualizes itself is no other than your practice just now yeah but what is now ah Then Dogen says, the now of this continuous practice does not originally belong to the self. Whoa. Now I feel like I should be hippie. Can you dig it? The now of this continuous practice does not originally belong to the self so this now that doesn't originally belong to the self and Dogen is implying can you free now from its being possessed by self-referential thinking

[23:14]

So now we can have a question. How do you free now, the present, from self-referential thinking? Well, you have to be able to at least notice the topography of the present. Again, you know the present has no duration. It's immediately past. There's actually nothing existing here. It's disappearing, disappearing, disappearing. So why do we have the sensation of a present? Because we create the duration of the present within our own senses. And that duration of the present does not originally belong to the self.

[24:30]

Now, how do we know these things? How do I know these things? Why is this the teaching of Buddhism? Because of the practice of mindfulness. So this consciousness, which I can take as, can I free this consciousness from self-referential thinking? Can I develop the habit as you notice I've developed the habit? that when I say something like my consciousness bells go off stop don't say it that way because not only is self-referential thinking built into my consciousness

[25:35]

Mental habits. And the whole fabric of consciousness. It's constantly reified, reestablished, assumed in the English language. There's no way for me to say the experienced consciousness of this location, which is shared by you... Anyway, so I see my consciousness. A long line of quotation marks on both sides of my. Okay, so my consciousness reaches, I mean, it fills this room.

[27:09]

I have a sense of it being out there with the wall and the ivy and... green grass. But I have a sense of it being present in the room. Going over all the bumps of you. But in some extent it It feels into, I mean, I'm sorry to sound like this, but it feels in, we all do it, it feels into each of you to some extent. And some of you let it in and some of you block it. And that creates an interesting topography just sitting here with a feel of the different kind of receptors.

[28:31]

Yes, so that's consciousness. Well, we can call it that. Yeah, there's awareness built into that too. But now we have to talk about that. No, no, I won't. But there's a tension. Let's stick with one subject. So although consciousness, yours and mine, extends... you know, in this room, and of course you've got memories and associations too. Maybe, I mean, at some point I'd like to talk about sight-centered awareness. S-I-T-E.

[29:39]

Or sight-centering consciousness. Yeah. You know, we have to find some words which you can feel into a situation. And maybe, I hope, perhaps we can come back to that later. But let's say there's something called sight-centered, sight-centering consciousness. Which establishes yourself and your body in this sight moment.

[30:47]

In the physicality of this moment. But although each of you can establish that, and that's at the center of what it means to establish Dharma, to actualize a Dharma, even if we have a sight-centered consciousness. Now let's imagine that. In each of you there's a flow of associations, memories, all kinds of things pouring in at the same time into this sight-centered consciousness. Yeah, we could make that picture more subtle, but that's enough for now.

[31:51]

So that's some description of consciousness, our shared and individual consciousness. now within that attention roams around I can look at Andreas I can bring I've been looking for a word for a graphic way to describe attention. And the best I've come up with so far is the ball of attention. Sometimes I have the wheel of attention. But there's ball lightning, you know, a ball of flame. Okay, so I don't know, ball sounds a little childish, but anyway.

[33:11]

ball of attention. So this ball of attention I bring to, I hope it doesn't hurt him, knock him over, to Andreas. Now again, is that just a current condensation of consciousness? Or something different. My top team here of translators. Okay, is it just a condensation or current within consciousness? we can certainly use that metaphor and that metaphor is more subtle than the words but the metaphor may be convincing in its deceptiveness Metaphors and intuition are also often extremely convincing.

[34:44]

Because they make sense of a whole lot of facts, information, etc. And then we believe things that make sense. So we have to be very careful in using metaphors. We have to look around the edges of the metaphors. On the other hand, without metaphors we can't explore beyond language and beyond our habits of thinking. So what I'm bringing up is one subject question of this seminar.

[35:45]

Which you can hang out with. Yeah, hold in mind. As related in a very important way to the whole experience of your own mind-body continuum, And certainly to the teaching of the four foundations of mindfulness. Okay, so perhaps it's not, let's imagine, maybe it's not a current or condensation within consciousness. Perhaps it's actually something different.

[36:49]

Now, when you go to sleep, as you're going to sleep, you know all this. You can pay attention and it's important. Extremely important as part of the practice of mindfulness to pay, give attention, bring attention to the act of going to sleep. And as you know, there's usually a kind of shift in mental imagery. Yeah, things start appearing that aren't exactly in the context of daily consciousness.

[37:49]

And there's often a kind of, just before you go to sleep, your body gives a little shudder. And as you feel that shudder, you know you're going to sleep. And at that moment your breathing becomes involuntary. And breathing begins to breathe in a way not related to consciousness. You can notice that when a kid pretends it's going to sleep, pretends it's asleep, and that kid ain't asleep. So you go through the eye of this needle.

[38:51]

But sometimes you can bring attention through that eye and it opens up in sleep and we call it lucid dreaming. Now when it opens up in sleep, as lucid dreaming, is this still part of consciousness or what is going on? Is this now? Attention squeezed through the eye of the needle along with a camel.

[39:52]

Reappearing in sleep. Or reappearing in zazen. Hmm. So what is this attention that we are establishing through the practice of mindfulness? I think it's time to take a break. And I'm happy to say to my organizer, I'm right on time. Two points. Two only. For me, I should get more than that.

[40:38]

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