Would anyone like to say something at this point? Yes I have a question about this aliveness. I make the experience that when I really feel the aliveness, like for example when I feel the aliveness of a horse, then in that also the quality of death may appear and that sometimes when I feel the aliveness of a horse I may return entirely without power somehow. Was that right?

[01:03]

Do you sometimes, after writing, feel more alive or alive through the writing? I can't write, but I can feel the feeling of the sphere. And when the feeling is over, I feel my inner powerlessness. I can't ride at all, but I can feel the aliveness of the horse. And when that feeling is over, then I feel my own internal lack of power. So just standing beside the horse, you mean, you feel its aliveness? I observe that and the longer I sit there very quietly, the more I feel that.

[02:13]

Yeah, I can sort of understand it. Maybe you ought to try writing. My wife and daughter, I have a daughter who is seven, younger than you. And they both ride quite a bit in Crestone. And it's clear they do it because it increases their, it makes them aware of their aliveness, the horse. And I think some people jog, for instance, to get not so much for exercise, but to get a certain feeling of aliveness through jogging. But I can't... I'd have to go sit and watch the horse with you and then see how I feel.

[03:19]

But I don't know exactly. I would have to come along and look at the horse with you and then see how I would feel. Someone else? Yes, Lona. You talked about... You talked about when you speak in the right way or when you express yourself in the right way that then that may deepen and clarify experience. and spoke about that I now call it body field that you can extend that. And these are experiences that I know from my psychotherapy training. that we really practiced holding a person from beneath, from the sides, from the back, from all sides.

[04:55]

And this is a question I asked earlier. It is clear to me that Buddhism has a wider context, but I would like to hear more about it in more detail. And that's a question that I've asked before already, and it's clear to me that Buddhism has a wider context there, but I'd like to hear something more concrete. Concrete might be the wrong word. More precise? About the difference and the overlap. Well, I mean, it's clear to me, at least as far as I can be clear about this, that this is one of the examples of the ways in which Buddhist practice and psychotherapy have begun to occupy the same territory. I would imagine doing what you said gives you a certain feeling of

[06:03]

a person that probably would be different than you might feel through meditation practice. But all I can do is talk about the way in which also not just a aliveness, but a bodily continuity is established. And then you'd have to try it. My words can't say much, but I can say something you can try. But I'm definitely going to try what you just said. I'm already supporting her from underneath. Still, maybe I just want to understand better what context does to things, to phenomena.

[07:27]

What would be an imagined context for you? The context is what I would like to understand. But you would like me to say something about the context of bodily practice in Zen. What is the context of the physical practice in Zen, how does it form the experience, in contrast, in quotation marks, how does the context of psychotherapy form the experience? how the context of bodily practice in Zen shapes experience, and then what you don't have maybe to explain, that's something that she can conclude from that, how that is in contrast to how bodily practice in psychotherapy shapes experience.

[08:51]

How bodily practice in Zen shapes our experience. Well, I have to think about it. I never thought about speaking it just that way. Okay. Anyone else? Someone else? Yes. I'll also again connect that to things you talked about in Rastenberg, where you spoke about transforming the past. I don't know, but that's how I understood it, and with what you just said, I have the feeling that you have opened a field of present and present, into which I can bring a past baked firmly over consciousness,

[09:57]

I'm not entirely sure how to say it, but with what you said right now, you opened up a field of present and presence in which I can bring a... What can you bring in there again? The past that in consciousness... I have an image as if there is a past that is fixed in consciousness. I have this image that there is a past that is very firm and somehow stuck together in consciousness. And if I introduce that into the field that you talked about before the break, then it starts to be a different past. Yeah, that's right. That then can also somehow dissolve and it doesn't have this kind of inner determination or being determined anymore.

[11:07]

And I have the image that that's often what we do in psychotherapy, to shift the past from one aggregate state to the other aggregate state. In creating this other field you talked about. Yeah. Well, yeah, I would say that that's a good image, that the past or accumulated experience in consciousness is sometimes some kind of mass. but it's glued together by consciousness. And if you move it into another kind of liquid, it comes apart, it comes unglued.

[12:27]

Or it may, or more likely to. And I think then it reconfigures itself. Which is different than dissolving. And more commonly it reconfigures, but sometimes it dissolves. But that's only a momentary experience. Now, I have some resistance to speaking the way I'm speaking.

[13:34]

Because it's a little bit too much like I'm talking about some sort of machine where there's this liquid and that liquid and you move it from here to here. It's sort of like an engineering problem. But at the same time, one, I can't find many other ways to speak about these things. You can't or you can't? I can't. Okay. Okay. And our experience does happen in certain configurations. Und unsere Erfahrung geschieht ja in bestimmten Konfigurationen oder Zusammensetzungen. And part of the reason it happens in certain configurations is because we can only act on our experience if we can understand it. Und ein Grund dafür, dass unsere Erfahrung in bestimmten Zusammensetzungen oder Konfigurationen geschieht, ist, dass sie das auch nur kann, weil wir ja darin handeln müssen und sie verstehen müssen.

[14:52]

So we can use our analytical ability to study our experience in terms of such configurations. But we can't practice in terms of only those configurations. Aber wir können nicht innerhalb nur dieser Konfiguration praktizieren. Wir müssen erst mal, würde ich sagen, in diesem Gefilde der nicht greifbaren Empfindung praktizieren. Und subtiler noch, in einer Art von Dunkelheit. The other day in Hannover, partly to speak about this, I used, rather than a machine, I used a Rumi poem. Neulich in Hannover habe ich, statt darüber als eine Art von Maschine zu sprechen, habe ich ein Rumi-Gedicht benutzt.

[15:58]

Which goes, you are that wished-for song. Das so geht, du bist das gewünschte Lied. You are that wished for song. Go through the ear to your center. Go through the ear to your center. Where... That's good. Where the sky is. Where the wind is. Where silent knowing is. Where the sky is, where the wind is, where silent knowing is. Cover the seeds. In your work they'll sprout. In your work they'll sprout. And cover the seeds is this darkness or this, the part you don't know.

[17:12]

Okay. Yeah. I find the distinction that you made before the break between consciousness and awareness very clear. Would you agree if I said that these are two complementary ways of relating to the world and to yourself? Oh, for sure. Yes, for sure. That means, if I understood correctly, in everyday life we also have to modulate in which form of either consciousness, consciousness, consciousness of consciousness, or the reality that we are,

[18:21]

So that means that during everyday life we also have to modulate in what state of consciousness or consciousness of consciousness or awareness we are. Yeah. And that that is also valid for meditation where we also have both forms. Yeah, usually meditation is primarily awareness. I often experience that it begins with becoming conscious of these concepts, so that it starts with consciousness before I can do this other step. It begins with consciousness.

[19:25]

Well, usually one starts from consciousness. It's very hard to start meditating in the middle of the night. Or it's hard to notice that you are meditating in the middle of the night. So usually we start from consciousness. In nature we sometimes start with awareness. In nature? You mean being outside, walking in the woods or something? Now, of course, consciousness is not one thing and awareness is not one thing. Yes, and we could say that practice is also to use awareness to re-educate consciousness. When awareness is more bodily rooted than consciousness. Now one, in this context I'm speaking about from this morning, one sort of yogic mental or yogic skill I can suggest to you, yogic practice,

[21:08]

Yeah, it's quite simple. And it's so simple, I often feel like I'm fooling you to tell you about it. But you have to try it enough before you can see that Maybe he wasn't fooling me. Which is that you go from the particular to the field. And I've been doing it enough that it's basically my primary mode of mind. What is your name? Maya. Maya? Oh, this is a great name for being interested in Buddhism. Yeah. So I might go from the particular of Maya's shoulders and hair. Yeah, and then I go to the field of mind.

[22:38]

Everything all at once. And then I might go back to the particular. The reflection of these windows in Hans' glasses. So it's not really about Hans, it's just I notice the reflection of these windows in Hans' glasses. And then I go back to the field of mind. And then I let whatever other particular captures attention capture attention. Your red hair had the question this morning about unconsciousness and consciousness. And back to the field.

[23:39]

Okay. Now, what's the effect of that? Well, the most instrumental effect is the field of mind blocks concepts. If I just look at you all at once, I mean, looking at you all at once is a concept, but the experience is not a concept. Wenn ich euch alle auf einmal betrachte und dieses alle auf einmal betrachten ist ein Konzept, aber die Erfahrung davon ist kein Konzept. If I just look at you all at once, I actually can't look at you all at once.

[24:41]

It's a kind of visual field and I feel it more and I can't think it, I can just feel it. Tatsächlich kann ich euch nicht alle auf einmal betrachten. Das ist mehr so wie ein visuelles Feld und dieses Feld, das kann ich nur spüren, das kann ich nicht denken. So if I just get in the habit of doing that, and maybe we're so in the habit of following our thinking, establishing our continuity in our thinking, And primarily self-referential thinking, past, present, future thinking. So a simple thing like going to the field of all-at-onceness Blocks or stalls conceptual comparative thinking. Stalls. Isn't that something like very similar to block? Yeah, it's also a stall. Yeah.

[26:03]

Stop. Yeah. And then, when you get in the habit of seeing the field of all-at-onceness, which again blocks conceptual puts aside conceptual thinking the particulars become more vivid and the particulars you don't think about the particulars the particulars are just there Okay. Have you got that image? Can you hold that image? Okay. So, let's go back I mean, is this okay that I'm doing this?

[27:20]

Fine with you? All right. Okay. Because I don't want to burden you with any, you know, a lot of my stuff, you know. But I'm totally fascinated by this. But I, you know, I think, oh, yeah. Anyway, oh, Buddha, I mean. Okay. Okay. So again, we've got aliveness and the continuum of aliveness. And then we've got presence. Okay. And then... And I'm using... not interchangeably, but overlapping, medium, field and continuum. Because these three English words get close to what I'm talking about, but they don't contain what I'm talking about.

[28:27]

Because these three English or German words are close to what I want to talk about, but they don't contain what I want to talk about. So from the field of... From the presence or field of awareness... we can think about maybe a field of mind. Now, this sense of a field of mind can arise through this practice of aliveness as a continuum and so forth. But it should also be supported by and entered through the awareness that every act of perception points to the object perceived and also to the mind perceiving.

[29:39]

Now that's the same as I said this morning. We live in a phenomenal world, not a physical world. And I bring this up all the time. But It's maybe the most important thing to recognize in any adept Buddhist practice. Okay. In other words, you're living in a field of mind. It's not that there aren't objects here. But that you know these objects only through the field of mind. Now that's just obvious, isn't it? It's just phenomenologically true. It's rooted in the word phenomena, which...

[31:02]

Doesn't have that meaning for most people, but that's what the word means. Okay, so what I suggest as a practice, the last few weeks, what I've been suggesting as a practice to enter into this, is to use, I think I mentioned in the Sashin, mind and mind. So, if I look at you, Angela, you're there. I don't know quite what's there, I mean, you know. That's your business and problem.

[32:17]

But I do see you and I've known you a long time. And my experience of knowing you a long time flows into my immediate seeing of you. And I have a visual sense of you. Now, let me put that aside for a moment and go to these three main ways we see. One is we see dualistically. You're over there and I'm here and we're separated. Another is we see with feeling. It's the kind of feeling when you cry. It's the kind of feeling when you cry inside, maybe. It's that feeling of knowing something or recognizing something and there's a kind of

[33:17]

shift inside from that. And that shift is a shift into connectedness. And then third way is non-dualistic seeing. Where I see connectedness and I don't see separation. And I can feel the difference. It's a kind of physiological mental feeling that's different. Okay, so let's go back to mind and mind. So I use these three words to remind myself Because consciousness always wants to see predictability.

[34:57]

And consciousness wants to see entities. And consciousness, particularly visual consciousness, wants to externalize the world. And the primordial responsibility of consciousness is to protect us from ticks and tigers. So we externalize the world. Because if there's a tick on that branch or there's a tiger behind the tree, I want to know about it.

[36:03]

Okay. And my visual sense externalizes this room. Now, the visual sense is the most difficult sense to get the feeling that it's mind. But in actual fact, if you can moment by moment observe your mind creation of this room in your mind you're actually doing a process of spatializing the room yeah there's a wall you know and I expect the wall there to be right angled oh yes it is And it's a certain, and I feel a proprioceptive kind of connection with it.

[37:20]

So in fact, my mind constructs this room from the ingredients of the room. Also konstruiert mein Geist tatsächlich dieses Zimmer mit den Zutaten dieses Zimmers. Okay. So, and when I look at Angela... Und wenn ich Angela anschaue... I am constructing Angela. Dann konstruiere ich Angela. She may not like it, but I'm sorry. Das mag sie vielleicht nicht, aber es tut mir leid, so ist es halt. This... I married the two of you. Yeah. And so all of that memory is present. And the immediacy unrelated to the past is present. So that's mind.

[38:25]

Okay, so the first mind is to remind myself conceptually that what I'm seeing is my own sensorium and mental functioning. And my second word, mind, is to see if I can find the feeling, not just the knowing that my perception is mind, but the feeling in my body, or whatever whose body this is, as mind. Okay. So, now to say something about Buddhist practice.

[39:29]

I have created this phrase, mind and mind. It's a famous phrase in Buddhism that I didn't create. This very mind is Buddha. And that's wonderful to work with, but I think it actually is more powerful if you first work with mind and mind. Now, someone said earlier that we think in sentences. We parse our experience in sentences. And many of you know that the Lankavatara Sutra says the adept should know the syllable body sagt, dass der fortgeschrittene Schüler den Silbenkörper kennen sollte.

[40:40]

The name body. Den Namenskörper. And the phrase body. Und den Satzkörper. And phrase or sentence body. Oder Wendungs- oder Satzkörper. Now, what does that mean? Was bedeutet das? Well, a word in a sentence, also ein Wort in einem Satz, a word in a sentence has a A horizontal presence in the sentence. Controlled by the grammar of the sentence. Now, if I say, Angela is a good person. The word Angela fits into is a good person. But since I know Angela so well, pretty well, the word Angela jumps out of the sentence vertically. So it has a vertical presence in the sentence unrelated to the grammar of the sentence. Also hat es auch eine vertikale Präsenz in dem Satz, die nicht in Beziehung steht zu dem Satz.

[42:03]

Und ein Dichter schreibt ein Gedicht mit beidem, und zwar den horizontalen und den vertikalen Implikationen des Wortes. Yeah, I mean, again, to use Rumi, Rumi says, you are the night ocean glinting with light. And the sentence, because the sentence has almost no horizontal meaning, Yeah, it's not true, in fact. But it becomes true when you start experiencing the words vertically. Okay. So, when I say, Angela is a good person. Okay. I... Is and word, or is and good, are...

[43:03]

words defined by the sentence. Sentenced to an existence in the sentence. Excuse me, I can't resist that. Okay. But Angela is not sentenced to the sentence. And particularly, Angela's name is a name, not a word. So you can't put a name into the confines of a word so easily. If you understand the distinction I'm making between a name and a word. Okay. Now, Angela's name is also Angela. And now Angela's name is also Angela.

[44:24]

Oh, is it Angela? Oh, all right. Angela. Angela, la, la, la, la. So we could have la, [...] la. That's in her name. You didn't say it the way I said it. It's my privilege. The translator wants some independence. Okay. Okay. So, the sense of the Lankavatara Sutra and what mantras are based on is the syllables. And the syllables call forth a body. When it calls forth a sensorial and mental reaction, what is your body but the activity of the senses and the mind?

[45:33]

When it evokes a mental and a physical reaction, what is your body but the sensorium or the fields of the mind and the spirit? So the syllables, Angela, call for something already. And poets, of course, use this all the time. So one word makes a syllabic connection with another word later in the poem and so forth. So a syllable body proceeds through a poem. As well as a name body appears also when you put the syllables together as a name.

[46:39]

So if I say the flower is not red nor is the willow green. Also, wenn ich sage, die Blumen sind nicht rot und auch die Weiden sind nicht grün. Green has its own name quality, the green of the trees, the green of, you know, etc., other than the description of a color in this sentence. Dann hat das Grün seine eigene Namensqualität, das Grün der Blätter und so weiter, die anders ist als Grün innerhalb des Satzes. Now, we have a sentence, common sentence in Buddhism, the willow is green and the flower is red. And we also have a sentence, the willow is not green nor is the flower red. And you can feel what this does when you change the way that works.

[47:43]

And subliminal knowing subliminal Cognitive activity occurs in the syllables as well as in the names and the sentences. So what the Lankavatara Sutra means is you should... Hear the hum of the syllable body when someone's speaking to you. As well as hear what's called forth by the names. And also be able to hear what the sentence is talking about.

[48:46]

And it also means that while I'm speaking to you I should be able to put my attention and my being and feeling in the syllables of what I'm speaking in the hum of what I'm speaking And let that hum come into the names and into the sentences. Okay. This is just plain old Buddhism. I'm sorry. But they've been doing it for 2,500 years. They ought to come up with a few interesting things. Okay. And all this way of knowing helps to locate you in the center of your own experience.

[50:25]

So if I practice mind and mind and I And I look at Angela and I feel what I know about Angela is my own mind knowing her, my own senses and mind knowing her. And then part of the practice, I try to shift that feeling so I really feel my senses. First I know Angela. She's mind. Not mine, but mind. Can't have everything. I know she's mind. But as a practice, and then I try to feel that mind that knows Angela as a physical, mental presence. So I do that often enough that eventually I feel I'm living in a medium of mind.

[51:41]

As if there aren't entities here so much as entity-lessness. A kind of flow of mind appearing as objects. Now that sense that you live within a medium of mind is the most That continual sense that you're in a medium of mind is the beginning, the basis for adept Buddhist practice.

[52:47]

Now, trying to find a way to share that with you And trying to find a way to really remind my own experience of this. I created the phrase mind and mind. Now once I've created this phrase it can have a life of its own. It can do other work too. So if you just like say it on your inhale and exhale Kind of mind and mind. Or try it the other way, you know, sort of mind and, you know, try the variations. So you try it on your heels, I say.

[54:07]

Exhale, inhale, try it on your heels. So you'll find that practicing Yeah, for five or ten minutes, now and then, with mind and mind on your hails, it makes you notice things that you wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Okay. So I think we should end pretty soon. Isn't that right?

[55:07]

I always like to ask her because she says, well, maybe not. Yes? Sounds like it's Halloween. Ghost and ghost. I'm not sure if I fully understood that. It's the same in German, this mind and mind. And you mean that one is the mind that perceives the physical presence? No, the first mind, these are just words, right? So you use geist, you use mind. To remind yourself that this object is, well, it's a bell. It's called a bell. It could be a teacup.

[56:12]

Makes tea taste funny, I've tried it. But it's a bell because we use it as a bell. So it is the reconstruction of that object in my history of meaning. Yeah, and the man who made it made it because he's the man, all of that. So the first word mind is only to remind yourself that this is a construct of your senses and your thinking and the thinking of our culture and so forth. Just to remind yourself of that over and over again is a basic practice. Usually the example used traditionally is a vase. Intellectually, conceptually remind yourself that that vase is a physical construct of the culture and of your own sensorial process.

[57:29]

Just to know that and to know that on each occasion, to know that is a big step. But to experience it is the fundamental step. To experience your own mind making the room, my own ears making the sound of the bird, that is the second word mind. I most commonly use the example of a bird song. Because we know that the... Hello. We know.

[58:47]

Is this guy connected with you? With you? Oh my God, you get so big. Because we know that the range of a bird's ear is far greater than the range of our ear. Because we know that the range of a bird's ear is much wider than the range of our ear. What another bird hears is a Bach fugue, and we're hearing chirp, chirp. And if you slow down a bird's sound, it's extremely complex, but we just can't hear the complexity. Alright, so when you hear the bird song, you are hearing only what your hearing can hear.

[59:56]

Okay, so to know that is one part of the practice. To experience that you only are hearing a portion of the bird song and to feel your own hearing hearing it. And strangely enough, when you actually hear your own hearing of the bird song, it's often one of the first experiences of bliss in meditation. So the experience of the phrase mind and mind, is a way, an entry in to experiencing the field of mind.

[61:20]

And the experience of the field of mind is almost indistinguishable from the feeling of the field of space. Okay, now, if I go from the particular to the field of mind, and pretty soon my attention is located in the field of mind, without conceptualizing or externalizing, it's a little tiny shift to I'm actually experiencing the field of space. Then objects appear in this field of space.

[62:41]

But they almost float in this field. They're spatially in the field. And it's like the mind could shift from the words to the page. So you feel the page, or then you go to the words, and then you feel the page. So there's a feeling of the field of objects. And then there's suddenly a shift or maybe suddenly isn't the right word. There's a kind of little shift to the space in which everything's appearing. Okay, now what I've said so far is shifting your experience of continuity to aliveness itself. can be the entry to experiencing the field of mind as space.

[64:05]

An open field in which things can appear. And I'm saying that it's also supported by a practice like mind and mind. Which makes this human space we live in a field of mind. But I can't say just mind. Mind with a very big M, which is also a bodily mind. Now this field is also a field of connectedness. You feel the connectedness. So it's a field of non-duality. And this field is a... a field of subliminal cognitive awareness.

[65:32]

A subliminal field of cognitive knowing. Now, cognitive, in English, the GNO of cognitive does not mean to think. It just means to know and to learn. So generally it means to cognize. But actually it means, in its older sense, in its rooted sense, it means gnosis or knowing itself, but a knowing itself which is simultaneously learning. Simultaneously learning. What did you say? It's a kind of knowing the Gnosis. Well, I have to start back where... Ah, okay.

[66:53]

Simultaneously with learning. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, we have the words learning and knowing, but our experience is often a knowing that is learning simultaneously through its knowing. Okay, so now we got close to what you asked me to do this morning. Oh, is she happy to be of service? Okay, so now we have a sense of how subliminal knowing surfaces into our life. And how do we join that with super-liminal knowing? To be continued. Yeah. Wow. Now we're getting close to, well, that's speaking to what you asked, but also we're getting closer to, we can speak about felt sense and such things.

[68:28]

And on this beautiful, now not raining day, though the rain was nice too, Maybe it's a good time to stop. And we start again at 9.30 or something like that. Okay. I mean, you open your door at 9 and you... Yeah, okay. So the social hour. So let's sit for a moment. You can sit any way you want. You know, I can remember when I was a kid, I got so tired of hearing, oh, you're getting older, you're getting bigger.

[69:36]

But when you're an adult, it's wonderful to see somebody getting older and bigger. It's boring when you're a kid. I wish I could get older and bigger. I mean, I am getting older and bigger. I'm shrinking, actually, about an inch so far. I'm actually shivering so far, all over my body. Let me offer you or give you this other short Rumi Om.

[71:40]

We are the night ocean glinting with light. We are the space between the fish and the moon We are the space between the fish and the moon While we sit here together This very aliveness is Buddha.

[72:41]

Sitting solely in the satisfaction of sitting itself.

[72:52]

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