I understand what you're doing, but whatever. It's okay. Me too. Oh, thanks. Excuse me for having a cup of tea before the tea break, but I'm a little bit sick since last night. But not dysfunction. I have to encourage this to leave the station. Stopped at the platform. Does anyone have anything you'd like to say or mention in regard to what we spoke about before the lunch?

[01:21]

Okay, I give up. Let's start with this word, soteriological. Yeah, you probably know what it means. Soter part is to save, salvational. And the logos part means by the word or by reason or something like that. So it's usually used to mean, or traditionally it's used in the West to mean to be saved by the word of Jesus.

[02:46]

As I said, scholars have adopted it to also mean to be saved by the Buddha. And then that's where, you know, to save all sentient beings comes from, this soteriological idea. And it's not a... My point, though, in bringing it up, is that all Buddhist teachings really are Buddhist teachings because they cause enlightenment or cause freedom from suffering.

[03:59]

So when you look at a teaching of Buddhism, If you want to understand it and practice it in the way it's been developed, you have to ask, how does this lead to less suffering and how could it lead to realization and enlightenment? So, let's go back to again this topic which is so ubiquitous of mindfulness. Ubiquitous, everywhere present. Okay. So let's say you... Well, it makes the kitchen feel a lot better.

[05:13]

I ask sometimes being a bachelor house husband. If I leave the dishes for two or three days, it does increase suffering. But it's a stretch to call it, say it leads to enlightenment. Yeah. So if we take that as implicit, then we have to look again at mindfulness practices within Buddhism. And I have said that mindfulness as a practice depends on what you are mindful of.

[06:32]

So I brought in that you're not mindful of everything. You can be mindful of everything, that's perfectly fine. But as a practice, you bring your attentionfulness to particular frames of reference. Or to particular targets. Now, I'm speaking about this, I said, because I think it's so important for us as... who define our lives through psychology as well as through Buddhist practices.

[07:44]

And I think if we really understand ourselves through, if we can really understand the dynamic of mindfulness, it will help us actually use mindfulness in other ways. You don't have to go so fast. Then perhaps if mindfulness is used to free you or to mature or individuate oneself or free you from certain compulsive behaviors or something like that, dann ist die Achtsamkeit vielleicht dazu gedacht, dich von bestimmten, sagen wir mal, zwanghaften Verhaltensweisen zum Beispiel zu befreien.

[08:50]

Then perhaps the targets of mindfulness should be developed in a different way. Dann sollten die Ziele der Achtsamkeit vielleicht articulated in a different way. auf andere Weise entwickelt oder ausgedrückt werden. Okay. Now, Most of you know that the four foundations of mindfulness starts with the body. Okay, now let me say that in a sense when you are practicing mindfulness, You're practicing mindfulness within a concept. Okay. We just sat zazen. Then we sat zazen primarily within two concepts. That's different than just meditating as long as you want and etc.

[09:55]

Of course you can meditate as long as you want. But heart of practice is also at least much of the time meditating for a specific length of time whether you want to or not. You want to take it outside of preferences. Preferences, you know, if you're meditating at home, you may want to only meditate five minutes or 55 minutes, I don't care. Once you establish what kind of works in your life, Do it whether you like it or want to or not.

[10:57]

Then you're doing it when you don't want to, which is sometimes the most important time to do it. Okay, and again, virtually always you're sitting without moving. The point I'm making is that even just sitting is framed in concepts. And without these concepts, it's not Buddhism. And it will have a different effect. Now we want to be free and natural and all that stuff, but actually Buddhism is very specific and not exactly natural.

[12:04]

It's framed in pedagogical concepts. Let me point out with my little mantra that to be free of concepts is a concept. And without the concept of concepts, you can't be free of concepts. It's possible to be free of concepts, but not if there are no concepts. You've got to have some concepts to be free of. Okay. I mean, you can't wallow in a muddy naturalness.

[13:04]

Muddy naturalness. Okay. Now, again, everyone knows that... Okay. Okay. I'm trying to find out how to focus this. And of course, if I'm going to develop this with any subtlety, sensitivity, I need participation in feeling and in, you know, and in discussion with you. Yes, otherwise I'm just talking to avoid the many possibilities I could speak about. Okay. I'm in a way now trying to focus our discussion, frame our discussion.

[14:31]

If our interior discussion is... Then we can say that's Buddha's activity. Okay, so then if you practice mindfulness, you're practicing Buddha's activities. Now, you may have trouble saying, oh, Buddha's activity, oh, jeez, I'm just washing the dishes. But I was struck by something the Dalai Lama said in the early 90s. He said Buddhism did not take hold in Tibet until people in Tibet could imagine themselves as Buddha. Until they could imagine a Tibetan person could be a Buddha.

[15:37]

Okay, now that's maybe a little hard for us to get hold of. Because the word Buddha is the central figure in a religion, and central figures in the religions in the West are gods and blah, blah, blah. So let's try to put it in words that are accessible to us. So it was a fee-mench. Fee-male, fee-mench. Is that good German? No. Fee is in... What? Oh, it means... But the root is male. Yes. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. And, of course, Fe is the sign for iron in chemistry. And Fe is the sign for... So, female.

[16:48]

Eisen ist der Chemie, also heißt es Eisenmarkt. Yeah. Okay. He was a person. Could have been a woman. He wasn't born a Buddha. He became a Buddha through his activities. He wasn't any kind of divine, anything. He wasn't brought to earth. He just was a guy. And some people didn't even recognize him as anything, you know, unusual. He's called Buddha. Who cares about him? Okay. So we can participate in those activities.

[17:57]

And the teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of Buddha's activities. So I think it's good if you have the chutzpah. Chutzpah? No, in Yiddish. In Yiddish, it means something stronger than that. Chutzpah, that the balls, eggs, to imagine, okay, this is Buddha's activities. That's what I'm doing. Smooth, okay. To imagine yourself or feel yourself involved in Buddhist activities. Sukhiyoshi used to say, you're all Buddhists. But you're just the kind of Buddha you are.

[19:08]

Okay. Okay, so... And again, you have to discipline your thinking. You have to keep reminding yourself that there are no entities. There is only activity. So you say, this is called a bell. It's an activity which is called a bell, but it's not a bell. Now you may just think this is semantics. But semantics are inside of us, influencing how we think. I mean, people say to me, you know, Oh, they see me in a restaurant or something.

[20:22]

Oh, are you Dick Baker? Richard Baker? Sometimes I answer yes because I don't want to sound zenny. But it's very difficult for me to answer yes. The best answer I can give is say sometimes. Because I've trained myself to see activities, not entities. And it changed Buddha's activities. And in a sense, you're entering it through, you're using a mantra to enter a mandala of Buddha's activities. Now I'm using mantra to mean a concept which you hold in mind. Okay. Now, you want to also have the feeling for interdependence.

[21:47]

Everything is interdependent. But you want to feel that in a dynamic way. That that interdependence is a form of causation. Yeah, as I quoted... You put it somewhere, huh? I quoted Santa Rachita before you were here, Ralph. And he and Santa Rachita, who lived in the 8th century, There's only the parts. Okay. Now sometimes I think that when we study Buddhism, it's sort of like cooking. When you study a koan, the first thing you want to do is look at the ingredients.

[22:48]

And I remember when I, you know, I'm definitely not much of a cook. Or a baker. Yeah, I know. That's my cousin. Um... But I like to cook. Sometimes it's just fun, so I do it when I have a chance. And when I first started to cook, I always wanted to get to the cooking. And I didn't pay much attention to the ingredients. And I wanted the ingredients to lead directly into the cooking. As if implied in the ingredients was what it was going to turn out to be.

[23:58]

But, you know, I read recipe books by friends of mine, you know, like Debra Madison. And like the soup you just made, often they ask for a bay leaf. I don't know. Here's this dried piece of paper in the shape of a leaf. What the heck does that do? I didn't know it does. It says put it in. But after a while, I realized that you've got ingredients that they could turn into many different kinds of food. Aber nach einer Weile habe ich dann verstanden, dass man Zutaten hat und dass die in ganz viele verschiedene Arten von Gerichten verwandelt werden. You can change the emphasis and you can prepare some of the ingredients differently than others and so forth.

[25:10]

Du kannst zum Beispiel die Betonung etwas verändern oder du kannst einige Zutaten anders vorbereiten als andere. So when you study koans, the first thing you want to do is really look at the ingredients. And then you want to, you know, like, just stay with the ingredients for a while. And the word ingredients I like. The first part, ingre, is ingress, to insert. Und der zweite Teil, das sind die Bestandteile. So ingredients means to enter into the constituents. Also ingredients auf Englisch bedeutet in die Bestandteile eintreten. Yeah. So you just look at the ingredients of the koan. Also du betrachtest einfach die Zutaten eines koans. Now we're not studying koans here, but I'm just using it as an example.

[26:12]

You look at the ingredients, which are the parts of the koan, and you don't try to understand them. Because you assume that if you have the parts, the ingredients way they're related will appear through the parts. Okay. Now, when we say... When I define Zen meditation as uncorrected mind, what I'm assuming is... And they show you where to go.

[27:16]

But Zen takes a more rigorous Buddhist position which we don't show you where to go. I don't know how to translate rigorous actually. Does anyone have an idea? I wanted to say strict. Is there a stricter approach where we don't tell you where to go? It's funny when those words appear. Because Germans are obviously very rigorous in how they do things, and then you don't have a word for it. Yeah, they are. I felt them all to be too strong. Oh, I see. The German words are even stronger and rigorous. Now I understand. Where was I?

[28:32]

Zen has a more rigorous approach and not to... Oh, yeah. Okay. So, uncorrected mind means... Is it you apply... You're trusting that what appears, appears in a sense for a reason. But it may not feel reasonable to us. So the basic technique of Buddhism is you apply, I'm going to say it and then I'll explain later, attentional attention. You apply attentional attention to whatever appears. So if a distraction appears, you apply attentional attention to distraction.

[29:45]

So it's no longer a distraction. Do you understand? So if you just bring mindfulness, let's use mindfulness now instead of attentional attention. You bring mindfulness to whatever appears. If you do that, distraction is impossible. And that's a form of cooking. Right. I'm trying to find ways to say this. And it slips in and out of our usual way of thinking. Okay. Anybody want to say anything?

[30:46]

Making sense? Yeah, at least. Are you with me on this? I would say go on. Go on? Oh yeah, okay. Okay. When you talk about applying attention to whatever appears, then that reminds me a lot to how to deal with the unconsciousness, at least in psychoanalysis.

[31:49]

Is that from the under... Suspended attention. Suspended attention. Evenly suspended. Evenly suspended attention. Okay. Evenly suspended attention. In German is what? Like right now. So, yeah. Okay. Even existence of distraction shows that I am contracted. Otherwise, it would not be a contracting. It wouldn't be a distraction. All right. Okay. Do you translate yourself? Now, I'm not presenting this as a philosophical position about some kind of natural man. This is a kind of training.

[33:06]

Because you can be distracted. You can be confused and mixed up and all kinds of things. But it's assumed that when a certain kind of attention is brought to your situation that allows something to happen. The ingredients. Okay, so now we have to ask, what is that certain kind of attention? And what is the context in which this cooking occurs? Now, when you sit at your computer screen, or ride a bicycle, or drive a car, or read, there's a certain kind of attention.

[34:08]

That's not mindfulness. That's attention, but it's not what we mean by attention in mindfulness. So, now, if you, again, if we're going to practice this teaching as it's meant to be, Now, I don't care. You practice it any way you want. But I think it's useful to practice it the way it's meant to be, to understand that. Okay. So, then... there's a kind of ongoing dialectic.

[35:12]

Because we're using words and phrases to direct our attention. Okay, so if attention leads to enlightenment, Let's create that as a formula. Then does attention, riding a bicycle, lead to enlightenment? No. That must be a different kind of attention. So what's the difference? So that kind of question you need to ask to penetrate the teaching. So what is the kind of attention that leads to enlightenment? Okay, let's... Let's bring attention to a break.

[36:19]

Oh.

[36:19]

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