So mind connects to all these, but mind is also a kind of this mind when it's here, right, as the seventh vijnana. It's a filter that filters what goes into the storehouse consciousness. Okay. That's fairly understandable, isn't it? They come into the senses. are received by the mind through the senses. And then the mind also has a function to filter that and put it in the memory. Okay. So if we go back to that other picture... I just said it's...

[01:06]

It's a filtering activity, editing activity. I think people like to have a translation for that, another English or German word for it. Like what? Like... It sounded strange, that was the impression. Mindness is the filtering activity of mind, or the editing activity of mind. But we use it as a technical term. We can use it as a technical term. You would like to have it more specific. The wish was that it would be translated. Yes? Is it a function and it's not an entity? It's a function. It's a function of all of its mind, and these are functions within mind that have homeostatic and self-organizing qualities. It may be like two clouds connected by a small cloud.

[02:34]

But each cloud has its own wind patterns within it. And each cloud then holds its shape. But is it one cloud or two clouds? They're all the same cloud at the same altitude, but this one has its own, and maybe they split apart or come closer together. Yes. Now, the trouble with trying to define these terms exactly, first of all, in general, I prefer using English terms or German for you terms.

[03:35]

I think it's easier. If you're more scholarly or even pedantic, You may want exact translations of these. The problem is, early Vasubandhu uses them one way, late Vasubandhu uses them another way. And as Buddhism proposed, the understanding and meaning of the terms has changed. And they're not always just used as technical terms. I can say, keep in mind. That's not mind as a technical term. So you find in the literature many uses of manas and manas combined with all kinds of things. I think it's just very difficult to translate manas directly. Cheetah is very difficult to translate directly.

[04:40]

So let's use this sense of, like I drew yesterday. So this was roughly Manas. Here it's a selecting process. And receive it. And here it's an editing process. Okay, now the Elaya Vishnayana, I mean, the Elaya Vishnayana, let's say, is, let's make it bigger. Okay. That's not an unconscious, it's a non-conscious.

[05:51]

It's a reservoir consciousness. All you're thinking, whatever you do, you're dipping into that for material. Now, when your mental continuity... or rather your experience of continuity your experience of your identity and your experience of reality is primarily located in thinking consciousness. That what happens is you tend to break the link What then happens is that you have the tendency to break the connection or to suppress it.

[06:52]

Then it becomes primarily a kind of way in which things go from thought processes to memory. Okay, so you're thinking. I need material to think. All the noses I've ever seen have not been upside down. And I look into the live, and I say, hundreds, I've seen thousands of noses. None of them are like that. Now your nose needs some attention. Okay, so everything I see and hear and think about is compared to memory process. Okay, that in a sense makes that my vision are quite stale. It's entirely involved with thinking all the time.

[08:09]

And it's not freshened up by the actual environment. Now, where did this alaya vijnana arise from initially? arose from the senses okay but when your sense of Reality, identity and continuity is in thinking processes. There's very little new material going into the live at Yama. Because you're always seeing things in terms of memory, past experiences. Okay. When you remove conceptualization from the perception process.

[09:23]

Okay, so I look at you, for example. And in the process of looking at you, I peel all the labels off. Your gender, your age, etc. And I just And I see you. Now we have a term for that actually in a koan. It's called exposed in the golden wind. Okay. Now, when I just look at you that way, I actually move the Ayatollah over into the immediate present. It's like you're opening the doors and windows of the storehouse consciousness. Now it's more of a threshold consciousness. It's a threshold where phenomenal world and your body, everything's coming into it all the time, stirring it up.

[10:38]

Now, you said, where does the heart come in? You said? She said, Maya said. With a name like Maya, we have to think of... She said, where does the heart come in? Well, it is understood that when you move Alaya Vishnana more this way into the immediate present, then this activity is more a function of the heart than of thinking. When it's here, it's more a thinking activity. Now this has come about through just what you did, others of you have done, is look at the thinking process and say, oh, I see that all my memory keeps being related to thinking.

[11:42]

It's very little related to the immediate present. Are you with me? Beate is making... You always get it last, but when you get it, you get it pretty well. At least you get it. Some people think they get it and they don't. It's much better to know you don't get it, because then you have a chance of getting it. Okay, so seeing this, the analysis of the problem was that we have, we need a formula, our continuity, reality and identity in the thought stream.

[12:48]

So, let's get it out of the thought stream into the embodied stream of the present moment. That's exactly the reason there's so much emphasis on breathing. When you bring your attention to your breathing, you're bringing it out of the thought stream into your breath. If someone asks me, who are you? I mean, if it's kind of usual people, I say, Richard Baker. But usually I say, you know, sometimes I'm Richard Baker.

[13:50]

Nowadays. But I would say, oh, I'm a breathing person. I'm always a breathing person. When I cease to be that, I won't be able to say Richard Baker either. So you bring your sense, you're doing many things when you bring your attention to your breath. But basically you're bringing your sense of Identity. Continuity and reality. RCI. Bringing it into body, breath and phenomena. So mindfulness practices are based on shifting the Alaya Vijnana into the immediate present.

[15:07]

You're basically transforming yourself. Und grundsätzlich heißt das, dass ihr euch selbst transformiert, das heißt grundlegend verändert. You're the construction site for a new person. Und ihr seid die Baustelle für eine neue Person, ein neues Wesen. And Zazen and mindfulness practice are both the process of reconstructing yourself. Und die Achtsamkeitspraxis und Zazen sind der Prozess des Umbaus eigentlich. And the process of... The process of making you safe while you do it. Because when you make such a big change of how memory functions, you're actually changing the kind of person you are. You're creating a new

[16:08]

New person. You still have all the same memories. So to most people you look the same. But things affect you differently. And you're constantly being nourished by the immediate present. And that experience of nourishment is not just a kind of physical, psychological thing. But we could say is in fact, we could call it psychological in that it is transforming the process of memory association. This is a little hard to explain. I just did the best I could. But you can give me more. We can discuss it more. But I think this is enough to show you How thoroughly this has been thought out in Buddhism.

[17:46]

And how rooted these simple practices, like bringing your attention to your breathing, how rooted these simple practices are how these simple practices are rooted in a very thorough and deep understanding of how we exist. This is, again, the reality-therapeutic relationship. And also it's stochereological or enlightenment because this move is a kind of enlightenment. Okay. Yes. Yes. What is the function of the phenomena in this process?

[18:51]

Can I use them for this process, for better understanding of the problem? Phenomena, you mean? Yes, of course. Why not? Deutsch, bitte. Of course. But how is phenomena part of your reality? Yeah. I don't know what you mean. So you're going to have to find your own sense of what makes sense. But I can talk about this and you can see if it relates to what you mean.

[19:56]

Because we all have our own habits of using these words and thinking about them and And those habits often overlap with the practices and sometimes interfere with the practices. Someone else had a question? Yeah, okay. I wonder where in there is action, not being but also doing, acting. I'm stuck in the real change of reconstruction when perception is strong and I find no way give it into action, and if action is too early, then it's like old action, it's too fast, yeah.

[21:22]

Okay, German, please. In this process of reconstruction, Okay, I think I heard you. So let's see if what we say as we go along answers some of what you brought up. And then you can ask me. Who else? Yes? I have a question about thinking. You talked about the thought stream and the switch to breathing. and how the thought stream is basically memories and all that, and the breathing is the threshing of the house.

[22:49]

Opening it up to the... In my experience, usually thinking is old stuff, Sometimes it happens that it becomes a life and I experience as well a change in my body, in everything and whatever. So it is not clear for me. For me it's not either or. I can create a new... Something new happens within my thought stream while I'm in my breathing. Yes. It's not either or. I mean, for me it's not really the connection between... It sounds to me like you are either in the thought stream or you change and you base your identity in the breathing.

[23:51]

And for me sometimes it's like when it matches, then there is a new thing. Okay. about the same thing, the question of terms. Yes, I remember, yes. So you want to say this in Swedish a bit? I have a question about thinking. Roshi talked about the thought stream, which is mainly associated with the perception of the inner world. On the other hand, there is the change of identity when you are in the breath, in the current breath. I sometimes experience it like this, when I think well, that I also perceive myself in my breathing, and that it is not only memories, but that in the moment, although I think, something new, alive arises.

[25:01]

So for me it is not either Well, I think you should trust your own experience. And then if you want, you can try to match the validity of your own experience I would accept the ability of your own experience first. And then I try to match that with this kind of understanding and saying, does this fit my understanding? Okay. I know I read somewhere an anecdote about Einstein. There was a thing recently I saw in the newspaper where they'd taken Einstein's brain out to study it and they'd forgotten it.

[26:21]

It was stuck in the refrigerator somewhere. He wasn't around to make sure they took care of it. But Einstein would seem to do things like he would have a feeling in his hand or something. And he seemed to have naturally, or by the way he was constructed, a New York. And he would notice that, and then he'd pay attention to it, And the feeling would turn into a thought and it would be a new idea. So I think what happens is when your home base is breast, body and phenomena, you have your...

[27:27]

You're in the embodied present. Let's call it that. That's home base. Then, my experience is your thinking clears up tremendously. And you cease having primarily self-referential thinking. In both senses the meaning of the word self. Thinking referring only to other thinking and thinking referring to who's thinking. Then your thinking is much more embodied in the whole of you. And it's certainly you and you may identify with it. It's certainly you, and you may identify with it.

[28:54]

But it's still not where you find your sense of continuity and identity, primarily. Your home base is breath, body and phenomena. We should take a break soon, so I'd like to save the other questions until after the break. And I'd like to speak about this, what we brought up yesterday, about you defined compassion to some extent, or love. Now, I would say that Buddhism is a path of compassion. It's not a path of love.

[29:55]

Am I really making a distinction? Yes and no. Now, I don't know. Being such a cold fish, I don't know much about the path of love. But I know when I practice Sufism sometimes, like working with the zikrs. Zikrs, it's a kind of Sufi practice. You primarily work with these upper chakras. And anyway, it seems different. There's an active kind of love involved. At least, that's the impression I have. And in that, it's somewhat different in flavor from Buddhism. Okay. I would define compassion in Buddhism as the recognition, acceptance and the acting through connectedness.

[31:20]

Okay. So basically, compassion means, in this sense, connectedness. It can also be translated as seeing suffering of others and committing yourself to changing it. Sukhira, she used to say, Define compassion as knowing another person. He would say knowing their flavor. And letting them flourish. Yeah. But there's still a kind of leaving alone in it.

[32:40]

There's a kind of trusting you leave somebody alone, but you're there for them. they flourish more than if you're too attached or something. I'm just trying to give you a feeling as I understand it from being exposed to Buddhism for All my adult life. For example, my right hand really takes good care of my left hand. It clips its fingernails. Sometimes my left hand takes care of my right hand. And sometimes it's nice left hand.

[33:43]

And I like you too. And sometimes they embrace. But they're connected. And they don't really have to love each other. Because the left hand says, well, you know. So compassion is recognizing this connectedness where nothing is necessary. We're already connected. Now, the question came up also yesterday, do we make this present moment? Or do we receive it, or do we... You mentioned it yesterday.

[34:45]

Do we live it, or is it just there, and we just know? Yeah, is it already there and we notice it or do we make it, etc.? Now, from the Buddhist point of view, we can study that from the point of view of compassion and wisdom. Their compassion and wisdom are understood as the basic movement, wisdom inward to emptiness, outward to, like Avalokiteshvara having a thousand arms. Yes. Now maybe I can, this would be part of, if we talk after break, we can talk about this a little more, what is the present moment.

[35:53]

But there are the practices of I'm just trying to give you a sense of how Buddhism looks at these things. What they're called the four immeasurables. Sometimes called the Unlimiteds. And sometimes called the four divine states of being or abide.

[37:04]

Abode is good, yeah. OK, one is kindness. Friendliness. And the second is empathetic joy. The third is equanimity. And the fourth is compassion. Now, I could also give you the parameters, which have a similar function. Now, the idea is that for your own development and also for others,

[38:16]

And also to develop the ability to know the world. This is not just, it's not morality, it's reality. This is the way you know reality. For instance, say you have a state of mind of aversion or hatred. Then you're not going to receive much. So openness and generosity you're much more receiving. So this is unlimited kindness or unlimited friendliness. And empathetic joy means you take joy in what others do. And as you develop more of a bliss consciousness, which arises through understanding the present moment,

[39:19]

then you generate that bliss because it benefits others as well as yourself. And equanimity, like you said yesterday, something comes in and you accept it. So we would call that a practice of acceptance or welcoming rooted in the attitude and experience of compassion. And it's also related, of course, to equanimity, which is part of also the practice I've been giving you for the last six months, which is to bring your attention and energy equally to each moment.

[40:43]

And people ask me, what does it mean to bring your energy equally each moment? Well, I think we know that feeling when we feel present with energy and present with kind of, oh yeah, it's out there. And this relates to what you asked. Is the key to this, and there's also a kind of technical term for it, the readiness at all moments to act. In Zen, awareness means awareness accompanied by the readiness to act. So you can feel the difference if you're just aware and you're aware with the readiness to act. It's also equanimity.

[41:54]

Okay. Now, one way that's suggested to practice these, a traditional way is to intentionally, consciously radiate each one of these one at a time in all surrounding directions and up and down. If you want to practice this, I would suggest you practice for one day, say, radiating friendliness. When I used to practice it sometimes, and I would say hello to everybody.

[43:00]

In the train station, you know, and everybody went by me. Somebody said, my friend was saying, your unlimited friendliness is driving me crazy. Right. And in Germany, somehow, Germans like to occupy their own space, and they don't want to be interfered with. There's a high degree of compassion in Germany is to respect each other's space. And here I come along and they say, they don't know I'm a Buddhist practicing unlimited friendliness. They think I'm just some sort of American. So an American, yeah. The kind that talks to you endlessly on the airplane when you're trying to have a transatlantic flight.

[44:03]

Starts telling you about their grandmother. Okay. And so you take each one like that. And actually a good practice is to say, take a hectare somewhere. Or you might take the area here to the other hillside, if you live here, to the tower, to the top there, to the farm. And then... concentrate on every being, every insect, every bird, every person in this, and see if you can feel these four. And notice when you can't feel it. So, as an example now, take, for example, a hectare circle and, like, for example, to the tower here, to the neighboring farm, spread it out, spread it out on every creature, every insect, so every little thing, and also notice if you can't quite do it.

[45:11]

Do you extend it over to your summer house? Okay, so this is not a path of love, but you know, it's not too bad. Let's take a break. It's quarter after 11. Let's come back in order to 12. And who has to leave before 3 o'clock today? Who has to leave before 7 o'clock? Who has to leave before... 5 o'clock. Yeah. Before 4 o'clock. Okay. So it looks like most people could stay till 4. So how should we make our schedule?

[46:23]

Should we just go a little longer and have lunch later? And then end around 2.30 or 2 or something? Or shall we... eat quickly and have an hour meeting in the afternoon. Okay, you like to eat quickly, okay. So, what's our usual... You can eat less slowly. Okay, well, let's try out one plan. What time is lunch supposed to be? One o'clock. One o'clock. Okay, so we have lunch from one... We don't have so much time.

[47:25]

Yeah, we need to be tight. So, then we have... I'd like to finish some things that we... started. See if we can give some shape to this gate of the present moment. Oh, we have four, five, and six. So four is simply the perceptual process. That is that everything is a perceptual process.

[48:48]

If I'm giving attention to something, if I look at something in the most ordinary way, actually I'm scanning it, all kinds of things are going on in the perceptual process. I'd say the fifth is, which changes things, a yogic perceptual process. Where there's more clarity, able to sustain... each sense field and so forth. And here you develop each Vijnana. And you develop the skandhas. And that changes the way the perceptual process works. So all of these are the way it is, and they also are the way we can practice with the perceptual process.

[50:03]

And the last is subjective disposition. Oh, that's a hard one. Easy to say in English. It's the subjective disposition. I don't know. The disposition in English means whether you're happy or sad. He's got a sad disposition. He's got a cheery disposition. No, no, no, no. So if you're a critical type person, it affects the way you proceed. If you're a sage, one of the qualities of being a sage is they're usually cheerful.

[51:16]

So, you know, we're moody, whatever. One of the things Tsukuyoshi always spoke about was perfecting the personality. And I went into this in some detail in the five-day meeting I had with this group of Austrian psychotherapists. But it's related to this. And what interested me is Suzuki Roshi used to speak about perfecting the personality as the last part of practice.

[52:22]

And so what I finally understood was the shift through practice So that your personality is not rooted in your personal history, but in the immediate present. You still, of course, have a personal history. It's just that in everyday circumstances, you're not always expressing your personal history. You're expressing what arises, your personal, what in this situation would mean, your personality is equivalent to the field of the present.

[53:27]

Now, all of us have this experience that sometimes you're with a good friend and somehow there's some lightheartedness. This is probably more like you have a good mood for some reason. That's more like having your personality rooted in the present. And the more your personality is rooted in the present, then you can see your habits and you can begin to perfect or develop your personality. Now, another distinction that we should make, and again, this is, I've only recently tried to talk about these things,

[54:34]

Let me put on the parameters for the heck of it. The first is generosity. The second is, I think, best called just precepts. And the third is patience. And the fourth is energy. and the fifth and sixth, meditation and wisdom.

[55:52]

We can understand these as interacting with these. In this they are very similar to the four immeasurables. Because you bring into each situation generosity. I mean, it's expressed in little things. Sukhita, she said, when he was standing, he was standing getting a lecture like this. And he said, these glasses, they're your glasses. But you know about my tired old eyes, so you let me use them. This is a feeling of generosity that these glasses, whatever he has, doesn't belong to him, but he's using it.

[56:54]

And the generosity goes both ways. You're being generous to him by letting him use his own glasses. And of course, an immense amount of work, societal, cultural work, when producing eyeglasses, And just as an aside, some cultural historians attribute much of the dominance of Europe in the world culture on eyeglasses. Because I think they were discovered in Venice or something. But it allows your working life for anything like accounting or details to be extended considerably because most people's end is about 40 when they can no longer...

[58:01]

And precepts means to perfect normal human qualities. That sometimes is said discipline. But it really means that we really want human beings to, you know, you want to feel, you want to trust people. So you become a person people can trust. So you have the personal discipline to become a person that people can trust.

[59:01]

Patience means you're willing to wait. generously for the other person to reveal him or herself. You don't have a mind. I don't have time for that. There's no such thing really as being out of time. You are time. What you do is time. But to know that and then to extend that to other people's time.

[60:03]

So you're willing to modify your own time, sense of time, with another person's sense of time. And I like that phrase that's in the American Protestant wedding ceremony. You ask each of the couples, each of the two people, do you plight your troth? Now, what plight your trust means, plight means to endanger your personal truth. And troth is also betrothed.

[61:04]

It means to be committed to another person, to marry them. So the idea is that you endanger your own truth by marrying somebody. So this is like this sense of patience. You endanger your own sense of time. by entering into another person's sense of time, which might be quite different from your own. It's like looking at a beach stone, too. You let the beach stone speak to you. If you wait too long, it gets dry, and you say, I'd like to be better wet. And energy, again, is the gift of bringing your own energy to each situation, not kind of being passive, waiting for the other person to do things.

[62:17]

You're always ready to step forward. This is considered compassion in Buddhism. No, that's that. Now... There's a very important distinction made in... There's two main types of perception. One is a perception known only through itself.

[63:35]

I'll try to give you an example of this. the best that I can think of is the green flash. Do you know what the green flash is? What is Superman and then Captain Marvel? The green flash is supposedly something you can see when the sun goes down. And I've seen it three times. But it is extremely brief. If you think for a moment, you must say, if it happened. And it doesn't always happen.

[64:41]

At least it doesn't always happen when I look at sunsets. And the American Indians considered a sign of spiritual development to see the green flesh. And if you have a memory of seeing the green flash, it interferes with seeing the green flash. And sometimes two or three people will be standing, and two will see it, and the other two will say, I didn't see anything. They're all looking, you know. And sometimes two or three people stand together to look at the sunset, and two of them stand there and see nothing at all. But if there's any conceptualization process going on, you're less likely to see it. I am standing here. I am looking at the sun setting.

[65:41]

I am waiting for the green light. But it will never appear because I am... But if you're just standing there and you've peeled all the labels off the world, you might as well be on Mars. You have no idea where you are. Sometimes, whoa. Okay, that is a perception known only through itself. And there are other kinds of examples that occur in this. Someone told me that mother zebras make sure that the baby, just after it's born, How anybody knows this, I don't know.

[66:48]

You'd only be sure if you were a zebra. Supposing little babies down there and the mother zebra holds its neck like this and gets all the other zebras away. So the baby zebra... memorizes the neck patterns of the mother. Maybe the odor of the mother's neck, who knows, but let's... The theory is the neck pattern. This is the mother's compassion. And she won't let any other zebra come near during this imprinting period. you could say that that baby zebra as it grows up and it can always recognize its mother is a perception known only to itself.

[67:58]

No other zebra perceives it that way. Or it would be like if you're a parent. You're a parent and you hear in a crowd somewhere, you're out shopping, you hear your babies cry. And among other babies crying and noise, that's my baby. I'd better go see what's going on. But this kind of perception known only to itself. Because other people hear the babies crying, but it's not the same perception. Okay, now, another example, which I can point out again, as we often do in seminars, Again, we're sitting here in this room together.

[69:03]

And we've created a field. And it's different than it was when we first came on Friday evening. And already right now the feeling is somewhat different than it was before the break. And it's different right now than it was a moment ago before I started speaking about this. And it's created by all of us. And it has no dimensions other than us all at once. Und es hat keine andere Dimension anders als uns alles zusammen. We can all feel it. Wir können es alle spüren. But we can't grasp it. Aber wir können es nicht ergrafen.

[70:05]

And you couldn't explain it to anyone. Und man könnte es niemand anderem erklären. You could say, well, there's a sort of this nice feeling or something. I mean, you don't know what, you couldn't explain it. Aber man könnte vielleicht sagen, es ist ein ganz angenehmes oder nettes Gefühl oder wie auch immer, aber man kann es nicht ganz erklären. And if one of you gets up and leaves... It changes. Or somebody else comes in, it changes. Because we're all making it. And we're making it by our kind of attention, etc. And it has no time dimensions. And it's always different. And it can only be known through itself. We can only know it right now, at this moment, and you can feel some difference in the next moment, but really it's unique.

[71:07]

It's completely unique and immeasurable. But it's also what Buddhism calls absolute reality. Buddhism talks about the absolute and the relative. This is what is meant by the absolute. Absolute because it can't be compared to anything else. And you see it's entirely empty. It's empty of duration. It's empty of permanence. It's empty of substance. And it has no existence except this one. Go ahead. But if I'm going to speak to you with any authenticity, I have to keep speaking to that moment that's only known through itself.

[72:09]

Because that's when there's the most absolute connectedness. Okay. So let's take that as a fact of reality and a fact that Buddhism places a high, Buddhism values above other forms of perceptions. So Buddhism says, yes, these kinds of moments occur to us. It's always the case. I mean, there's no way this isn't the case all the time, right? But the more your mind is in a thought stream, you can't perceive this that's known only through itself.

[73:28]

Only when you come into an embodied stream, Nur wenn ihr zu diesem verkörperten Strom hinkommt, of continuity, nämlich diesem Fluss der Kontinuität, can you also experience the momentariness of this continuity. Nur dann könnt ihr auch die Augenblicklichkeit dieser Kontinuität erfahren. So again, practice is to try to bring us into a way of knowing when in this quality of Perception known only through itself is present all the time.

[74:39]

You just know it in your body. But since we're complex people, we can also be talking and thinking about things. But you can also not just be with a person. You can like I'm speaking with you now. I can talk about you, I can talk with you, and I can... I feel my breath in my speaking. But I can feel my body and especially my stomach connected to this feeling, this moment. It's not repeatable. And they inform each other. Now, compassion in a way is to spread out this moment.

[75:42]

Wisdom is to draw into this moment. So a realized life is considered to be a pulse between this spreading it out or drawing it in. Or knowing both simultaneously. Okay, now what is a moment? Again, as I've spoken before, we can think of it as an infolding, a holding, and an outfolding. And the infolding is I'm sitting here and I'm getting lots of information from you. And, you know, people have done studies of things like eye blinking and body movements in an audience or when there's a conversation like this going on.

[76:59]

I think it was discovered by accident because they made a movie of somebody talking to a group. And they slowed it down until a few seconds of the movie took 20 minutes or something to show. And whatever the reason they were doing it for, someone noticed that there was an unbelievable coordination between all the movements at a micro level. The whole group's eyes were... blinking together, and people were moving in ways that were likely there was a liquid connecting everyone.

[78:08]

And it was interesting, it was related primarily to the speaker, but there was no time delay. In other words, the speaker didn't do something and then everybody else did. It was like everyone was listening to the same beat. And this, in Buddhist terms, is sometimes, this sense is called Maa. And ma, again, is this kind of like the square, which is five points. And ma means a field that's connected and the center keeps moving. And there's like an infinite number of strings attached to everything.

[79:24]

All to this, this, to this, which soon becomes infinite. And this idea of Ma is that each situation develops this quality right away. So, there's this information coming from everybody and my memory and so forth. And that's an infolding. And like all this information, we could think of it as inside us. But inside isn't quite right because it suggests there's an outside.

[80:28]

And there's no real outside-inside distinction in this. So maybe you can think of it if you want to try to kind of turn it into a wisdom way of looking at things. You can think of it perhaps as everything is inside. Everything is an inside that's finding momentary centeredness in you. And you can see that the more you develop the skandhas, the vijnanas, your sense fields and so forth, the more there's a thorough infolding is.

[81:31]

So the present is discovered somewhere in this. So one part of the present is there's this activity of enfolding. And the more there's a feeling of openness, And generosity. And your energy is there. The more thorough this enfolding is, then there's a holding. And this holding can be for a while, or it can be brief. And zazen is a practice where there keeps being an infolding and a holding.

[82:33]

And in ordinary circumstances, it's an infolding and an outfolding. And I can feel an enfolding being here. And I can feel a holding of that. Which is not directly related to the enfolding. The experience of holding is somewhat separate from the enfolding. Do you understand? It's not just that there's A and then there's held A and then there's expressed A. There's A and there's A, B, C, D, all kinds of things, and then maybe G is expressed.

[83:34]

But the more there's a feeling of enfolding, through mindfulness practice you've slowed down your perception sufficiently. You're not just caught up in the moment, the received moment. Almost a little bit like slow motion. You can find at a, do I dare use the word cellular level, In contrast to saying mental, you can feel this enfolding. And zazen practice helps open up, as well as mindfulness, helps open up this experience, this openness, this generosity of enfolding. And then the holdings.

[84:45]

When you hold, there's a kind of... A feeling of relief. Everything's okay. And from that holding, bliss arises. Just your breathing is, I don't know what word to use, quite blissful. It's not that there's kind of some continuous state of bliss. It's that each, on each... Perceptual activity or mental activity bliss arises. I mean, we could characterize each perception as sort of like, say, I look at this person. I have a feeling of appreciation. And I think perception in the root is a kind of caring.

[86:06]

You don't perceive things you don't care about. And if you perceive something you don't care about, you only do it if it benefits you to dislike them or something. The more basic nature of all emotional and feeling activity is caring. Okay. Like you don't get angry unless you care. Care is a little difficult in German because the word is the same for sorrow.

[87:11]

Maybe that's good. So that on each perception, let's call it that, each knowing moment... There's a caring appreciation and lighting up. Whatever you see, you feel light. It lights you up. I don't know how to explain it otherwise. So there's a, again, folding in. And you feel lit up by this folding in. And the wisdom movement, or Zazen as a wisdom practice, is the emphasis on the in-folding.

[88:12]

But without discriminating when it's supposed to be, but when it's not, when it's, When it happens, there's an outfolding. So you begin through this noticing these three phases. Your reservoir of personal energy and presence deepens and deepens all the time. So there might be an infolding of this moment and a nearly equal outfolding to all of us here. Or there may be an infolding going on. But I see Michelle perhaps, excuse me, you're not, but is crying or something.

[89:30]

So I might continue to speak, but I might have an outfolding of another feeling toward Michelle. Joining her sorrow. Or some feeling of this empathetic joy. So this is not just a simple one, two, three. Okay. Now, yeah. This is really, I mean, I can say these words, but really it's in the intimacy of you yourself that you discover this. And the more this process is a flow of perceptions known only to themselves, through themselves, the more what's called in Zen great function begins to

[90:58]

Basically, great function means to let everything act through you. To know the world beyond the five or six senses. To let yourself feel each moment, not think about each moment. And the technical term for this perceptual process where each perception is known only through itself is called thusness. And thusness is also a word for the experience of emptiness. So I said earlier, I would say something about the difference between this and thus.

[92:18]

This is this, and I know you to some extent as a particular kind of person. This as distinct from other things. Thus I know you in some absolute way. I know you as unique and non-repeatable at each moment.

[92:46]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_72.5