I think of trauma as a bridge between awareness and consciousness. And how you reflect in that form, or the story in that form, not to analyze what that means, Okay. Can you say it to me? I understand the dream in mind, I don't know, thinking that it's kind of a bridge between awareness and consciousness in some way.

[01:03]

But the actual content of the dream, the story of the dream, not to analyze it, that this object or this is a symbol for this in your life, but somehow how to learn or get something from the dream that can become important in your daily life, or to help the structure of consciousness. Okay. Okay. So, in responding then to what you said about the distinction between awareness and dreaming mind. Now, Buddhism distinguishes a whole number of levels of consciousness and awareness. But I think the fundamental distinction that's useful for us Westerners in practice can be limited pretty much to awareness and consciousness. Yeah, now refinements of that can come as your practice develops.

[02:12]

And I'm using these words because they're perfect, because they They're available in English. And they also happen to very closely parallel the technical language of Buddhism. And if they don't exist quite in the same way in German, you can just use awareness and consciousness in your translation. Okay. Now again, I just want to say, because I'm a little embarrassed about going over these things again for so many of you, But I think if you really get a hold on, and one of the points of Buddhism is to get a kind of sense of the territory,

[03:21]

Well, you kind of know vaguely where you are, but Buddhism, Zen especially, doesn't tell you what the city's like, but they give you a kind of general map. For instance, when you're unable to, when you're practicing counting to one. And you may be noticing that you're distracted. it's very helpful to notice that, as I said this morning, that there's a field in which this distraction occurs. So that you don't just notice the distraction,

[04:36]

and say, oh geez, I'm distracted. But you notice that with the distraction, a field has arisen which allows the distraction to happen. See, that's something you could practice for many years and only notice the distraction. And that's what a teacher is supposed to do. is introduce you to this fundamental mind. And one of the ways is to point out a distinction, like notice the field that arises with this distraction and not just the distraction. Well, if you can get some of this basic kind of vocabulary down, as we say in English, or clear, it will be an immense help in your practice over the coming years.

[05:57]

I'm partly apologizing for it, explaining things too much and also trying to also make you see, help you see how important these explanations are. Okay, so we can think of awareness and consciousness again as perhaps, as an idea, as two different liquids. And the liquids have different temperature, viscosity, and so forth. Different absorbent qualities and so forth. Okay. In that sense, awareness is bigger than dreaming mind.

[07:12]

And dreaming mind primarily occurs within the larger liquid of awareness. Okay. Now, dreaming awareness also has content. And that content and dreaming mind also or awareness also participates in your fundamental story. Awareness. And awareness also is a very powerful and direct laser-like medium for intention. It's one of the reasons that the Eightfold Path starts with right views. And all of Buddhism starts with the vow.

[08:13]

Because in the end the root of all practice is your resolve or intention. And that resolve meets many obstacles in consciousness. And consciousness is not a very good medium for intention. Your intentions are mostly carried in awareness. So you're, in a way, your story at the level of associations and kind of field, rather, yeah? And at the level of images and intentions is primarily carried in awareness. The vehicle is awareness. Yes. Okay, and consciousness carries more the structure of your story.

[10:01]

And is where most of the activity of your life occurs. Okay, so when you dream... It's like the Loch Ness... What could we say? The... Anyway, the Loch Ness, you know who that is, Nellie. Nelly surfaces in your dream. And people have been looking for the Loch Ness guy for many centuries. But it's like there's a deep dimension of your life swimming in this awareness, you know?

[11:17]

And sometimes we can call it unconsciousness and stuff, but... But in dreams, you suddenly see the back of this thing surface and think, whoo! But Nelly can't exist in consciousness. So sometimes you just see ripples. There's a shadow. And sometimes you see a head break the surface. Okay, like that. So it's, you know, the dreams are a little kind of chance to see this deeper dimension of your life. And it's very important to recognize our life, not just your life. I mean, you're much more involuntarily connected to other people in your life.

[12:18]

in your deeper life than in your conscious life. And in your conscious life, you think you have control over who you associate with, what you do. But in your dreams you don't have so much control over who you associate with. You can have dreams about people you'd never dream of having dinner with. So if you begin to practice motionless sitting, And yogic posture. Nelly surfaces much more in you. Nelly surfaces much more in you.

[13:50]

So at first when you do Zazen, all you notice is these distractions. Then you begin to notice the field of the distractions. And when you notice the field of the distractions, you begin to see the distractions are ripples from something much deeper under the surface. And if you don't know unfabricated mind, you won't notice. Because fabricated mind will only notice consciousness and ego and so forth. And if you don't have, and if you're practicing a yogic posture, Nelly not only surfaces in your consciousness or awareness, but Nelly also begins to surface in your body.

[15:09]

I didn't think I was going to talk about Nelly. See what you people do to me? I come to Berlin, I start talking about Nelly. It's your fault. But Nelly begins to surface in your energy body. And actually begins to change the way you function. When Nelly is surfaced in your energy body, you can do things like, you've just eaten some bad food or something, you shouldn't have had too much of something.

[16:12]

You can actually just say to your body, absorb this bad food and make use of it. And suddenly, the whole effect goes away. And this is not really... I mean, your body's coping with it, right? But your body's coping with all kinds of things and trying to deal with your conscious mind, which takes a lot of work. But your conscious mind can now talk the language of the dreaming body. And talk to your immune system. And say, hey, you know, let's be a little different. And the body, which is now mixed with...

[17:14]

Dreaming mind. Mixed with awareness. And when you do zazen, in a way, what you're doing is you start sitting. And you let go of the structure of consciousness. And mind slips into your body like water into sand. And enlivens the whole body. And the whole body becomes responsive to the intentions which can move through awareness, but not through consciousness. So even. Okay.

[18:35]

Now, I talked last night about educating or building or developing consciousness from the inside and outside. And you can't develop consciousness, you can't, no college can teach you, teach your consciousness brightness. Meditation can teach your consciousness brightness. And meditation can begin to distinguish between consciousness and awareness. and can begin to develop a kind of education of awareness which is primarily just becoming familiar. Okay, so you're developing or educating or whatever consciousness from both inside and out.

[19:41]

Now, the practices I would like to emphasize today and tomorrow, which are at the surface of this meeting of the inside and outside education, are the paramitas, usually six, the six perfections. And we could think of the six perfections as perfecting the merging of interior and exterior consciousness. Okay. This is almost the same thing, but not quite.

[21:03]

When you say it differently, it's different. Perfecting the merging of these two continents... of awareness and consciousness. Now, when a writer is writing, the writer is trying to touch and has a sense of this, a sense of let's call it Nelly. And probably most artists are people for whom education didn't quite entirely work. They somehow couldn't, can't forget what society tried to educate out of them. They can't forget certain highs or experiences that surpass drugs.

[22:10]

And I think most people paint or write because they touch something that moves them deeply or is immensely satisfying. immensely satisfying. Or something which sometimes an artist's ordinary mind is so distracted and conflicted Oder manchmal ist vielleicht der gewöhnliche Geist eines Künstlers derartig abgelenkt oder voller Konflikte. So dass er vielleicht einfach um zu überleben oder für ganz gewöhnliche Befriedigung.

[23:12]

So dass sie also dafür sozusagen Ganzheit berühren müssen oder auch Nelly's Rücken. Now, this getting in touch with Nelly, for a writer, it's often called knowing the muses or being inspired. And you work to be inspired. Like somebody peered in the keyhole of Gogol, the Russian writer's working room, And he was sitting there banging his head. Then he'd write a sentence or two and then he'd bang his head and then he'd write a sentence.

[24:20]

And he was using a quite primitive way to change his state of mind. Yeah, but it does work. Whoa, it does work. Okay. Now, but when you begin through motionless and yogic experience and posture, become more and more familiar with this with awareness, and with the power of this deep water which wells up against the surface of our conscious mind, which is much of what we really mean by spiritual life. You begin to work with this in a different way.

[25:22]

So, on the one hand, you see... Gordon, are you still with us? Yes. You see your story appearing in awareness. Now, you can bring your story together by trying to interpret dreams and retrieving aspects of the dream and putting them into consciousness. And that's the technique of most psychotherapy. Oh, there's the missing link. Do you call in German the missing link the ape? The missing link in English means the missing ancestor who was some sort of monkey. Anyway, it's not important. So in psychology, he tries to find the missing link or the piece and says, oh, now if you put that in your consciousness, it makes your story more whole.

[26:33]

Now, that's dealing with content. Buddhism doesn't deal with content that much. Take the field in which these are floating and integrate it with the field of your conscious life. Do you see the difference? No. Instead of taking something that's floating in the water and putting it in the air, You mix the air and the water. And then you let them all float together. And let them, like in chaos theory, begin to find their own order. So one of the interesting things about chaos theory is that we can see it in the word disorder.

[27:38]

Disorder implies that order is the natural state. And disorder is the unnatural state. But actually, the way things work, disorder is the natural state. And order is always emerging from that. So we should also have words like dischaos and chaos. And you're always actually moving from dischaos to chaos, from chaos to dischaos. Right. Okay, now I've been talking too much and it told me up by the toilet not to. But I still have to talk a little bit about the artist and the actor, so I'll try to do that quickly. And I found out one of you today remembered one of you today as an actor.

[28:53]

And I was thinking about another a person who comes to seminars and thinks he's a retired actor. So I began thinking about acting, you know, remembering some things which I thought I might talk about in Heidelberg, but maybe I could talk a little bit about it here. Because you didn't have to go so fast. So did you. You said you wanted to go fast. Yeah, but I don't want you to go fast. Now, Chinese and Japanese culture influenced by Buddhism have worked out in the arts the territory I'm talking about. Okay, so let's take one of the places that's most clear is for the actor.

[29:56]

Now, the actors, in the way Buddhism looks at it, for a no actor, for instance, Schauspieler. [...] It's like a good thing to be. Spieler is to speak. To spiel. It's a player. A player. Okay. A show player. A show player. Okay. That's what we're all doing, actually. That's what I'm doing. I'm performing. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun to perform if we're doing it together. So, the actor doesn't try to be the character consistently from the time he steps on the stage to the time he leaves.

[31:01]

The actor is actually trying to work first of all in the medium of consciousness. And is sort of trying to be the actor but is sort of trying to be the person portrayed and sort of trying to be the audience at the same time. So this actor is working with a kind of atmosphere of consciousness that arises from the audience. And his training is to be sensitive to that atmosphere of consciousness of that particular night's audience that's arising to the stage. So he or she is out swimming in that on the stage.

[32:03]

And then they begin to sink. And they start sinking into... awareness and begin drawing the audience into awareness. So it's again like the story. Your story nearly is surfacing in the dream. And there's a definite sense in a no play. You have two scripts going on. One script is... Surfacing in consciousness.

[33:06]

And the actor's job is to bring that story, that narrative, into consciousness. The actor's job is also to bring the story, the other script, into awareness. And they actually divide the stage. So if you know no plays, that one part of the stage, when you step into it, represents the timeless realm. And the front part of the stage represents, the more front part usually represents the time realm.

[34:12]

and represents consciousness, more emphasis on consciousness. So the actor is... One interesting thing about note plays, too, is you can photograph the actor at any point, and they always look like they should be on a postcard. Because they're always moving in those kind of postures which are very evocative. Okay, so say the actor is talking about something. My friend feels this. And so and so else feels this. And then, while they're speaking, they just step back a little like that. And they start speaking, but then suddenly they're speaking to people who are dead. And it's a kind of reality.

[35:26]

What's going to happen in the play is already happening now. So they'll start speaking with a sense of prophecy. Then they'll step back like this, and then they're in the usual way of talking. And they keep going right across the line. And also the chorus begins to initiate it. There's usually a chorus, and they start speaking from another level, like in a Greek play. But in this kind of theater that's been developed through Buddhism, It's not really carried by the chorus. The chorus just initiates things. It's carried by the actor. No. What the actor's trying to do is move first in swimming in the consciousness of the audience.

[36:31]

And then begin to take... The magic of the theater is suddenly you're in another world. For a couple of hours you're in another world. And if it's good theater, you recognize, hey, this is my world. I just don't see it usually. Okay, so the actor and actors begin to draw the audience into awareness. And then the actor starts going back and forth between awareness and consciousness. And then suddenly the actor will do something which makes awareness erupt into consciousness. And the whole audience will stop. I mean, people actually go, you know, like that.

[37:34]

I mean, people gasp. I mean, they gasp involuntarily. Because there's a physical surge into their energy body. And the actor stops for a minute, freezes, is motionless. And people start weeping, it's amazing. And then they stop and move into consciousness. But you don't want to have that level the whole time. You only want that to happen two or three times in the whole play. Because it's more like life is. In fact, sometimes we only have that experience never in our lifetime. So the play begins to be a kind of education in bringing consciousness and awareness together.

[38:40]

And allowing one to erupt into the other sometimes. In a way you puncture that for people and then hopefully when they go home sometimes it begins to be their own capacity. So theater of this kind is at the center of culture. It's working with the very fabric of culture. The deep story of your culture and of your life that's kind of embedded like Nelly.

[39:41]

And the water that Nelly swims in. And the water of your ordinary life. And your own story. And you may feel this in a movie sometimes. You're just watching a movie. And I think we go to the movies as a kind of spiritual practice. And there's a lot of qualities to movies which are like spiritual experience. First of all, what you see is suffused with light. There's a transparency to it. And sometimes you'll start to, for some reason, cry because something happens and a little thing happens. And that crying is a way of thinking. It's a way your mind begins to work through tears.

[40:49]

Okay. Now, writing haiku, for instance, is the last thing I'll bring up. When you're writing poetry or a novel or anything, in this Buddhist way of thinking about writing, you're doing exactly the same thing the actor's doing. You're working with consciousness. And you try to let something else start to surface in the writing. And then occasionally erupt into the writing, erupt out of the page into your life. So you may almost not be able to read that sentence. You have to go back to it several times. Or you have to stop reading at that point and just rest for a bit and then go back. Now, the technique of the haiku is meant to be only that little portion where consciousness and awareness surface together.

[42:07]

Now, when Westerners write haiku or imitate haiku, they always write little, short, clever poems. And they don't have a sense that the haiku is actually an immense poem, which is unsaid, that you have to imply in the little ones, and it surfaces for a moment right there. So it's, and that's why haikus are often associated with Buddhist practice and are actually the words of an enlightenment experience. So you could have a set of old railroad tracks.

[43:10]

Cigarette wrapper thrown down. The sound of a horn. Or something like that. Which isn't so much a poem, but surfaces out into your life. Okay, now we could sit for a few minutes, but I think that you need to walk around and do something else. So let's take a break for 20 minutes. 4.20 will come back. And maybe for the toilet, I can open the upstairs, and there's two toilets there. Well, I want us to end with sitting, but it would be a little bit long for you if we started sitting now. Is that okay? Oh, there you are. I thought we lost you to the wedding.

[44:38]

No, not yet. Oh, I lost it. Because partly I thought of it because I wanted to show you this book. I'll tell you in a minute. Yeah, is 10 to 5 okay tomorrow? Yeah. Okay. When I say five, you know, I might mean quarter to five, I might mean five-twenty, because I'm not a clock. But, you know, I'm pretty good with time. So I did use this example of the actor and the writer. Of course, because I'm also talking about you. Because you're swimming in consciousness and awareness all the time.

[45:45]

Or at least in consciousness. Or you may feel imprisoned in consciousness. You don't know how to open up consciousness so it feels like fresh air. And that's really what we're talking about here. In this mystery of unity. Mysterium. Sounds more mysterious in German. Mysterium. We Germans can be very mysterious. You can enter the inner sanctum of Mysterium. Anyway, so... And there's quite a few loose ends today.

[46:48]

Loose end. And so I'll try to tie up a few of those tomorrow. And make some more. You can tie up later. It's nice to leave a lot of things untied sometimes. And also I want to enter a little bit different territory tomorrow. Now, if you have your piece of paper, you might write down the six parameters. Do you need that? Yes. The first one is generosity.

[48:46]

And the second one is conduct. You want a pencil? You can share it. It's only a few words. Go back and forth. Conduct. Or discipline. Difficult to translate. You mean you don't have any discipline in Germany? We haven't, but too much. We had too much of that, actually. So, ja, Haltung, Führung, Disziplin. Behaviour. Verhalten. That also includes practice. But I have to open these up for you tomorrow. Right now they're just the first name on the door. And the third is patience. And the fourth is effort.

[50:08]

Patient. Patient. And the fourth is effort or energy. Four. And the fifth is meditation. And the sixth is wisdom. And these are considered the most fundamental realms of bodhisattva practice.

[51:10]

And it can be understood from the point of view of consciousness and ordinary thinking. And it can be understood from the point of view of awareness and yogic experience. And Okay, that's enough on that. So you might just, you know, keep these words in mind. A little bit the way we looked at the first words, awareness, I mean, wholeness, unity and... Mysterious, yeah.

[52:16]

I don't... Maybe some of you know the musician-composer Philip Glass. Who worked in Germany with Robert Wilson doing some operas and things. And... Philip Glass is a Buddhist or studies Buddhism. And he has one song that Linda Ronstadt sings actually called Liquid Days. And it starts out with you know the usual noises he makes repetitious sounds and then Linda who has a very clarion or bell like voice comes in and starts and sings and says a man wakes up to the sound of rain And the memory or image of his lovers passes through the room.

[53:43]

And I don't remember how the rest of it goes. But he puts before his mind certain words. And they are mostly the six paramitas. And all he does, he keeps putting in front of himself generosity. Patience. Compassion. And she just keeps singing these words over and over again. Generosity. Compassion. Patience. It's quite nice. Okay, there's a book a close friend of mine and companion in this journey has written called The Future of the Body.

[54:54]

It just came out. And he founded Esalen Institute. Who's the author? Michael Murphy. And he's been working on this book. It's actually, the original manuscript was about three times his size. And it's again called The Future of the Body. And it's called, the subtitle is Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature. And I'm bringing it up partly because several of you have asked me questions which actually suggest to me you'd like reading this book. The first sentence of the book is, we live only part of the life we are given.

[55:59]

And he covers everything, practically. He's had somebody doing research for... 15, 20 years, and all the literature on spiritual life. In Buddhism, Hinduism, and a very large part of the book on Christianity. And how the process of identifying a saint goes and things like that. He's got a long section on the history of mesmerism in Germany. And the various people who worked on this sense of a universal fluid that the German romantics were interested in. And there's a long section on siddhis and charisms.

[57:17]

Charisms. It's the word used in Christianity. But it's not the same as charisma. It means like blood appearing in your hands and things like that. But not stigmata is a charism. Let's see if I can find the word here. There's a section called, I'll just read you some of the sections because I think it might interest you. The extraordinary capacities of religious adepts. The charisms of Catholic saints and mystics. Adventure in sport. Because he talks a lot about athletes and the kind of experience they have. Odors of sanctity and holy body fluids.

[58:44]

The bases of transformative practice. The varieties of evidence for human transformative capacity. Evolution and extraordinary functioning. So forth. It's published by Tarcher. T-A-R-C-H. I'll put it out. You can look at it. Tarcher. But my guess is it's going to become a kind of Bible and dictionary of the current... territory of all these religions and yogic practices that are meeting together. I mean, there's nobody else who's done anything like this. And it's, for me, of course, interesting because Michael and I have been

[59:48]

very close friends for 30 years. We talk on the phone at least once a week or so and have endless long conversations. And when I see, I helped him some of the book and read various parts, but when I see it, I really wish I'd helped him more. I don't mean that at all that he needed my help. I mean that I would have learned so much myself in helping him with the text. It's very hard to write a book, I'll tell you. It helps to have other perspectives all the time. But, you know, all of his studies keep being brought together in his own practice of zazen. And he started out more on the Hindu side and now is somewhere on the Buddhist side.

[61:20]

He started really in Christianity. Anyway. Okay, I think that's enough. So let's sit for a little while. Your life has a quality of belonging to you. You know It's not your voice you're hearing. I know this is my voice. At the same time, there's a quality to our life as it doesn't belong to us.

[62:32]

Even our story has an independence that we can more observe than own. And we have to create a space, an interior space and exterior space that can allow the magic and beauty of our life to happen. An important question is, where does the continuity of your life reside?

[64:06]

Does anyone want to turn me into a carpenter? Yeah. I would very much like to hear something about the connection between Zen mind and body awareness. Because the things that touch the body are very interesting for me, especially because I also make Tai Chi and things like that. And in Tai Chi also sometimes Zen mind comes up, and I would like to know more of that. And what do you mean by Zen mind? Well, what I understand. Yeah, I would like to know. I need some help. I can't explain.

[65:55]

Yeah, but when you say it, what do you feel other than, say, mind or intelligence, or what do you…? You talked about it yesterday, how you move between platforms of consciousness and always come back to one point. Yeah. And how that has to do with the body? Yes. Okay. Did you translate what I said sometimes as platforms? Perhaps rather plain, probably. It might be even, yeah. Yeah, she understood plain. Oh, yeah. Okay. I spoke yesterday about the craftsmanship, the relationship to architecture. For me, the craftsmanship is a certain ability and this architecture or the presentation of this architecture.

[67:05]

You talked about the relation between carpentry and architecture and for me the craft actually this is the ability to put into being by the carpenter the architecture and I want to know more about the technique of the craft actually. Of putting the architecture into the carpentry. Making by the carpentry the architecture sort of exist. You mean through the carpentry producing the architecture? Through the architecture producing the carpentry? No, first. And the technique of the crafts, to say. Yeah. Okay.

[68:09]

You didn't say what you said in German, so... But at least simply you should say something. Okay. Okay. Does anybody else want to? Yes. When there are I think it's good to know how to get there and still be able to count to ten. That's a problem for me. When I come here and I'm in such a group, I get into this situation pretty quickly.

[69:16]

And I can't see the scene quickly. So I could do something very difficult at all. These words, like unity, mystery, and all that, I have to work with them at all. Because I can't implement them. I would like to know how can you stay in awareness around anti-communism? Because I had these problems at the beginning of this course with these words, mystery, wounds, and the like, because if I come to a place like this and I sit in this, then I come automatically in this mind that I can't come to tell. I start to handle words like mystery, unity, or hope. Okay. So I have many problems with it. And I would like to know how to get these two things together. I mean, in some way, it would be nice to stay in this field of awareness and to count them.

[70:22]

Uli, did you have one? It was an art detector. You said when water sinks into the sand, is there any art detector there? Needed it. When you say the water sinks into the sand, that is architecture. My experience is a little that it's practical sinking into the sand. I don't know if it's needed to have some architecture to that point, but yeah, that's my question. Do you want to say it in German? if it is not so, whether it is necessary to have a pure identity up to this point, to get to this point.

[71:56]

Yes, I have a body that also has to do with body and mind. But on the other hand, there are emotions. I don't know how to explain it. Emotions and feelings are also strong. It's not like the lady comes in and slaps you. Sometimes the elegance comes out. And that also has to do with the body. For example, I get very sad. And then I can't let the sadness go through. But sometimes, yes, then I can't help but cry. And that also happens sometimes. But what do I do if I, for example, get a stroke? That means that the feeling goes into the body, but then I fall out of the earthly hold. That means, if I am alone, then I get up, and the animals should be less. But what do I do, for example, if I go to a session? I go, [...] I go. The main question was how do I deal with emotions, feelings that come up.

[73:05]

It's not always that I can, when Nelly comes up, I can just stroke its back. Sometimes it comes right completely up and then tears are welling up and I have to sob. And if I'm in the yogic posture, that's all right. But, for example, if I would be in a saschin, I really wouldn't know how to deal with it and stay in the yogic posture. It's easier when I'm alone. How do I deal with these emotions? It's easier when I'm alone. I'm going out. I'm doing something else. You're distracting yourself. You mean you're distracting yourself. Then I can follow the emotion. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, how to deal in the meditation with this coming up. Okay. Also joy. Yeah, yeah, I understand. You know, if you

[74:24]

You know, as you know, I teach in quite a few different places, but mostly America and Germany and Austria. And I would say that one of the... two strengths of practice in Germany in particular. One is there's an unusual amount, compared to other places I've taught, of friendliness between people. It's kind of strange because you wouldn't notice it on the street. People don't smile at you and they walk right by and, you know, you kind of... But still, once there's even a little bit of knowing of each other, people are quite supportive of each other. It's a good basis for a Sangha practice to develop. And the other main thing I noticed teaching here is that German people seem to have more of a sense of the craft of practice than most people.

[76:03]

I think I replied to this or mentioned it in Sashin. I was just struck by it then. And it seems that as a kind of cultural trader, I don't know how to do the language or what, there's a willingness to try things out and study the details of your life. Partly that I think that's, if I compare that to Americans, it's a... It's... that Europeans in general, not just Germans, have more cultural security than Americans do.

[77:14]

Because I think that Americans have a lot of openness and freedom, at the same time they have to really protect themselves because if they don't keep their own scene together, there's no culture to support them, there's no background support, much less than in Europe. So that's just a way of saying that the kind of questions you're asking are... actually the real ingredients of individual practice. Okay. Well, of course, I don't know if I can keep track of all of this, but of course the point of counting to ten in awareness or in zazen mind,

[78:43]

is to learn to count to ten in Zazen Mind. So you can do it. But you can force it. But if you force it, it's not so good. So you have to let it happen. But make some effort, mostly at the level of intention. And much of this, the way I'm talking today, can be kind of summed up in the word negotiation. It's not the same meaning in German. If you negotiate a contract, what do you call it? Yeah, you work to and fro to get to an agreement, that's right?

[80:09]

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we can find a different word. Because the German word for negotiation also means appeal at court, you see. Yeah, well, it does in English too. So it has a different side connotation. The root, the etymology of negotiation don't work in English because it means no leisure. So I don't know what word to use. I like the roots to work for a word. So anyway, today we'll have to suffice with some sort of word like negotiation. Give us a few months of time. Okay.

[81:22]

So what's one of the characteristic differences in counting to ten in consciousness and counting to ten in awareness? When you count to ten in... In consciousness, each number leads to the next number. One, two, three, four, six, seven. Good. But when you count in awareness, each number is really sort of like one. Okay. You're saying one. And then nothing really leads to two. Because there's nothing in this one that implies two. So you have to kind of

[82:22]

Oh yeah, something comes after one. Two, oh yeah, two. So what you're doing, one of the things you're doing in counting to ten is you're developing the ability to direct intention within awareness. And you're also working toward developing one-pointedness. But also you are becoming familiar with awareness. And becoming familiar with awareness means you're becoming familiar with the contents of personality or self that are in awareness and not in consciousness.

[83:47]

Now this is related to the idea of unconscious, but it's not the same. This isn't repressed material, it's just material that is associated differently. You haven't repressed it, it's just that there's no way that your usual conscious architecture doesn't address it. Now the sense of architecture is in, as I said yesterday, the eightfold path begins with right views. So you can take, to some extent, the word architecture, in the way I'm using it, as a synonym for views.

[85:11]

So, of course, in that sense, to say, to present an image like the mind... disappears into the sand is a view. So in that sense, that much view or architecture is necessary. At least. But as Uli is rightly pointing out, this particular view of the mind disappearing into the sand is also the freedom from views. And the point of practice is to be free of views.

[86:11]

That's not the only point, but it's kind of the point which makes a lot of other points happen. When I say something like, that's the point, don't you think, oh, there are no other points? So you exclude everything else. No, this point has its own magnetic field which brings up, the view of emptiness brings up form. Now, in discussing views, I'm trying not to discuss views this morning in a too philosophical way. I'm trying to keep to the carpentry side. But the interplay is beautiful.

[87:29]

Now, what you were saying, if you come to a sashin, you can express all kinds of emotions. And quite often people cry or make noises. And people feel, you know, there's a lot of... It actually is quite helpful even, because everyone feels an empathy and a clarity in it. Because, as I said yesterday again, crying is a form of thinking or... acting or feeling. The other thing that happens in Saschins quite often in Germany more than in America is people start giggling.

[88:32]

And this seems to be another characteristic more peculiar to Germans than to Americans. I mean, everyone giggles, but sometimes the Zendo, a few times the Zendo has gotten almost out of control with giggling. You know, a simple thing like mistaking in a chant locust for lotus. And then suddenly the whole Zendo is like a teenage, you know, class. But the one thing that is different in Zendo in sitting, or being in a sashin and having emotions come up.

[89:51]

And in general, in sashin, emotions come up more openly and strongly than usual. Is that you learn to sit still in the middle of it. And what you do by that is actually create a space that's neither repression nor expression. You can express, but you don't have to. You can just let it happen. And you actually, every time you do that you start creating more interior space. And when you do that you make yourself accessible to emotions in a more and more deep way. So it actually becomes a very expressive way of being though it looks like

[90:55]

you know, you're just sitting there. Now this is one of the dangers too of sitting because some people use zazen practice in the opposite way. They use And they use the not moving as a kind of inner repression.

[91:34]

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