Each conversation was satisfying. And yet at the same time it may take us a long time to have a conversation. Where we can actually hear each other and we understand each other's vocabulary. But I'm trying. Now what I want to emphasize... We're supposed to have lunch in half an hour, right? Okay. What I want to emphasize is I'd like you to understand that we're not talking about being, we're talking about becoming.

[01:03]

It's commonplace to say things, process thinking, etc. nowadays. And if you come up to me afterwards and say, well, that was such a good example of process thinking. I'll probably think you didn't understand. Because what you're expressing is an instinct to make it safe. And to put it in a familiar category. I'm talking, so I don't know how to get past that kind of word or attitude. But I want you to, somehow I really want to get across that there is nothing that's not a process.

[02:07]

Aber irgendwie möchte ich wirklich rüberbringen, dass es nichts gibt, was kein Prozess ist. Euer Körper ist ein Prozess. And we know that because we exercise and things like that. Und wir wissen das, wenn wir trainieren und so weiter. But if you really knew your body was a process, you probably would do different kinds of exercises. Aber wenn ihr wirklich wüsste, dass euer Körper ein Prozess ist, würdet ihr vielleicht andere Körperübungen machen. Or maybe. And your mind is a process. And it's all an incubation process. It's almost a form of self-procreation. And this is one of the deeper meanings of the precept of being sexually responsible is that actually we're always in a process of procreation.

[03:17]

So, whatever we can say being small B means or being big B means, we're really talking about becoming. And when you get away from the mind that wants everything to be predictable and to see the immediately forming present you are seeing a process of procreation. Now, how much can you be in this? When you first start practicing, it's exhausting.

[04:20]

It's much easier to lay back and go with the cultural flow. And if you're lucky, and the majority is lucky, it's okay. But this is not wisdom. Wisdom is to maybe do that, but also, again, to know the emptiness Or to see the illusion through the illusion of predictability to just how precipitous the myriad events are. No, before I come back to that, I want to say something about... show you how familiar...

[05:29]

how commonplace this, a rather different way of looking at the body is in Buddhism. I went through this, but there's only four of you here, so I can tell you again. the basic instruction for chanting that's told to new monks in a monastery. And there's no harm in hearing this instruction again, anyway. is you sit in usually CESA posture, or this is okay.

[06:50]

And you settle your breathing. And then you contract your sphincter. And you move your breathing up your spine. And you can actually hold your sphincter more or less shut during chanting, or you can just do it one or two times at the beginning. And then you... Do this until you get a sensation at the top of your head which you can hold. And once you bring that sensation down, once you can hold that sensation, you bring it down your front,

[07:53]

And your face is here. But the whole front of your body is a kind of face. So you bring it down the face of your body. And you bring it down to slightly below your navel. And you learn to hold it there. Now, once you learn to hold it there, then from that point you chant. And you can feel as you chant a line going between these two points. Now, this is not the ordinary way we are taught to sing or chant. So this is usually presented as some kind of esoteric kind of thing known to yogis or kundalini people, but it's just what's taught everybody in certain situations in Buddhism.

[09:26]

So I think I should try to make this more familiar to you, though I don't want at the same time for you to get too involved in it as a technique. Now, this is taught for chanting because it helps the chanting. But it's also taught with chanting because... I don't know where to stop. It's also taught with chanting because chanting is in practice, the voice is in practice, a joining of mind and body.

[10:36]

So actually, although words are kind of put down, it's in speech and sound that we can discover a certain unity of mind and body. And also it's a way of moving from the content of a word into the sound of a word. And then coming into each word through its sound rather than through the way the sound is shaped. And you're also doing what's called reversing the flow. Because usually we have an energy that flows in our front face from bottom up.

[11:40]

and on our back from the top down. But when you do this breathing practice, you're reversing the flow so it goes from the bottom up and down the front. And getting a sense of this and seeing the image of this as a circle is part of the practice. Now, This is what partly that image means. You are the clay mannequin.

[12:59]

The diamond is the teaching of emptiness. And if you scratch the back, you will awaken and really bring life into the clay mannequin. And like it says here, when you watch the breath, he says, even if you can pass through, that means enter into the Dharma body. and even in that situation completely let go, and then if you think, examining carefully, what breath is there, this too is sickness. Because you're still making something of it. Now, the Dharmakaya is sometimes understood as medicine.

[14:15]

Like medical knowledge. And the Sambhogakaya body, the bliss body or reward body, is understood as taking the medicine or studying the medicine. And the nirmanakaya is applying that medicine and practicing it with others. So this reference by young men to the breath means in this state still to examine your subtle breath, which is necessary, is also a form of self. Now, you don't need to know all this, but I think it's helpful. I think it's helpful to know there's another image of the body Now, let me say something about images in contrast to metaphors.

[15:39]

At Crestone, Randy, who's the Eno, And in Creston, there is Randy the Ino, the sender. Some of you know him because he's done Sashins with us here, or you've been to Creston. But he's been a Tai Chi teacher. So what he's doing in the practice period is, several mornings each week, is giving us certain Tai Chi exercises which relate to Zen practice. And one of the images is, as you're standing, as you move your arms in what's called the water wheel.

[16:40]

Now, a metaphor is something like in the evening of your life. And that doesn't do anything but sort of suggest that it's late in life and it's getting dark. So this is not a metaphor, it's an image which draws your breath in a certain pattern. Inhale, exhale. Another image is as if you were drawing silk from a cocoon. And if you have a little cocoon, have you ever seen movies or examples?

[17:57]

They actually pull the thread out from the cocoon, unraveling the cocoon. And you can't have any jerky movements or it breaks. So as soon as he uses the image of the drawing silk from a cocoon, you move out of this flow of the energy to a kind of circling of the breath to a kind of energy that is very steady. Now, I'm presenting this because thinking in, not metaphors, but thinking in images is an essential part of realizing this kind of practice. And it's one of the ways you have an anchor in your practice.

[19:07]

So in fact, it's quite helpful to make your backbone an anchor. Or make this image of your breath, mind, heart connection. So now each of you in your own practice has to find out what image anchors you. Und jeder oder jede von euch muss in ihrer eigenen Praxis herausfinden, welches Bild euch verankert. If your anchor is thinking, I'm such and such a kind of person. Wenn euer Anker jedoch ist, dass ihr denkt, ich bin eine bestimmte Person. And tomorrow I'm going to do such and such. Und morgen werde ich dies und das tun. And everyone will like me.

[20:07]

Und alle werden mich mögen. This may be true. Das kann durchaus wahr sein. I hope it is. Ich hoffe, dass das so ist. But it won't help you in meditation. Aber es wird euch nicht in der Meditation helfen. Because in meditation that stuff becomes real flimsy. In der Meditation wird also dieses Zeug wirklich sehr fadenscheinig. Flimsy, yeah. So you have to have something more immediate that you can hold on to. Ihr müsst also etwas Handfesteres haben, um euch daran festzuhalten, etwas Unmittelbareres. Now again, in the beginning of practice, you need to develop a kind of relationship between the self you discover in practice and the ordinary sensation of self you have when you're not sitting meditation. And you need to develop some kind of relationship to that so that in the midst of meditation you can stay within a realm where you feel fairly secure.

[21:24]

Because as long as your security is based on thoughts about who you are, You have to take care of your security in that way. And as lay people, I think, practicing, you have to experiment with yourself in meditation and yourself out of meditation and a relationship between these, who you are. Do we have any questions? So we have something like an object of perception.

[22:50]

Okay, your object of perception. And you have something like your karma. That's your karma. And from your karma you perceive this. You have lots of ideas about it. But if you practice meditation you begin to have an area that's more formless. And this, when it has no boundaries, is called the Dharmakaya.

[24:04]

And before you have the Dharmakaya, you have a kind of area of associations, free-floating, what Freud used, sort of free-floating associations. One of the points of practice, or one of the things that guides practice to the extent that it's guided, And the inner alchemy is to realize the Dharmakaya and to use the Dharmakaya to transform this into the Sambhogakaya. And to use the Dharmakaya to transform this into the Sambhogakaya. Then when you perceive this, you can perceive it in its emptiness.

[25:10]

And you no longer need anchors or structure to support you and relate you to here. So reversing the flow in your body is also reversing where you're coming from. You're now coming from this side and you're no longer coming from this side. As long as your mind can be overwhelmed or taken over by conceptual thought or by your karma, you've got to develop a relationship here where you feel secure. Now, part of practice is to shift the constituents of consciousness

[26:17]

So they're not arising from your karma. This is partly what's meant by freeing yourself from suffering. So the constituents of consciousness are not arising from your karma and from comparative thinking, but are rather arising from your body and from the immediately forming situation. Okay. Now to do that, part of the reason we do that is this shit working with your breath. It's called working with your breath to modulate the light. And sometimes it's said in the Chinese system, You can't let the general tell the son of heaven what to do.

[27:57]

You can't let the general tell heaven or the emperor what to do. Now, the general is consciousness. And if consciousness tells the whole of you too much what to do, it's a sickness. So you need a general. But you also need an emperor. And you have to establish a relationship between the two. This is also called tai chi, or the source of yin and yang.

[28:59]

Before things divide into yin and yang, that point which you can experience is called the joining of heaven and earth, or tai chi. Now I'm using some of the Chinese terms. And some Buddhist terms. For example, a Buddhist term is Enchu. Enchu is a shortened word, a Japanese abbreviation for a longer word, which means something like the interactive... co-arising of the field of consciousness or guarding the field of elixir.

[30:09]

Now this means that if your meditation develops to the point where it is actually transforming your interior consciousness, You have to begin to take care of yourself in a different way. It's also called guarding the yellow seed. It means taking care of your breath In a very physical kind of physical consciousness. Now, again I want to say that I'm teaching this.

[31:37]

And I want you to also understand that I'm learning this all the time too and learning it with you. And often I don't I'm not rooted in this kind of immediately forming consciousness. And when I practice with you, it reminds me, you know, I read this koan, it reminds me It would be good if I did this because this is when I feel most whole and healthiest and so forth. And when I don't do it, I'm being a little lazy. And depending on my savings bank of practice.

[32:49]

But I try to give you a little bit of the feeling, you know, if you've ever been in a, I mean, obviously, been in a high building or something, and you look down into the street, Now I'm just trying to give you a, I don't know, trying to reach for somewhere and find an image that might suggest something or be helpful to you. So you look down in the street and you see way below you people walking here and there between each other and among buildings. Or they're walking among the trees of a park. And it sometimes can be quite a strong feeling or the feeling like you have sometimes in a movie. Or sometimes ordinary scenes that you see in a movie can be more powerful than when you're in them yourselves.

[34:13]

But this kind of practice, when you feel yourself located the way I'm talking about, Aber wenn ihr euch wirklich irgendwo verankert fühlt, so in dem Sinne, wie ich jetzt darüber spreche. Instead of as usual, when you yourself go down back into the street, it just feels like you're walking along in the street. Und anstatt, dass ihr jetzt einfach selbst die Straße hinunter geht und einfach jetzt nur denkt, gut, ich bin jetzt eine Person, die in der Straße umher geht. And you don't have the feeling of the whole scene anymore. Und ihr habt jetzt nicht mehr ein Gefühl für die Szene als Ganzes. But when you have this other way of organizing your experience, you begin to feel the scene as if you were up on high looking at it, but it's not really about on high, it's about feeling something, I don't know, you understand what I mean?

[35:24]

And it says Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva in the Heart Sutra, is the one who sees from on high. But that doesn't mean high or low. It means from an ordinary consciousness it feels high, but from this kind of consciousness it feels like the whole of the scene is in your body. Now some of you, most of you probably, when you've meditated, you're sitting and you hear a dog or a car. And it can almost sound like music.

[36:38]

The engine sounds like music. Or the dog is barking from inside of you to out. Now when that happens, mind is now a sensory organ. It's no longer you're hearing something and your mind is bringing together hearing and looking at it in your mind. Mind itself, though ear is part of it, is directly apprehending it, and it's a different kind of ingredient in your soup. There's a strange joy and a different way of finding how you exist in the world when you feel the hold of each situation coming through you. And you're breathing it and you can feel yourself breathing it.

[38:00]

And everything looks more real and somehow less real at the same time. The buildings are definitely there and yet also seem to be just happen to be there. Die Gebäude sind mit Sicherheit da, und trotzdem ist es irgendwie fast zufällig. Now, this kind of experience happens when you organize your sense of identity differently than out of your comparative thinking. And this koan is talking about this as the fundamental way of organizing identity. And then the problems that can arise when you do that. But for most of us, we won't probably get so we organize our beingness, our becoming that way all the time.

[39:14]

But if you only do it sometimes only in meditation or only sunbathing or only occasionally when you're practicing mindfulness in a pharmacy It's a wonderful medicine, inner and outside the pharmacy. So I hope you take this medicine occasionally. And as you develop your consciousness, you develop your settled state of mind. you can take this medicine more often.

[40:18]

And sometimes it will just for no reason be poured over you like a blessing or like grace. So we have this wonderful capacity for freedom and joy. And we're probably making the people in the kitchen unhappy. So I would like to suggest we sit, but I won't. But just discover your backbone and breath for a moment. And let the bell pass through you. I'd like to listen to your questions for a bit.

[42:02]

Does anyone have any? Or comments? Yes. Yes. Well, the Koran sounds very complicated, but isn't it that in Doxan you want to have an answer to a single question, or one answer to a single question? So could you tell us what kind of question you would like to have answered? In this koan, there are many questions. And if I was working with someone, was working with this koan, I would

[43:06]

Expect, hope, a person would come to one or two phrases that stuck in their craw. And sometimes people find a sticking point which I didn't see. And which actually turns the koan for them. And turns their life. And usually if you find such a point, it is... it usually almost miraculously opens up the whole rest of the koan or makes all the other points fairly easy to come to.

[44:15]

But of course there's some obvious ones. What does the man inside the hermitage know? or outside the hermitage. And then one I like is, which I might ask, is What about not pulling weeds in a wild field? But it depends on how much you, how deeply you went into the koan. And it depends on the person. And it depends on the person.

[45:31]

For example, there is a whole area here that has to do with breathing and experiences that are related to it. But it would also depend on the person's own development. But what I usually do is hope a person comes up, first of all, with their own point. And I find that deeper than my suggesting the point. And then from that, I suggest a point. Yes. I mean, there are other human collections.

[46:33]

This is called That is, you are working on something with Koans, as with the Hoshi, with Umut Gatlin, who is actually a very good worker. In other koan collections, usually there's a traditional answer and there's an individual answer to a koan, and the teacher works in the way that he expects a certain answer from you. Well, in other koan collections, usually there's a traditional answer and there's an individual answer to a koan, and the teacher works in the way that he expects a certain answer from you.

[47:45]

And it seems like you work differently with koans. Yeah, I know that way. It's Kennedy's art. I don't know it really thoroughly because I've only studied that way partially. And the Mumonkan particularly lends itself to that kind of study. But in my understanding, the Hekigan Roku and the Shoryu Roku both are much deeper vehicles of teaching. And I'm trying to find a way where koan study works in the West. And my general model comes from Suzuki Roshi.

[48:52]

And his feeling to go back into China before Japanese Buddhism. where the teacher presented the general picture and the student chose his or her koan. I think there's advantages to both. I think, at least for me, I find the way I do it more allows a wider participation from people.

[49:56]

But I don't know. One should do, if you're in one tradition, you should do your traditions. And I'm always still developing, trying to develop a way that stays with the traditional understanding and yet is open. How can I put it? We can't translate from one culture to another. All translation is, of course, interpretation. So my general feeling is to try to remap these things, not just columns, but terms and experiences and practices. To remap them in our own cultural terms and familiar experiences.

[51:06]

Particularly in a situation like this where we're trying to find a way to teach ourselves. And as I pointed out in the Heart Sutra seminar, the Heart Sutra represents, now I'm speaking about this and trying to respond to what you said in ways that make clearer what we're doing here. The Heart Sutra represents a change in Buddhism from the historical Buddha and a lineage of teacher to teacher to putting emptiness in the center instead of the Buddha

[52:12]

And emptiness in this case means the Dharmakaya, as we're looking at it here. So it's a shift from the Buddha to the teacher of the Buddhas. Now, this is a particular understanding. It means that a certain experience, yogic, meditative, dharmakaya experience, is what taught the historical Buddha. So what's transmitted is the experience which teaches you. So instead of, so Subhuti or Shariputra, instead of being the most wise of the Theravadan or Hinayana adepts, Shariputra becomes the person asking the question and learning from the experience.

[53:43]

Wird Shariputra dann zu demjenigen, der die Frage stellt und von der Erfahrung lernt? Von den Bodhisattvas. So it's actually, I mean, one last note on it. I'm pretty much convinced that the Heart Sutra is actually a Chinese creation and not an Indian Sanskrit creation. Ich bin ziemlich davon überzeugt, dass das Heart Sutra eine chinesische Schöpfung ist und eben nicht aus dem indischen Sanskrit kommt. And it was probably retranslated back into Sanskrit and then retranslated back into Chinese. So it's really a Yogacara tantric text using the Prajnaparamita emptiness teachings. And so what we are studying here is the experience that taught the Buddhas. Now, how can you study this experience? Or practice this.

[55:10]

And experience is too limited a word, but I have to say something. And I want to mention an experience that's very important to me. Which is sitting here next to Ulrike and having her translate and making all this possible. I get embarrassed if I keep thanking her, but I at least have to do it once or twice. Something else? Yeah. Consciousness shouldn't rule, yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. Can you say it in German?

[56:28]

Before the break, Dr. Roshi said that the general cannot give orders to the ruler, and the general is the savior, and then said something that is particularly important in this book, to have a certain kind of connection to the breath. First of all, I want to clarify something I said last night, which a couple of people asked me about. When I said two or three periods are enough, what I meant was outside of a practice place where you're practicing with people regularly.

[57:34]

Three is probably too much, but that's an upper limit, I would say, suggest. Also, when man außerhalb einer Situation ist, wo man eben für sich alleine und nicht gemeinschaftlich mit anderen praktiziert, sind drei Sitzperioden wahrscheinlich schon zu viel. Also es ist eher die Obergrenze. I think actually 20 minutes to 40 minutes a day is okay. I think 20 to 40 minutes a day is enough. Some people want to sit once in the morning, once in the evening, or something like that. But I think some sitting and the practice of mindfulness are really what's the best basis for adept lay practice. Okay.

[58:44]

I'm thinking of the things that are necessary for us to understand, accept, make use of this sense of the body that I'm presenting to you. And you might ask, what, if I talked about this circulation, what circulates? And or you might ask, what are the channels of that circulation? And I ask myself, can I give you a feeling for this which makes it real to you? And really, so far I haven't thought of something that might make it more real for you.

[60:15]

I think one thing that's useful is to not have an idea that there's some given mind or consciousness. That actually you are manufacturing your consciousness all the time. And if you don't recognize that, it feels kind of unnatural to have this sense of your body as you're walking around and doing things. Or perhaps you have to be motivated to get better at martial arts or get better at something to maintain this kind of feeling. So I think as Westerners we go back and forth between our usual personal and cultural body image and feeling.

[61:41]

between that and this other image that you develop from practice. And that dialogue is the reality of most of our practice, I think. Now, another thing I want to mention is what's important is to give reality to what you feel. And again, I have to try to find a way to say that. A reality to what you feel without needing to check on it or confirm it through conceptual or rational thought.

[62:58]

There's a whole emphasis and practice on whether something is a genuine cognition or not. And one of the checks is this kind of feeling, I said, when you feel like the sound of something outside passing through you or arising within you. So if you're in a sense going to, if the dharmakaya is medical knowledge, And the Sambhogakaya is the medical study. Then how do you study something like formless space?

[64:28]

Well, you have to be open to how this experience affects you. And if you sometimes are sitting and you feel you're sitting way over there, but you know you're physically straight, you don't say to yourself, well, I'm not way over there, this is an illusion. In fact, you're probably a little bit off, but it's only a tiny bit. But that's not the point. To be out of place a little bit also can mean crazy in German. I hope that's not the case.

[65:42]

So when you have that feeling, it's good to just say, oh, that feeling is real. It's not about whether it is actually the way your body is. Or sometimes you may feel you have no boundaries. And you don't say, this is my imagination. No, this is what you feel. But you don't look into it and say, ha, this is more real. Or this is somehow both. I mean, maybe it's more real. But then if it's more real, this is less real. And if this is less real, then you can see that it's empty.

[66:51]

And if this is empty, then certainly this is empty. There's a story I'd like to tell you, but I'd have to get permission from someone to tell you, so I won't tell it. Now... What is she saying? What do you say? I'm going to tell you a story, but I'm not going to tell you. I have to ask her, but no. No, nothing to do with you. Can we have a little bit of light? The boss is here, so he knows what to do.

[67:52]

The boss is here, so he knows what to do. I don't know what I'm gonna write on this, but I'm gonna try to write something. The ingredients of practice. Let's be obvious.

[69:06]

There's your arms, your legs. Arm, Beine. Stomach. Bauch. Your backbone. Rückgrat. And of course there's your pillow, maybe. So when you sit down, you're bringing these ingredients to your sitting. You're also bringing thoughts. And you're bringing psyche. So for the sake of this discussion, let's try to define psyche. Let's say maybe it's your... And then it has to be your experience.

[70:10]

And last, probably, the story in images by which you integrate this. So as you sit, you can begin to see this functioning. You can feel your personal history coming in and your cultural history as a Westerner, a European, a German, a Dutchman. And America, and as well known, America has no culture. She asked me, what's the difference between America and yogurt?

[71:40]

Yogurt, of course, has a living culture. And I have to live with it. Of course, I disagree with it. I mean, you've all seen Terminator 2. so and the way your own chemistry plays a big role in your life and I feel that this is a powerful determining factor but I feel that to learn to a big extent at least, through practice you can begin to actually change and influence your chemical mix.

[72:53]

And as the experience you have comes together with your chemistry and your history, it's integrated by a certain story. It's integrated by a certain story. And I think as a Westerner, and any person, you need to work on and mature this story that makes use of your experience. There's very little difference in the German translation between story and history. Oh, all right. That's why I got stuck. Can you repeat this last time? Well, it's obvious what I've been saying.

[73:55]

And I think that... One of the things that is going on, and I can hear it in the questions you've been asking me, is that many of you are at turning points in your life. And what happens when you're at a real turning point in your life and your experience has had consequence on your on the structure of your identity. You have to deepen your story or change your story to accommodate your new experience or the experience that you can feel coming but you can't quite let out. And I asked those of you who came early Friday to begin the practice through this seminar was going to lead to taking the precepts.

[75:08]

And let me say, any of you can take the precepts if you want to. Those of you who came today. But it's important really to take the presets in the context of two things which I said, try to write your own presets. A way of being that you can share with others. That's universal, it's not Buddhist or Christian or whatever. And also I asked you to think of points that have been decisive in your life.

[76:31]

And I think what's come up in many of your questions is that, and things people have said to me personally, is that many of you are at a point where you can feel your life wanting to move, and you don't know quite how to let it move. And really, we're all in this, actually in this space all the time. Because everything's changed. So how are you open to this? Well, one way is you move out of your karma.

[77:31]

That object of perception is hard to see here. You move out of your karma to here, to looking at from this side. And as this experience of the Dharmakaya gets bigger, it begins to dissolve the karma. Or recontextualize your karma. So it's a different way of approaching karma than the usual way of trying to work with it. But of course we have to do both. Now, I'm trying to approach this from a little different way of talking about it over here. So these are your external, we could say maybe these are the external ingredients.

[78:42]

But external isn't quite right because psyche isn't exactly external. So, maybe we have to find a better word. So, as you start to practice, then you begin to have different ingredients. So now there's a range of possible ingredients. You begin to have a still mind. And you begin to have a background mind.

[79:43]

as well as thoughts and psyche and so forth. But you also begin to not just work with your arms and legs, but you begin to experience yourself at the level of the five elements. Which are fluidity, motility, solidity. Yeah. Yeah, space. That's four. Sometimes it's four or five.

[81:03]

Anyway, motility being movement and heat, fluidity being your liquid, solidity being the solid part of you, and the spaces between your organs, in your organs, throughout you and around you. And you begin to practice with the five skandhas. Which I don't have to write down, I think, for you. But it's form, feeling, perceptions, gatherers or impulses and consciousness. Now, the point I'm making here is when your ingredients change to this, It actually starts changing everything.

[82:13]

The way psyche works and the way identity works begins to change here. And when you begin to see the world through the five skandhas, you're beginning to change the dynamics of perception. We can make a third and we could go to fourth, but when you start having the Dharmakaya, then again your ingredients are changing more.

[83:23]

What is the fourth stage? You said you can make your fourth. Well, I would like to come to it later. I would like to come to it later. At this point I'm just trying to make clear that when you're practicing, you're changing your ingredients. And those ingredients make a different kind of soup. And you are in the process of cooking that soup.

[84:28]

So the question is, what's the best way to cook your soup? As I often say, you're either going to cook your karma or your karma is going to cook you. Yeah. Now, There are three cooking areas. You have a three-burner stove. And those three burners are called the Tan Deng, Tan Tian in Chinese. And they coincide with the chakras but are somewhat different than the chakras. And the lower tendon is here. A little bit below the navel. And the upper, the middle is here, your Schatzkiste.

[85:35]

And your upper is here. And particular in the middle of the eyebrows. And this is sometimes called white hair circulation meditation. Because the Buddha supposedly had a white hair here that was circular. And these are called Tan Tien means fields of cinnabar. And Tan Tien means fields of cinnabar. which is sulfuric, it's mercuric sulfide. It's mercuric sulfide, I believe. And it was used in alchemy to transform things. And in Taoism, these three areas are translated as needing, K-N-E-A-D, needing medicine.

[86:51]

So these are areas where you make medicine. Now, it's really not important the question of what circulates. It's really not very important. Because in fact, if you have this image, the image is just as I can have a thought which allows me again to move my hand, That thought, which has no physical reality almost, is translated into physical movement. If you have an image of a kind of subtle breath moving up through your body and down and back up again,

[87:54]

Images work at a very deep level in your mind. And it causes a physical mind-body and mental effect. Just as surely as moving my hand, a thought to move my hand moves my hand. So what do you have here? Instead of a specific thought, let me move my hand, You begin to have a thought that's organizing the whole field of mind. And this is actually... Anyway, I don't want to give you too many images.

[89:05]

But this image affects your whole metabolism and the patterning of your body, mind. Now, as you move out of your karma and your story as your main organizing identity, You can move into this more physical field of mind organizing. And as I said, there's a Japanese word for it, which means relational, co-arising, At the center where activity arises. So you're trying to bring yourself back, like I said, there's this point Taiji.

[90:23]

Before yin and yang arise. Before yin and yang arise. Before differentiation arises. So you're trying to come to a point that you can feel physically and mentally. That's a kind of pre-activity point. And this teaching and this koan is about how to come to that point. Now, I want to find a way to teach this to you gently. I don't want to make too much effort or push it too hard.

[91:25]

So, I think I've talked enough for now. And I'd like us to sit a few minutes and then have a break. Okay. Thank you.

[92:11]

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