Good evening. Guten Abend. Guten Abend. We have quite a bit of space here, so anybody who's way back there would like to sit here. I don't mind confusing you with the Buddha, so you can sit right in front of the Buddha if you'd like. Es gibt sehr viel Platz hier vorne, und wenn jemand da hinten nichts dagegen hätte, also ab und zu von mir mit dem Buddha verwechselt zu werden, dann soll er oder sie doch bitte nach vorne kommen. No one wants to move, it's okay, we're very good. Probably tomorrow I'll sit on that side, so there'll be more space. You don't have to go hiding in the corner.

[01:05]

Right in front of the Buddha. I like mixing. Did most people arrive or there are still some people who didn't come yet? Okay. It's nice that we have our own place because we can wait for people more easily than if we were somewhere else. So I... I have to get used to speaking this way.

[02:10]

I feel like I'm going to be in a tennis game, you know, sort of. Yeah, I feel like I'm going to be in a tennis game, you know, sort of. Yeah, I feel like I'm going to be in a tennis game, you know, sort of. So anyway, we're here for the second seminar at this place. And Graal and Gisela and Sabina and Moana and others have taken good care of the place up till now. And Christina and Eric arrived today? Yesterday. Yesterday. Oh, okay. Ah. And I have to think of, inevitably, I will think of these first seminars as foundational seminars for this place, in a way, too.

[03:43]

And the title given to us for this weekend is Building a Life Together. Is that right? Okay. So we have to naturally ask what is... what is life and what is together. Of course, I think that it's wonderful if just in a practical sense we are a community, even if widely dispersed. And I hope that in that practical sense we can be a community of mutual friendship and mutual support. But in what way can we, what is building a sangha together?

[05:13]

So how does this place differ from wherever we live and whatever community we already have? Of course, it's obviously different and a retreat, and in its difference, a retreat from our usual way of life. But I don't want to think of it as just a retreat from the ordinary life we have. I also want to think of it as a moving forward into a life of a life. And dare I say, a life of insight and wisdom. So this weekend I'd like to explore, discuss what this life of wisdom and insight and creativity might be.

[06:35]

Now in Buddhism we don't ask so much who we are. But most fundamentally, usually we ask, what is the world? With the assumption and knowledge that whatever the world is, we also are. So I'd like to ask us, and you can ask yourself, what is the world? What is this world we live in? Or this world we live, in English we can say, this world we live as.

[08:11]

Because we don't just live in the world like it was some kind of container, but we live as the world. Yeah. So this building a life together would also be coming to a mutual understanding of what this world is we live in. You know, I feel as an individual as a single person, we somehow live in the world and there's a certain kind of separateness.

[09:20]

And that separateness is for the most part a separateness through different practices, different understandings. And in that separateness, the world flows by us and sometimes flows ahead of us. And through... Mutual understanding with another person through reading, of course, and so forth. We begin to feel a larger maybe area of water around us that doesn't flow by us, but rather is rather calm around us or still around us.

[10:23]

And we hold that space or that liquid through our common vision and understanding. And if we can come to not only a mutual understanding between us, but a kind of mutual understanding with the world, A mutual understanding with the world as it actually is. Or as close as we can come to how it actually is. Yeah, then I think we, this stillness, the stillness of a common understanding can reach very far into our society and the world.

[11:41]

The rushing feeling, a lot of it stops. And we tend to feel more like everything is in place around us. But this isn't just a psychological state or some kind of personal state. It means that you have come into some deep agreement with actuality. Yes, now of course, how can we do this? Well, I'd also like to, this weekend, come forward to the basics of practice.

[13:12]

Now I've often spoke with you about the three functions of self, which I think have to be basic to any culture or individual. And most of you know, because I've spoken about it often, is these three functions are separateness, knowing how we're separate from each other, Again, as our immune system knows what belongs to us and what doesn't belong to us. Or this is my voice and you know it's not your voice or so forth. We have to know this to function. And also connectedness.

[14:42]

How we're connected is also a function of self. And I think that for most of us, Except perhaps when we're in love or have a child, a baby, connectedness has a lot to do or mostly to do with politeness and manners and so forth. We behave in a considerate way from our separateness toward others. But the dominating stance is we're separate, but we're being polite about how separate we are. Yeah, and the third function a self would be establishing continuity from moment to moment.

[15:58]

So if we're going to be in the world, functioning in the world, we have to live in these three modes of connectedness, separateness and continuity. Now, one of the things I've been trying to speak about recently, find the language for recently, because I have a certain experience with practice, And of course with usual life too. And I have pretty deeply embedded in me what I, the presence of Suzuki Roshi or what I learned from Suzuki Roshi.

[17:05]

So I have these things to work with, my experience of Suzuki Roshi and my experience in practicing. And my experience in the world as we know it. And of course I also have, for me, English. And I've made a decision not to use technical Buddhist terms from Japanese or Sanskrit or something. Because such words, they don't have any coinage in our language. You can't spend them in our language. They set a stand alone, like, what's that? Now the problem with adopting English words and making them into technical Buddhist terms is that we can spend them in our language.

[18:17]

Spend them like money. Spend them in our language, in our thinking. But you can't deface a coin completely or you can't spend it. Deface? Rub off the face. So, Naturally, if we spend these familiar words as Buddhist terms, some of their familiar meaning goes with them. But I think it's much better to work with the associations of a word and the way it connects to us, that connection is worth it better than a word which has no connection for us.

[19:37]

Do you understand what I mean? So anyway, I'm trying, and I have to use English words, which luckily, English is a dialect of German. With about 50% of French words thrown in. But with Arika's expert help, Perhaps we can forage into, venture into German as well in discovering words that work for us. And this will be the work of you as a Sangha and Graut and Gisela and others of you in trying to find, I think, in our way of practicing, in this lineage house, find words that are both German and yet can function in realizing this Buddhist practice.

[21:08]

So what I've been trying to think about as I started recently is what is interior consciousness? Because we all know an interior consciousness that because we're thinking thoughts and you now think other people don't know what you're thinking. although they may know a lot more than you think. But they may not be able to think what they know. So what we would like to try to do if we're going to have a real mutual understanding is be able to know what we know.

[22:15]

And I think we have to get out of what I would call our inward consciousness. Now I'm making a distinction here between inward and interior. Inward I translate it as directed toward the inner. So there's inward and outward. Now this may not have seemed like the most important thing to you to figure out this weekend what is the distinction between interior and inward. But I would like to try to convince you before we leave on Sunday that this is where you're actually living.

[23:24]

Now to do that, we're going to have to look again, as I said at basics, we're going to have to look at breathing practice. Because I would say that... Yeah, I could put it... That Sangha, which is realizable...

[24:37]

This isn't something only for some few people. And because I would hold that we already know, but again, don't know, we know. That Sangha is a significantly different way of being oneself and being in the world. And I'd like us to understand that difference. If we're going to build that life, that Sangha life together too.

[25:44]

And the reason it's important is we're not just doing it for ourself, which is quite important. But also we're doing it for this larger self we are with others. And I have confidence in speaking about this with you because I know this difference is a difference you already know. Okay. So maybe that's enough of presenting a picture or, I hope, a feeling for what building a life together and what this Buddhist Study Center at Johanneshof can anchor us in.

[27:15]

Yeah, and the word anchor is important because I, my own experience is, an opinion is, that our inward consciousness, that we call inward, is actually outwardly anchored. It's a culturally created inwardness. I think you can imagine a baby being, when it's born, and in the process of, even from conception, in an unstructured consciousness, we begin a process of structuring that consciousness.

[28:25]

And it's structured through our sense experience and our interactions with others. And overwhelmingly in our civilizational cultures it's structured by learning to read. And although these words come to belong to you, they also belong to society. And soon your thought processes are isomorphic with language. Isomorphic means it has the same structure but perhaps different origins. So our thinking, which doesn't have the same history, roots as language, begins to take on the structure of language.

[29:42]

And if your thinking primarily has the structure of language in your meditation experience, you can't get very far in your meditation experience. Okay, so what's the secret of getting past this? The secret is breathing. Overwhelmingly breathing. Yeah. It is totally amazing to me, and I've been doing this a long time, you know, amazing to me how extraordinary breathing is.

[31:07]

And how, you know, the many schools of Buddhism have developed many ways of developing an interior and not inward consciousness as well as an inward consciousness. But Zen always tries to be practical and tries to bring all this back to the activity of daily life. So it might be esoteric in the way we understand it, but it's exoteric in its commonplaceness. So are building a life together not based on thought, But shall we say based on breathing?

[32:15]

Which in English is called a conspiracy. Conspire means to breathe together. Companion means to break bread together. So we just were companions and broke bread together. But we can't really say we break wind together. At least, I don't know, in English we... In German it's not very... So we can breathe together at least. Or discover a similar way of knowing ourselves through breathing.

[33:17]

And breathing is, you know, wonderful. You don't have too much choice about it. It starts at birth and ends at the last moment. And it's always re-beginning. You can always start again. You're right now starting a new breath. And it's an autonomic nervous system part of our autonomic nervous system which can also be made conscious And you make it conscious by bringing your by intending to do so and by bringing attention to your breath.

[34:27]

Now continuing with basics intention and attention are the most fundamental activities of being alive. In other words, we could think of... We have a physical posture of sitting and breathing. We could call that a physical posture. And the two most fundamental... Mental postures are intention and attention. That are at the root of all thinking, language, activity, personality and so forth. So when you start working with intention and attention very directly, you're reaching actually

[35:35]

Back to the big bang, you're reaching past self and your habits of self to look at what's created yourself. Intention is a bit like what camera you choose. And what you aim the camera at. What we aim at is quite important. It creates the picture of our life. And attention is how we focus the camera. And our ability to hold something in focus. So your breathing practice is a practice of bringing your breathing into focus.

[36:37]

And holding it in focus. And this is not easy to do, probably as you know. And it's not easy to do for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is because our way we establish continuity, connectedness and separation tend to be or are functions of the structure of our inward consciousness. So the structure of our consciousness demands our attention and intention. So by really learning to bring your attention away, attention to your breath, You're actually working with the very structure of your mind, which is trying to draw attention back to it.

[38:13]

So you might spend several years Isan, you know, Tommy Dorsey, said, took him many years to, as he said, realize his breath body. Yeah, and... And the problem is not that... is not just that you haven't made sufficient effort, but actually you have to be patient with the way this begins to open up a new way of being for you. Now, we're going to have to talk about a number of things in relationship to this, but I think at this hour of the evening it may be a little exhausting to hear about any more.

[39:22]

So let me just say that in the simple act of bringing attention to your breath, you're doing some very deep work on your existence. So please don't be discouraged at how difficult it is to have your attention, your mind resting on your breath all the time. And one of the... I mean, your breath is a bridge. A shuttle. And... and a gate.

[40:51]

And it's a shuttle that weaves mind and body together. And it's a bridge between interior and exterior or inward consciousness. And it's a gate to our subtle body. And one of the things you're doing when you bring your attention to your breath is you're physicalizing your mind. Because breath is a kind of way you're mixing your breath and your mind. Your breath, mixing breath, mind and body. Now remember that

[41:52]

yogic practice and one of the truisms of yogic practice is that all mental phenomena has a physical component. And all physical phenomena has a mental component. And when you bring your attention to your breath, you're making this physicality of mind more apparent to yourself. More palpable. And you're refining your breath and refining your mind. Now you have certain ingredients in your breathing. You have your exhale and your inhale and you have the pause at the top of the breath.

[43:10]

And you have to pause at the bottom of the breath. Now to these aspects of breathing you bring attention. And you can bring attention in various ways. So we can speak about that tomorrow. When your body becomes still, mind rises to the surface of your body like something like cream rises on milk. And you may find that when a zazen period ends your body feels very creamy or at least soft baby-like skin.

[44:30]

This is the presence of mind in the body and when you get so that your body can be your mind can be your body is still and now your mind becomes still the mind becomes clearer like mud settles to the bottom of a glass when the water is still So we should also probably discuss the difference between a position and a posture and a mudra. This is like one of those serials I used to watch as a kid.

[45:53]

Next week, we'll see if the horse jumping off the cliff lands on something. But we don't have to wait till next Saturday afternoon. We can wait till tomorrow morning, Saturday morning. So let's sit for just a few minutes. Certain physical postures will... Make mind more apparent to you. And bringing physical posture and attention and breast together is the most effective way to make mind accessible to you. Not just mind as thinking, but mind as the background of thinking.

[47:05]

And the source of thinking. And the mind that is beyond thinking. This is necessarily where we already live, but without some teaching it's not so easy to notice. And to notice this, to begin to be able to notice this, our true mind and our true mutual mind, actually, is Sangha.

[48:40]

to help each other in building this life together too. Please sit comfortably. And I really would like you to move Up as forward this way as possible.

[49:59]

Not so you can hear me, but so I can hear you. We don't need an aisle. Sorry. Thanks. Thank you. Good to mark.

[51:05]

So I'm sharing everything I can of this practice with you so that I can do it with you. And how to do seminars here offer us a way again, a new way to explore our sharing of practice together. And I mean, I consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have a place to practice in anywhere and especially like this. So it's the most important thing to me possible to discover how to practice together here.

[52:24]

So we have general questions like how is this room used for seminars and during the year by people who are using it not just for Buddhist reasons, And that we're working out, I think. And so how are we using this when it's a sashin and eventually a practice period and also then now like a seminar? Now, in the morning, for me, in the morning we're practicing, I'm sorry to say, a religion.

[53:41]

And I say I'm sorry to say because I don't want to force on you in any way Buddhism as a religious practice. I want this to be your choice. And I want you to be able to come to seminar just to know more about Buddhism and as a way of studying yourself and not necessarily as a way to practice Buddhism as a religion. But having this place where Buddhism is also practiced as a religion allows that to be an element, a dimension, a tension, a choice within our seminars. Now, so what do I mean by Buddhism as a religion?

[55:18]

And let me say again, now some people, like Thich Nhat Hanh, for instance, when he does a seminar, he makes the whole seminar basically a religious practice. The meals are formal and silent, for example. But my feeling is, once meals start, they should be more sort of informal, just not like we were in a sashin or something. But in the morning, you know, maybe it's more like a religion. Yeah. So, for example, this morning we had these platforms set up, but I didn't sit on the platform.

[56:47]

I put my cushion down below. Now, I mean, it's rather arbitrary. I don't mind sitting here. It's okay, you know. But why did I do it? Again, I could have sat on the platform, but I just didn't really feel comfortable. And the reason is, when the platforms are here, this is a lecture hall. It's not a zendo. So as soon as the platforms are in here, it's not really a zendo. Because in a zendo, we should all sit at the same level. Because we're emphasizing our Buddha nature, not some kind of that I lecture and you're listening or something like that.

[57:54]

Now, that's a kind of impractical distinction, which is really about religion, I would say. And also, then, like, what do we chant? So we chant here regularly in the mornings the various things, but including the lineage of Buddha ancestors. But my feeling is and the custom is you don't chant the lineage of Buddha ancestors unless you're part of the lineage. So it's making you do something that's rather artificial unless you're entering the lineage. Now, if you come to a sashin and you... asked to come and I've agreed that you come.

[59:14]

There's an agreement that at least you're going to try out chanting the lineage and there's a mutual decision made there. Well, I didn't decide individually, person by person, that each of you could come to the seminar. It was pretty much open. So if that's the case then we should chant something that gives you a taste of our practice but are more entry-level chanting or chanting that is just done generally in public. Now these are small distinctions But for me, being clear in these distinctions is important in how we develop practice here on several levels.

[60:31]

Now, I'm open to... from suggestions from you now and over the coming months and years. Maybe you'd like more formal silent meals with three bowls. I don't know. This is something we could do if you wanted it. But at present, my feeling is to include you, include a seminar, as you wish in the morning, more religious practice, and then the rest of the day is more informal. Okay. Now let me say in at least several ways in which I would say Buddhism is a religion for me.

[61:35]

One is that I feel that, as I think maybe it's in the karma piece in the current beautiful little tree planters, At least some place I read, I opened something and I read something I'd written, which was that Buddhism is a religion because we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha and not in anything else. Now, this is for me, for example, a lifetime commitment to take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha and not in anything else. And I don't always even know what it means, and I'm not very good at it, but at least it's my lifetime commitment.

[63:08]

Now, in another sense, Buddhism is a religion for me, is if someone asked me, what is your job description? My job description, I would say, is to light a candle every morning and offer incense in Crestone and Johanneshof the rest of my life. Or to do it with the sangha. So luckily there are people doing it in Crestone now while I'm here. And up until now, Gerald and Gisela and Sabina and others have been lighting a candle and offering incense here.

[64:31]

You know, this may seem strange, but actually I consider this more important than if I write a book or anything else. This is more important. That's why my book gets so slow. Lighting candles and things. So, it's a little irrational, but anyway, that's how I feel. And I feel that way because a place like this should be open every morning for practice in some way forever. And this also is my way of honoring or recognizing or remembering that mind which doesn't move.

[65:32]

So every morning my feeling is to make that recognition. Now, we are not a religion in that there's a higher... committed to a higher being, but it's a religion in the sense that we're committed to a wider being, perhaps. Okay, so I thought I should say something about that, just because this morning we did zazen and had a service. And that wasn't so common to do or quite unlikely to do when we had seminars in other places. So again, this is something that I'm telling you, expressing how I feel about it, and we can decide together how we want to balance these practicing here.

[67:10]

We could have just followed the regular schedule in the morning and then picked a breakfast time and seminar starting time from there. Instead, we picked our breakfast time and then adjusted the meditation, but still, something like that we'll be doing. There's a tradition, as far as I know, all monastic type practices to get up before the sun gets up. Or to be up when the sun comes up. And it's a kind of, I think, statement of saying, we don't get up because the sun gets up, we get up because we get up. And the sun gets up because it gets up.

[68:25]

It's quite independent and we're quite independent. There's that kind of feeling in practice. Now, I'm going to have to speak with you about signless states of mind.

[69:42]

So I need to find out a way to speak with you about signless states of mind. Because this is the big distinction between practice and ordinary life. Between usual states of mind and signless states of mind. Now, so, this is not... Since this, when I sign the states of mind, means a mind without marks. Or without a signature. Without a knower.

[70:55]

A knowing state of mind that has no mark or not necessarily a knower. Now how to speak about something that doesn't have a mark or a sign is not so easy because of course I'm speaking in signs and marks. Do we have the flip chart here somewhere? I don't know where the paper is either. The flip chart is right here. But no paper, huh? But I left broad paper. I think so. Okay.

[72:00]

Somewhere, okay. Well, maybe after a break we can set it up. Okay, so now a typical signless state of mind would be so-called samadhi. A mind not marked by thinking. We could say a mind concentrated on itself. But it's not that simple because you can, for most people, for beginners, when you have a kind of samadhi, I'm saying things like a kind of samadhi because I don't want you to think it's some kind of absolute unachievable state.

[73:08]

But you're sitting in meditation, say, and you feel quite concentrated and clear, and there's very little thinking. Now we could say that's a signless state of mind. But then you notice, oh, I'm quite concentrated now and this is maybe samadhi. And then you have the mind is marked by thought and no longer signless and disappears. But with more experienced meditation, you can keep the signless state of mind and observe it. So now we have a signless state of mind which can be observed but not interfered with.

[74:09]

So we have various kinds of signless states of mind. Now the skill of meditation, very precisely, is the skill to be able to hold or sustain signless states of mind. Now, it parallels... I'll keep coming, maybe, probably keep coming back to breathing practice. It parallels breathing practice in that when you first start, before you start breathing practice, your breathing is non-conscious.

[75:37]

And then you begin to notice your breathing. And at first, the noticing interferes with your breathing. And your breathing isn't quite natural. And in fact, you have to study your breathing and make your breathing quite clear before it can become natural again. Now at some point, As I often said, breathing breathes itself. And yet now, although breathing breathes itself, you can be completely one with it or conscious of it without interfering with it. So now let me say, just as part of this speaking about breathing,

[76:43]

At first, when we bring our attention to our breathing, of course, for various reasons, it goes away to other things. Your breathing is a lot less interesting than a lot of things. And it's always there, so you always come back to it, but you forget to come back to it, even though it's always there. So you think you can come back to it, but you don't. So that's what happens. Some negotiation like that is in the beginning of breathing practice. Now I'm speaking about breathing practice in daily activity as well as in meditation.

[78:04]

But after a while, it gets easier to come back to your breath. And so you come back more often. And then it becomes... You don't have to bring your breath back easily. It comes back by itself. So at first it goes away easily, your attention. Then it starts to come back easily. And then it comes back by itself. And then it just rests on your breathing.

[79:08]

It doesn't leave. These are obvious practical things you can understand, but they're classical stages in breathing practice. And it's when breathing comes back by itself or just rests without effort on your breath. It's when tension comes back easily or just rests without effort on your breath that you really begin to have the experience of breathing, breathing itself while accompanied by awareness. Then at that point your breathing and your mind become much more subtle. Yeah. Now again, this is something we're all breathing all the time. This is an opportunity, if you're interested, to practice with your breath.

[80:31]

Now the mind which rests easily on the breath and is sustained, we can also call a signless state of mind. Now, I've been talking to my daughter, Sally, who has a child, my grandchild. I don't know if my grandchild, but I guess it's my grandchild. I don't feel very possessive. But as I talk with Sally on the phone, I'm interested in what does she, is she bringing anything to being with the child, that's Buddhist.

[81:42]

Because although, I mean, she doesn't practice Buddhism formally, but she's grown up from her birth in Buddhist communities and in Buddhist practice situations. And like any mother, she plays with Tomas. Tomas is the Portuguese pronunciation of Tomas. Yeah, so they live in Portugal.

[82:43]

So, like any mother, she plays with him and reads him books and things like that. And he identifies pictures and words and things like that. That's all quite usual. But what she does seem to bring to it is a consciousness that she's teaching him an attention span, not just what this picture is or this word is. But what seems to be the case is that she teaches him a certain awareness and also to have a greater attention span and not just to recognize something, this picture or that one.

[83:35]

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