I write these statements here. We have here Degnaga or our new title. The reason is that I only have this half a day or this whole day. So, you know, I learn a lot by taking a statement like this and saying, what the heck is going on here? So I'd like to leave these statements with you sort of like hooks. And if I come back next year, I'll pull on the hook. See if it's still stuck in you. Or maybe if the hook is in you, you'll be walking along and a cloud, you'll look at it. cloud and suddenly you feel something and it makes sense.

[01:06]

So first I'll read it just quickly. In walking, in sitting, hold to the mind before thought arises. Look into it Schaut hinein und seht nicht sehen. Und dann lasst es los. Wenn eure Anstrengung so ist, stille oder Entspannung, does not interfere with observation, meditative observation. And meditative observation does not interfere with stillness.

[02:14]

And meditative perception does not mix into silence. And normally Zen uses everyday language. And walking means mindfulness. And sitting means mindfulness. And sitting means zazen. And these are the two main practices. Mindfulness is in your activity and mindfulness through stillness. Okay. So in both these two main ways of practice, hold to the mind before thought arises. That's a huge challenge. How the heck are you going to hold to the mind before thought arises? Yeah. I mean, I think it's, you know, when somebody's sitting, you have to think, wow, that's what I think.

[03:50]

I read that and I say, wow. I mean, just that someone thought of that means that there are people who can do it. No one would have thought about it unless they could do it. Because if you can't do it, you wouldn't have any idea of why you should tell somebody about it. So just imagine that you can hold to the mind before thought arises. It's a yogic skill. But it would transform all psychotherapy. But it will change the whole psychotherapy. If you could rest in your mind before thought arises, then your whole relationship to thoughts that disturb you is different.

[04:53]

Then you don't have to get rid of them. You can just let them come up and look at them while you're resting in the mind before thought arises. In a way, this would be enough. I just leave each of you with a challenge. Call me back when you can hold to the mind before thought arises. And until you can do that, it's a waste of my time to be here. But that's not true. I'm here because I like hanging out with you. And I even like hanging out with your thoughts. I find it very difficult. What do I realize, what do I see? Do I start on the base of the feeling that I add to the thoughts?

[06:09]

Yeah, what you said earlier was one of the gates or one of the secrets. In other words, if you can notice the... feeling that accompanies thoughts, you're already close to the mind before thought arises. You're close in two ways. You're close to the mind to knowing the mind from which thoughts arise. You're close, you're near to the mind from which thoughts arise. And you're also, this sounds like the same thing, but it's different, and you're also close to the mind which is prior to thoughts.

[07:37]

So, for example, if they wire you up and measure your responses, they've discovered that you say, okay, I'm going to move my arm now. So that thought occurs. But before that thought occurs, your arm has already got ready to move. There are processes of moving the arm that are prior to the thought, I'll move my arm. So you're getting closer into the true present. Because thought usually is occurring after the fact. Yes. But it is still thinking it's a process which then can prepare you for the future.

[08:59]

In other words, even if it's moments after, what produced the thoughts, it's still a process of noticing what we feel and think and can lead to the future processes. I'm only saying that because some people think that thoughts are bad or something. That's not what I mean at all. Thoughts are very useful. So anyway, if you can feel this, you can have a feeling for the thoughts, You can have a feel for the feeling that accompanies thoughts.

[10:12]

And you can stay with that feeling. You find that feeling is where other thoughts start arising from. So thoughts, this thought leads to this thought leads to this thought. And that's true. But it's also true that the feeling of this thought leads much more profoundly to the whole context of the thought. Profoundly. Lead to the whole context. To the whole context of this thought. Okay, so imagine this is a stage. And we're all characters. So if I do something, then he does something. So what I do leads to what he does.

[11:13]

So that's like this thought leads to that thought. But we're actually in this room, let's call that feeling, Which is creating the context for exactly what we do. So the more you move into the feeling that accompanies thoughts, the more you move into the room, shall we say, in which the thoughts are occurring. And that's simply back in Dignagna's time and back in the early centuries of the previous millennium. they noticed these things and they worked out a way that you can practice them, not just some genius.

[12:24]

So it's simply a way to study yourself and to notice really what are the aspects of ourself that are useful to notice. You can just decide whether you want to do it or not. If you want to do it, the skills or teachings are here to make it possible for you. If you don't want to do it, I hope you do something at least as interesting. Is this the place where I still can make decisions if I want to go into this feeling or is this the place where I can change my decision for what to do? In that state of feeling, do I still have the possibility to decide if I want to stay in the feeling or go into thinking?

[13:42]

In other words, if you can get a feeling for this moment before thought arises, You could also say, hold the moment before thought arises. So you're asking if this moment is the point at which you can transform your thinking. I have to figure it out. I could do something automatically like lifting the hand. Yeah. Yes, I know. When I find this point and I can change my mind instead of going automatically into something. Yes. But isn't this feeling connected with the truth behind?

[15:13]

It's getting too complicated. It's easier to say in English than in German. Well, I would have to ask you then, what is the truth? I ask you, Rosen. Yes, but I can ask you to define your terms. I can know what you mean by truth. Yes. It's more a question towards Johannes. Is before thoughts connected to felt sense? To symbolization process. To felt sense, the felt sense. Felt sense, or I thought she said symbolization. No, no. Felt sense is very defined as something real before any symbolization.

[16:18]

Felt sense is defined as something before you symbolize it. Yeah, okay, so ask Johannes. As a focusing man, I hear it, of course, now for the last quarter of an hour, like a... He thinks, as a focusing person, he sees you describing something they are doing, but they are describing it in different words. Especially if that feelings are not identical with emotions. Working with feeling before conceptions, concepts. And they also call it resonance. I would also call it proportion. The reason I'm bringing this up is because I feel it's in the same territory. Yes, please.

[17:29]

It's difficult for us to stay with the felt sense and not going into something else. Yes, it is. And that's why one practices yoga. Basically, the Buddhist thing is it's really difficult to do this with any skill unless you learn to practice meditation. Once you get a real feeling for it, you don't have to practice meditation to practice it. But for the average person, it takes meditation skills to learn to do this. I don't say it's the case. I just say that's the experience of Buddhists. Okay, someone else?

[18:29]

Yeah. Is there an I in this Zen world? An I of self you mean? I of self, yeah. Or how does it come up? And this self then relates to thoughts and feelings. Like something that is liberated from connections, is free from. You're making it very complicated. Liberated from connections. Without content, it wouldn't be an I.

[19:43]

Okay. I mean, the short answer, this is a really hard question to respond to. It's I that's responding. Okay. But the short answer is that every mode of mind can have an observing function. The way the mind is structured or the capacity of the mind for structure includes the capacity to observe itself. Now, the confusion of self in from a Buddhist point of view is that we tend to think one observer is the self.

[21:06]

But there's slightly different observing selves. Recently I've had to put on regular shoes. Which I haven't worn since I had to go to a bank when I was 19. That's an exaggeration. But normally I always wear sandals or something, right? Sometimes jogging shoes. But recently I've had to wear very nice Regular shoes. And I find I'm a slightly different person when I change my shoes. The sock of reality. So, in one shoes I actually walk a little bit differently.

[22:23]

And it's true, you know, Japanese shoes are meant that you keep this stable. And you walk in such a way that you keep this parallel to the ground. But the English, like without walking, they walk like this, you know. Heel first. Yeah. And we also tend to walk with our shoulders still. And I find if I change shoes, I change culture slightly. And then there's a different observing self comes. And the more you notice these differences, you don't necessarily make one of the observers the self. So we could say that Buddhism is a teaching not about no self, but about multiple selves.

[23:38]

And then the teaching about multiple selves means you don't make the same identification with one, You don't make the same identification with just one of the observing. And then if you see there's many ways to have an observing mind, then you see none of them, none one of them is permanent. And then you see that each one is essentially empty. And then you could be called something like a Buddhist. So maybe your content-less observer is what we mean. Your content. The observer free of content or free of likes and dislikes would be not what we mean by self in the usual sense.

[24:46]

But certainly all the basic difference here. Some people are creating systems of thought In which you have an observing self. And you can have a wider observer of that. And a wider observer of that. And that's basically a western way of looking at it. And it basically implies the God. And then it implies that this is somehow a container in which we live. And there's an outside to it where there's this ultimate observer.

[25:50]

Or an infinitely regressing observer. But Buddhism stops that process. And it says all of these observers or observers are just the capacity for any state of mind to observe itself. So if you create a big state of mind, it has a big observer. It's no different than a small observer. And so the process of Zen is not to shift into giving more reality to bigger observers, but to keep dissolving the observer. into the mind from which it arose.

[26:54]

And that's called non-duality. Now, basically these are, as we're talking, concepts. If you have a concept of bigger observers and moving the energy to the observers, you have a different system than if you have a concept collapsing the observer. And I wouldn't say one is better than the other. I like one better than the other. But whether it's better or produces a better planet, I don't know for sure. But there are definitely different ways of looking at that.

[27:55]

So, although Dignaga said, perception without conceptualization, perception without conceptualization. That's also a subtle way of working with concepts. Okay, so how are we doing in time here? Okay, so... Yeah. When there are multiple observers and then there is also the practice of observing that there are multiple observers, are there also multiple observers observing the other multiple observers? Is that a wonderful story, the observer observing the multiple observers?

[28:59]

Can you say that in German? The metaphors for this, the common metaphor for this is the barbershop mirrors. You're in the barber shop and you can see yourself a thousand times. And they have bars in New York which are all mirrors walking. You don't know which one has had too much to drink. Sorry, can you say that again? You don't know which one has had too much to drink.

[29:59]

See, they all have had too much to drink. But Zen practice is to say, oh yeah, these observers are useful. But at a certain point the proliferation of observers takes you away from reality. You don't collapse the observers into some more fundamental state of mind. In Buddhism, you collapse them into the immediacy of the present. So maybe I should talk about the two fundamental different kinds of perception.

[31:04]

But I should leave that because I finished this first. What do you mean with mind? Is that mind, pure mind, or is that a state of mind? Well, mind means a lot of things. First of all, it's a word. It's a word that doesn't exist in yogic culture. They don't have a general word for mind. This is an English word. Instead of creating generalizations, they point out functions. But we can generally understand the word mind to mean an experience of the unity of all the functions

[32:07]

we call mind. In other words, there's various functions of mind, knowing, thinking, feeling, etc. The more I find those working together in an integrated way, we can call that mind. At least that's one way to define it. Tied to our experience, not to a generalization. Now, we've been talking about, I talked, and it's hard to make clear what I mean by body space and mental space. But I can use a simple thing like a handshake. If I extend my hand to somebody, I'm also extending my mind.

[33:32]

And you know there's a big difference between just thinking about someone and actually stepping toward them. Und ihr wisst, es ist ein großer Unterschied, über jemanden nachzudenken oder auf jemanden zuzutreten. Es gibt ein Gefühl von dieser Präsenz des Mein. Und obwohl wir keine wissenschaftliche Erklärung dafür haben, You know that if, say, I'm here, or you're someone like this, someone comes in, you can feel them behind you. What are you feeling? I mean, scientists can't explain it. Or you're in an automobile and you notice... You feel someone looking at you, look over, and there's somebody in another car looking at you. These are, from a Buddhist point of view, examples of a kind of presence of mind. As a kind of field.

[34:39]

And when you develop the feeling for thoughts, you're also cultivating the field of mind. So when I do this with my hands, The basic understanding in somatic space. It's not just a greeting of hello or something. On one surface it's that. But there's a specificity to it. Generally we bring our hands together like this. What's that? That's the chakra.

[35:42]

So it's like you take your presence of mind, your field, and you bring it here. Lift it up into this chakra. Now, if you bow at this point, it's a different kind of bow. If now you lift the differentiation of the heart chakra up to here, which brings your backbone into it, And the feeling that comes up your backbone to here comes into your hands. And then you offer that to the person. And sometimes you actually, when you do it though, you're not supposed to do it obviously. You open your hands like this, which is a lotus posture. Now you may think this sounds crazy. But this is simply the experience of a culture which emphasizes somatic space rather than mental space.

[36:53]

And you can see it in little kids. You hand something to a kid, they often bring it into their body And then put it. Not only is there a feeling of empowering it, and you have a flower, you bring it in to smell it, but you're also bringing it into the field of mind. So it activates the field of mind. So if you look at Zen rituals, the way we eat, etc., all involved with activating the field of mind. And it's a vocabulary at least as precise as the sentence structure in a language. So if you, when you get a feeling for this,

[37:54]

At first it's kind of strange. But once you have even a small feeling for it, and you begin to act within it, it opens up pretty quickly. Okay. Was that okay that I said that? Okay, sometimes I think I say a little too much. I mean, I always think I say a little too much. So, here we have, to go back to this, in walking and sitting, in practices of mindfulness and still sitting, Find through these practices and attention is a muscle. And if you practice bringing attention to things, you exercise that muscle.

[39:26]

And in general when you bring attention to attention itself, you generate awareness instead of consciousness. And the practice of mindfulness is not just to be mindful of your walking, but to be mindful to bring attention to the walking, to bring attention to attention itself. Okay, so here you have now the ability to hold for a moment To the mind before thought arises. Which for now we can identify with non-graspable feeling. And then look into it.

[40:27]

Observe this non-graspable feeling and you'll see not seeing. Now what that means is you'll see, understand, feel something that goes beyond the usual way of knowing. This is just like a doctor gave you a prescription. Take two in the morning and then one in the afternoon. And then you let it go. Okay. So in the letting it go is the practice of emptiness. So each moment of activity you then let go of. Then when your effort is like this, Your observation of the mind doesn't interfere with the stillness of the mind.

[41:45]

The very observing process creates more stillness. Und dieser beobachtende Prozess bringt noch mehr Stille hervor. Das ist eine grundsätzliche Lehreinheit. Wie Achtsamkeit zur Achtsamkeit bringen, produziert Gewahrsein und Nichtbewusstsein. Okay. So that's, I think, quite a lot. It's a lot, mainly because it takes a certain amount of craft or skill to work into this. So before we end for today, for the morning, yeah, but some of you I won't see this afternoon, so... Unless somebody has a pressing question or comment.

[43:03]

Yes. I think the importance of the breath got lost. Because we started with the awareness and the observation of the breath and the counting of the breath. The feeling came that is going to be observed. Where does the... Where in that process is the breath? Does it bring you to the feeling and then it's no longer necessary? Okay, how did you know exactly where I was going? It was effortless. Some other pressing question which will tell me what to do.

[44:06]

Okay. So let me describe breath practice a little bit. All in all, it's the most fundamental craft of Buddhism. What's the word for breath in German? Atem. Atem? Atem. Okay, Atemwerk. Atemwerk. Instead of Handwerk, Atemwerk. Atemwerk. Atemhandwerk. Handatemwerk. You see, I'm not very good at languages. Okay. You have an intention to bring your attention to your breath.

[45:10]

Okay. The intention is mentation. Die Intention ist Mentation. Mental activity. Okay. Attention is mental, but it has action built into it. It's mixed with the potentiality to act. So it's already somewhat physicalized. It's mixed with the body. Because you're ready to act. Now another basic practice I would recommend is to bring your attention

[46:16]

and energy equally to each moment. And the emphasis here is on equally. Not just what interests you. Whether it's boring or interesting or whatever, you bring your energy equally to it. Your attention And your energy. And how do you know when you've brought your energy to it? Because you feel ready to act. You simply feel ready to act all the time. But you don't necessarily act. But you don't necessarily act. And this is also understood in Buddhism and Taoism as a practice of longevity.

[47:23]

The people who can bring their... Vitality. Vitality is also a muscle that you activate. Okay. So you have an intention to bring your attention to your breath. Okay, so think of intention and attention as a kind of mental funnel. And you're pouring it into your breath. Because your breath is something you can bring your attention to. So through the breath you're pouring mind into the body. And you're physicalizing the mind. So mind and body are not together. Mind and body are not one.

[48:40]

It is true that you can't have a mind without a body. So they're inseparable, at least as we mostly understand things. But they're not necessarily woven together. They're inseparable, but... The relationship isn't cultivated. You could have a husband and wife who are inseparable but hardly have a relationship. You have to cultivate the relationship. And so the cultivation of the relationship of mind and body is primarily done by bringing attention to the breath. And again, if you've been hearing in the last 10 or 20 years in Western medicine,

[49:48]

All the importance of the mind-body relationship, etc. But if you really believe that and think it's important, then... than the main teaching of breath practice for the last 2500 years, or the main teaching of the mind-body relationship, says the way to stitch mind and body together is to sew it with the breath. Okay. So that's one of the things you're doing when you bring your attention to your breath. You're cultivating and developing the mind-body connection.

[50:57]

fabric. Okay, now. Say you've decided to do that. What you discover, it's the easiest thing in the world to do to bring your attention to your breath. All of you can do it. For about one to three breaths. But almost immediately you're back in your thoughts. And to do it for 24 hours is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. So then a very interesting question arises. Why is one of the easiest things in the world to do, for a moment, one of the hardest things in the world to do over time? And the Buddhist answer, in my experience, is that we have a subtle view of permanence and that permanence is found in our thoughts.

[52:23]

that we want to find our continuity from moment to moment in our thoughts. And as long as you believe that, as long as that's the view that's there prior to thought arising, In other words, the mind that's there before thought arises is where the views rest that condition perception. that the views rest before thought arises, before perception arises. Okay, so Buddhism is a wisdom practice because it says you have to change those thoughts, those views that are there before thought arises.

[53:43]

Okay, so much of practice is to find out how to change those views that are there before thought arises. Okay, so what are you doing when you bring your... attention to your breath. You're shifting your sense of continuity from your thoughts to your breath. Mm-hmm. So if somebody asks me, who are you? They're asking me, what is my continuity? Who was I yesterday and who will I be tomorrow? If I give you the answer you're used to, I say Dick or Richard or something. But if I answer more honestly, I say, breathing.

[55:06]

Or something like that. Because my experience of continuity is not in Richard or Dick. My experience of continuity is in the embodied present. So if you keep trying to bring your attention to your breath, it keeps snapping back into your thoughts. And an ordinary activity has to be because we function with other people through our thinking. So to work on this as a practice, you have to find some opportunity where you're a little bit free and can practice it.

[56:11]

For instance, if you live in a building with staircases, or work in a building or live in a building, use the staircase as a chance to bring your attention to your breath. Or every time you look out a window, use that as an excuse to bring your attention to your breath. Or when you're sitting meditation, you bring your attention to your breath. And at some point, the effort to keep pulling your sense of continuity into your breath, one day it stays. It just stays.

[57:16]

I don't know. It's like a miracle. It's a miracle that arises through the effort to keep bringing your attention to your breath. But a miracle that also arises through the wisdom of seeing the the problems inherent in always having your attention, your sense of continuity in your thoughts. So you're undermining the view that your continuity and permanence is found in your thoughts. So at some point this attention eventually stays continuously in your feeling, thought, in your breath.

[58:19]

And then into your body. And then into your relationship with phenomena. And that's what we would call the embodied present. That's enough. So again, I'm presenting this as a simple craft or skill. And a skill based on the wisdom and the experience of seeing what happens when your sense of continuity and identity is too limited. is only identified with your thoughts. And how much existential and neurotic suffering arises from that.

[59:25]

So without trying to Change your thinking, that's a good psychological process to do, or understand your thinking. The first step in Buddhist practice, thinking, is to move your sense of continuity and identity out of your thoughts. That doesn't mean you don't think. You think as it's necessary. But your sense of continuity and identity is in the embodied present. In breath, body and phenomena. And that changes everything into a new kind of subtlety that arises from each moment.

[60:38]

A new kind of connectedness. A connectedness that's simply not available to you. when your sense of continuity and identity is in your thoughts. So that's enough for this morning's session. And I would like us to sit for shorter than I was suggested. Would the kitchen mind if we went a few minutes beyond one? We need four minutes or five minutes to present the workshops in the afternoon. Oh, okay. Okay, so I will only sit a minute or two.

[61:40]

I'm sorry. As I always say, practice is a homeopathic medicine.

[62:41]

If a feeling of stillness comes into you only for a moment, That knowing can change everything. Yeah, it'd be nice if the various workshops could at the end of the day get together and see what we all came up with.

[63:57]

Since your discussion will be in German, I suppose I can leave, unless you want me to stay. Okay. Thank you very much, all of you. I hope at least some of it was clear. Ich wollte noch ganz kurz mich entschuldigen und sagen, dass ich vergessen habe, Johanneshof-Programme, das ist das Haus, wo wir praktizieren, mitzubringen. Aber ich werde euch heute Nachmittag oder heute Abend eine Fotokopie davon hinlegen und übermorgen werden ganz viele Programme hier sein. Der Klaus hat gesagt, dass er die dann auslegen wird. Ja, es tut mir sehr leid.

[64:54]

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