Thank you for waiting. Now, as I said the other day, we have a particular arrangement of mind and body to protect us from ticks and tigers. Yeah, it's sort of the genetic default position. It's better not to think of it as the natural position. Yeah, although many of us got into Zen because we wanted to be more natural. Yeah, but that really means we want to be free from our culture.

[01:01]

Or the too restrictive culture. But we can't replace freedom from a restrictive culture with nothing. We have to replace it with another culture, in fact. Sounds right. I can feel it sounds right. So that, again, let's think of it as a genetic default position and not as what's natural in the sense of its best or more fundamental.

[02:05]

I mean, and in fact, it's not the best position. I mean, ticks have their season, and none of us have ever been attacked by a tiger. But wisdom knows no season. Okay. Yeah, okay. So if... the usual arrangement of mind and body is to protect us from ticks and tigers.

[03:19]

And it's not natural, it's just an arrangement. For a particular purpose. Okay. Then we can have another arrangement. And you, if you want to practice in order to lessen suffering increase enlightenment and fulfill your inner compassion Then you have to accept rearranging mind and body. Now, don't try to understand what I'm saying through the words, because the words aren't exactly German or English or even used in a normal way in English. Please understand what I mean.

[04:22]

And this rearrangement can sometimes be difficult, painful, boring, scary. And it's only going to happen if you suffer enough. Or you have a deep enough vow rooted in compassion or something like that. Okay. Now, I heard, you know, understood in the seminars that some of you had a problem with the idea of breath posture rather than a presence, posture and presence.

[05:31]

And here I'm using words in a kind of contextual sense and not tied to a meaning sense. And here I use the words with a meaning from the context and not a word that is directly linked to a meaning. Maybe I should make a distinction between a position and a posture. A position is... any old way your body is without the mind in it. Or without mind as attention in it. Yeah, I mean, for example, if I really slouch, would you like me to give lectures on this position?

[06:34]

You'd think I was drunk. But, you know, if I put my attention into my body, it won't stay in this position. If I put attention in my body, yeah, something else happens. So this is a position, and this is a position turned into a posture. A form with the mind in it. Okay, all right, so now, I made a distinction between breath as presence, as a continuous presence, and breath as a posture.

[07:55]

So, now, what I meant is, was when you bring, when attention is brought to each hail, Wenn, was ich gemeint habe, ist das, wenn Aufmerksamkeit auf jede Atembewegung gerichtet wird, you create a form with the mind in it. Then schafft ihr eine Form mit dem Geister. So I call that form with the mind in it a posture. Und diese Form mit dem Geister in, die nenne ich Haltung. Like when your leg is the forward leg, it's a form with the mind in it if you're walking with attention. Also wenn dein Okay. Now, I think in our afternoon discussions and in the day shows, we've come to the point where we're close to the mode of noticing and knowing being taught by this koan. This mode of noticing and knowing, this koan has prajnapara, prajnapara, dhara, dhara teaching.

[09:20]

Yeah, which is most simply put, the rhinoceros horn in the moon. If you want, you can keep that as an image. But to understand that as a mode of noticing and knowing, what I sometimes call in my own notes a cognosense, a cognosin, there's no such word as cognosense but cognition plus a sense put together cognosense but to get to the point where that we understand that I think we have to create a basis

[10:42]

Maybe I don't want to say ground because ground carries so many other implications. But maybe I use ground or maybe I should use grid. Yeah, we need some sort of grid. Okay. Now, I think we all have the ingredients through our own practice that we can now rearrange. So let's start with background mind. If that's one of the ingredients of our practice. So we have a feeling of, I usually call it something like a mother being, a woman being pregnant, doing her daily life, but always aware of the baby in her.

[12:11]

And much of our background mind is carried in vows and views. And for many of us, in our background mind are vows like, I'm going to be successful, or I'm going to be famous, or I'm going to be happy or something. Successful. I don't know. Those two. It's very important what you put into your background mind, what intentions.

[13:20]

And the Eightfold Path starts with right views, because if you don't get the right views in your background mind, no matter what you do, you're in trouble. So the views held in your background mind will condition, shape, limit, form perceptions. It's almost like it's a light that shines and you only see what's in the light. You won't see what's not illuminated by those intentions. Okay, so you begin to develop a background mind.

[14:23]

As I said, through Zazen practice, that is not so much the billboards or the views, But the feeling of a more basic and continuous mind always present behind the billboards. I hear the image of billboards is not so easy for you because your Autobahns don't have billboards. But in America, particularly when I was young, straight old billboards all the time, you know. I think there's laws now in most states where you can only replace nature with a certain percentage of billboards.

[15:25]

So you need such a vow to replace your billboards with a little more fundamental mind. So the noticing of this fundamental background mind As I said also, the noticing creates the background mind. So this is an ingredient of our practice. It's where the intention to bring attention to our breath resides.

[16:45]

Yeah. Okay, so that's the background. Now, another thing I've mentioned quite often and Hairdryer mentioned Peter has mentioned, of shifting the need for continuity from thoughts to breath, body and phenomena. breath, body and phenomena. Yeah. And of course there's a difference between the physical world and the phenomenal world because the word phenomena means that physical world which you perceive.

[17:54]

So if we're going to be strictly accurate, we'd say breath, body, phenomena, the phenomenal world and the physical world. And the physical world is always appearing in the phenomenal world. Okay. I'm sorry I'm being so exact in a way, but I think we really need to look at these things as ingredients. It's the territory in which we live and find our lived body and lived life. And if you see them as ingredients you can move them around a bit cook them differently.

[19:04]

Or decide not to cook them take them out of the pot. Okay. Now We have this function of self, which is a need for continuity. Now, if we don't have some sort of grid, maybe, of continuity, it's very hard to, we can't function. So the most dramatic thing that bringing attention to the breath does is that when attention is not occasionally, but pretty much continuously on the breath, Wenn diese Aufmerksamkeit nicht nur gelegentlich, sondern fast unablässig auf dem Atem ruht, The experience and the need for continuity shifts away from thoughts and mentation to the body.

[20:38]

dann verlagert sich dieses Bedürfnis nach Kontinuität weg aus den Gedanken in den Körper hinein. It's a major shift and one of the enlightenment experiences. The gummy band of mentation is snapped. It's always snapping us back to our thinking, even totally boring thinking. Our need for continuity keeps going back to our thinking, away from our breath. our need for continuity, which we find in our thinking, prevents us from keeping attention on the breath. As I say, it's really easy to pay attention to the breath for a few moments, but for 24, it goes, hey, I'd rather think.

[21:41]

It's so more me. But if you can educate attention to stay with the breath. Suddenly it just snaps and it just... Like that. And you just feel you, whoa, I've been living here all this time and I didn't notice it. Yeah. And So lots of things result from this.

[22:47]

When your need for continuity is established in thoughts, established in consciousness, and the job of consciousness is to establish predictability, Your sense of continuity gets trapped in predictability. Moment by moment life becomes predictable. Uniqueness has a struggle to kind of stick its head up into the waters of consciousness. Sometimes it's better to have a drink or get hit on the head by a hammer. And when continuity is found in thoughts and consciousness, it calls forth all the associations connected with language, psychologically impacted thought, and so forth.

[24:15]

Okay. Now, when continuity is found in breath, body, and phenomena, is found within tangible, phenomenal immediacy, in tangible, Unmittelbarkeit von der Phänomene. Just say this once more. Tangible phenomenal immediacy. Greifbare Phänomene. or tangible physical immediacy. This is a different medium for continuity.

[25:19]

So different associations are called forth. Primarily perceptual associations are called forth rather than language and psychological nodes. So where do you establish your continuity? Which is a cultural position as well as a genetic default position. When you change where you establish continuity, this is a very significant rearrangement. calling forth associations from an entirely different context of continuity.

[26:34]

Und das ruft Assoziation hervor von einem völlig anderen Kontext von Kontinuität. It changes your psychology. Und das ändert deine Psychologie. Okay, so now we have the ingredients of background mind and a continuity within tangible, physical immediacy. Okay. Got those two ingredients? Yeah. Good. Okay. All right. Now, what I've suggested is I gave you that little gatha. Staring into space. Releasing seeing. Involuted thought ceases. And mind rests in itself. Und Geist ruht in sich selbst.

[28:00]

Erlange Verwirklichung. Ja, and I've shortened that to seeing space. Raum sehen. Denken loslassen. Geist sehen. That's a rearrangement. That's a little shift right in those words. If you can, like, be in the words, seeing space, releasing thinking, Go away. Done with it. Yeah. Viewing mind. Resting in mind.

[29:04]

All right. Now, the idea is that... Again, if you shift from the particular to the field... Right now the field of mind is all of you all at once in the grass and the trees and the windows and so forth. Perhaps what happens is the mind, instead of having the conception of the particular, has the conceptual conception of all at once. And the shift to the all at once, we could call it a big conception. But it actually doesn't permit any other conceptions.

[30:21]

It disallows other conceptions. So you shift to a non-conceptual mind. So you've shifted to a non-conceptual mind and you've shifted to a non-intentional mind. So this kind of field of mind cuts through Manjushri's sword, cuts through involuted, convoluted thinking. Again? Again? This non-conceptual mind, or seeing space, blocks involuted thinking.

[31:31]

...shakes loose from involuted thinking. To take an image from Herr Dr. Konze, gets rid of thinking the way a dog does fleas. He said it about a healthy culture gets rid of anthropologists the way a dog does fleas. Yeah. Fleas. A horse gets rid of flies that don't.

[32:48]

Now, you can have big intentions in this field of mind. Views and vows. But you can't really have little intentions, I want to do this or that, etc. It just doesn't function in a field of mind. And this field of mind, the more you get used to it, when it's a non-intentional field of mind, It's the door that doesn't have to be pushed. It's the door that moves as it wishes. Things appear outside of our intention. And in that sense, this field of mind becomes a field of all-at-onceness.

[34:12]

In which the conception or the field doesn't hold everything locked in a certain pattern. The field of mind is changing. Pulsing. We are coming in and out of focus. Yeah, including more and more. It doesn't seem to have boundaries. It's a mind really of inter-independence. It's a mind that knows and actualizes interdependence. It's a mind that is at the center of the teaching of Buddhism.

[35:25]

And the actualization of realizations. So this is the third ingredient. And we could call it a foreground field of mind. It's as if you've taken this background mind and made it a foreground mind.

[36:26]

Are you still with me? Okay. Now, the background mind is a mind primarily of awareness and not consciousness. The background man is a mind primarily of awareness and not of consciousness. It's in the background of consciousness. What you've done is you've taken this background mind and awareness and put it into the foreground. It's another profound rearrangement. And you've brought then awareness into the field of consciousness. And they're interfused.

[37:40]

Okay. Now, part of the way this is done is bringing attention to each hail. It really is then, the breath really is a door to another mode of knowing and noticing. Now in this realm of timelessness I run out of time. And it's a war between legs and wisdom. And the legs always win.

[38:44]

And so maybe Zorro will be saved as he goes over the cliff. Now that the door has swung open to wisdom. So we'll continue tomorrow or this afternoon. Or we're continuing right now. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[39:35]

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