You know, there's 64 marks for a female. And a man can only share 31 of them. Thank you. In any case... So, the Mahayana Buddha said this whole idea of the glorification of the Buddha and the 32 marks. Nobody has the 32 marks. You have them. You don't want them. I saw it. What Mahayana Buddhism says is... What Mahayana Buddhism says is... The Mahayanas thought this was somewhat ridiculous and extrapolating.

[01:19]

So they created this sublime... So out of this thought, the Mahayana developed this sublime teaching. Now, it's not so easy to describe this, but I'll do my best. Dharma means, let's keep it as simple as I can. I mean, I'm not keeping it simple because you need it to be simple, but just you need to know so much if I give a description that's not simple. The basic truth of Buddhism is that everything changes. There's nothing that doesn't change. Dharma means that which holds. The word literally means that which holds.

[02:34]

So the experience, the practice of Buddhism is to accept And how everything changes. And yogic practice is basically a study of change. How to change from a one kind of state of mind to a more of mind of greater clarity and things like that. So yoga is a teaching of how to accept change and how to use change. And Buddhism is also a teaching of how to notice what changes stays in the midst of change.

[03:37]

Okay, so what stays in the midst of change? Das bleibt gleich und passt in der Mitte dieser Veränderung. For example, the original mind stays. In other words, the field of mind tends to stay while the contents change. So the field of mind, to know the field of mind would be a Dharma. And that's why emptiness is such a powerful idea in Buddhism. And what is emptiness? but also space.

[04:40]

It's the space of this room which allows each of us to sit here. So we change, but the space remains the same. In fact, the space changes too, but for the practical purposes of our practical life, we're distinguishing between what tends to stay and what tends to change. Now, dharma also means to hold something in your attention for a moment. For example, everything is changing here, right? There is no duration. It's all a flashing. But we have a sensation of duration. That is, we call, a kind of present memory.

[05:54]

In other words, not memory of the past, but our mind functions to create a sustained picture here that holds for a moment. when it actually has no dimension. We hold it for a moment, and that's a kind of memory. Because at the level of quantum physics, There's no duration. It's constantly moving. So the sense of duration is also a dharma. See how much this is really like physics? So when I look at something, If I look at something,

[07:00]

the smallest moment in which I look at something and have a feeling of it, hear it, before I think about it, that unit of perception is considered a dharma. And it probably has a somewhat measurable reality within our own physiology. But the point is not to make it. the point is not to make it true in some physical sense. But to relate the idea of dharma, believe me or not, I'm trying to keep this simple, But to relate the idea of Dharma to our actual experience.

[08:05]

So we're asking what's real. Dharma is what's real. Okay. I look at that bell, the moment which I look at that bell, I see it. That looking for that moment has a reality. And leads to the next moment. And that looking is more real than the bell. because the bell eventually will be broken and disappear but all the relationships that occur will continue to affect relationships so do you understand that in the dharmic way of thinking Relationships are real, but not objects.

[09:15]

I mean, They keep going on while objects are impermanent and disappear. So if you want to look at what's really real to our experience it's relationship. No matter how real Horst is, Siegfried is, he is actually a bunch of relationships of blood vessels, hormones. And Hilltrude is part of those relationships. And no matter how real Wurst is over there, he's only real to me and my relationship to him. So Dharmic practice is to always perceive relationships, not things.

[10:15]

And that's something you train yourself to do. It doesn't happen naturally. And it doesn't happen naturally at least that you notice that what you're perceiving is relationships. We think we're perceiving objects, but in fact we're perceiving relations. To know that is Dharma practice. Okay, so now we're getting close. So if what we're perceiving is relationships, and what's the condition of relationships, Because this room is a bunch of relationships, and those relationships, the condition of those relationships is space. My relationship to you, et cetera. So this is the sense of the body of Buddha as space.

[11:29]

Or as emptiness. Okay, now that's an interesting conception. But when you're practicing meditation, and you wonder where your hands are, say you're practicing meditation. Where are my hands? They're down there somewhere. Or your thumbs get separated. You try to bring them back together and there's about a million light years between them. And you lose the sense of, it almost feels like you're out here sometimes.

[12:32]

That's a physical experience of the Dharmakaya. You understand? That sometimes almost anyone in meditation has this feeling of where's our body boundaries and so on. The adept meditator develops that into a body with homeostasis and own organizing feeling. Then that's called Dharmakaya body. Realized Dharmakaya body. And the realized Dharmakaya body experienced physically is an experience of bliss. So the Sammabhagaya is born from the Dharmakaya. And the Sammabhagaya body, now,

[13:33]

Again, I'm sticking on the conceptual side of the Sambhogakaya body. And I'll come back to this tomorrow as we continue with this subject. The Sambhogakaya body also, as I said, I'm sticking to the conceptual side. But experiencing the Sambhogakaya body changes your plumbing. Changes your energetic physicality plumbing. But that's the side I'm not talking about. But that's why it's called a body, not just a mind.

[15:01]

And it's called a body for two reasons. Now they say, because when a body, when a mind functions in this unorganizing homeostatic way, but with a kind of physical presence, We call it a body. In other words, if we had a corpse lying here, in Buddhism, that's not a body. That's just a body that looks like a body. And you will soon see that it's not a body because it will lose its homeostasis. It will soon disintegrate. So what keeps it together as a body functioning, its aliveness, is what Buddhism means by a body.

[16:10]

That is very similar to a mind. Now this is called a body because it changes your body. The mind shapes the body and the body shapes the mind. This can be such a powerful experience. It actually changes how you work physically. So it's called a body for that reason. Now, when I call this also actualizing mind, And as the Sambhogakaya mind or actualizing mind, it's rooted in bliss and it's rooted in imperturbability. So this body is rooted in learning to sit still through anything.

[17:26]

And it's integral because it's no longer fluid like the mind. It's fluid and simultaneously extraordinarily stable. You can't disturb it. So you're not born with imperturbability. So it's a generated mind. Generated mind on the basis of bliss and imperturbability. blissful stable mind that in your ordinary activity it's present and it's contagious to other people we call that nirmanakaya body because that's the manifestation of this in ordinary life, and this is what historical Buddha is a nirmanakaya like.

[18:37]

So, it's just six o'clock. I'm right on time. This is a thing. I'm right on time. I am not trying to teach you Buddhism. This looks like I'm teaching you Buddhism. But I'm just using Buddhism to show you how big minds work. how minds that are not identified by or defined through thought can function. Most of our culture is based on minds that function through thought. In fact, we function, but mostly unnoticed to ourselves, through signless minds.

[19:54]

But we don't know much about that, because we have very little yogic science in our culture. But it's happening. We have this amazing event of these two great civilizations enfolding. with each other. I actually think Zen is one of the most profound interfaces. Interfaces because it's accessible to us. There are aspects of yoga culture that are part of Asian culture, and their supposition is simply unavailable to us. But because Zen is based on original mind, based on mind's free of acculturation, we can also know that, so it becomes an interface with yoga culture.

[21:10]

Okay? Yes. That's enough for now. that even might be called a lot. And I went after 6, I'm sorry. I went past 6 o'clock. Oh, we're supposed to stop at 6.30. Oh. I thought I was supposed to stop at 6. But still, maybe that's enough. Hmm? Hmm. So what I'll try to speak about tomorrow is the way original mind functions, which is also related to how original mind is also a generated mind.

[22:27]

And I've shown you only one function of original mind. It's its contrast to other minds. Which I illustrated with our little, you know, primitive sculpture where there was a contrast between thinking mind and original mind. So that's one of the functions of original mind is the contrast with other states of mind. But there's three or four other functions which we'll leave till tomorrow. As I say, it's like those cartoons or those movies I used to watch as a kid where the horse is off the cliff and it says, to be continued. The main one was called The Mark of Zorro. And this one is called Markless Zen.

[23:54]

And this golden-hued horse. And this golden-hued horse. A lot of wood. Yeah, and a lot of screens. Jede Menge von Wandflächen und Holz. Yeah. How long does it take to drive from here to Graz? Wie lange braucht man von hier nach Graz mit dem Auto? Two hours. Really, it's closer to Graz than it is to Vienna. Yes. Because he says it takes three to drive to Vienna.

[24:55]

If you try. I mean, if you would go with Florian, you would be faster. Yeah. The other direction. Yeah. I'm just wondering what time would really help you to do traveling during light time? It doesn't get dark very fast here, though. So maybe if we come to a natural place to stop, mid-afternoon sometime we'll stop. Maybe if we come to a natural place where we can stop, we'll stop in the middle of the afternoon. Now is there anything, having slept on your original mind, is there anything you'd like to think about?

[26:01]

Does it all make sense or does it not make sense? If it makes sense too easily, I think I didn't teach it very well. In such a field, it's hard to say if you have understood or not. Yeah. Yeah. I understand, yeah. I think I mentioned recently somewhere that Sukhya, she used to end every lecture with, do you understand? And I went up to him at some point and said, I wish you'd stop asking that question.

[27:02]

Because every time you ask, I stop and think, and then I don't. He said, oh, I understand. And I said... But I continued saying it. I have to say it. I had a very strange experience in the morning. In the morning? One hour before the alarm should have went off. It went off. But it was like the sound of a bird.

[28:19]

But I think I didn't dream it. I heard it. And she already thought whether a young bird came into the room and couldn't get out and was trapped. And it was very strange. Yes, and then what happened? You mean the little bird went to sleep again? You're such a good student. Okay. These pictures of the bodies of the kayas help me very much.

[29:28]

Yes. Okay. The picture of swimming in the water or the picture of wholism, for instance, of this group. I can feel that very good during meditation. And also the picture of the bliss body. The feeling of that. Well, I think that Most people who can meditate, and what I mean by that is you're actually able to shift into a meditative mind which is not the same as your ordinary thinking mind, and is not also sleeping mind.

[30:45]

If you can't do that, It's pretty hard to meditate because you sit there for 40 minutes wondering, what am I going to do next? So anyone who can do that, generally, knows what these, at least the first two are. So it's probably helpful at some point to notice, because we notice so many things we don't know which to pay attention to. So if you have a sense of these two bodies and you pay attention to them, they become more tangible.

[31:47]

The next step though, which is more difficult, is to establish them as real presences in your life. This morning Gerhard mentioned that Jacques Lacan might have some kind of idea of original mind in his writing. In my own experience so far as Western thinkers touch on it sometimes as a possibility. And I don't think, but I actually have not seen it myself in any Western writers.

[33:02]

Because they just, I don't think you can know this unless you have some yogic So what's fairly commonplace in Asia is not commonplace at all in the West. I think it's going to change now. Just to be a player in the... dialogue of our culture, to be a player, you not only have to have some yogic experience, you have to have a convincingly enough educated voice to have anybody listen to you. And so far there hasn't been anybody like that. I mean there's people who practice martial arts and yoga who know quite a bit, but they haven't

[34:03]

been somebody who has the techniques of a philosopher to talk about it. But there's an awful lot of very smart young people coming up who now have practiced with various Buddhist teachers and who are well trained in languages and philosophy, and they're going to start introducing these concepts in a way they're going to affect our general thinking. At least that's my impression, my feeling. Yes. Your mentioning of Picasso and Matisse was very helpful for me. so that they had the experience, and that they tried to repeat this experience in the realm of consciousness.

[35:24]

More splits and divisions and comparisons and eccentric lifestyle. But they couldn't do it because they lacked the bodily practice. Yeah, and they only knew the part they... For instance, I would say that Picasso saw a kind of field around each object. And Matisse saw a kind of interpenetrating space which he painted. It makes their paintings quite different. And neither knew how to develop that except to keep expressing it. It also helped me very much to the hint that all these bodies are generated.

[36:42]

Very often during meditation so far I waited passively for that it happened. But now I felt that I could have a share in it, that I could actively do something. It was very easy. This turning around? Yes. how to discuss the doing which is not doing, but it's not the same as being passive.

[37:48]

This is rather difficult to explain. I think in Christentum it means to believe. Yeah, I think in Christianity that's faith. Yeah. And I would like to speak about faith today. And I would like to speak about faith today. I want to say something rather trivial or banal, but during this week it was very important for me during sitting. During the last two years I frustrated myself during meditation in a way that when this monkey mind came up I tried to cut it off and to count my breath again.

[39:05]

And now I have noticed, when I let it go and pay attention to what kind of topics come up, that for my personal development very important topics come up again and again. So there is a certain color, so to speak, of the fantasies, which are determined from the head, But now I realize that when I just watch this monkey mind, there are certain issues and themes come up which are important for my life, like certain things I have to work on, and a certain flavor and certain colors of... And since I accepted that, it became much more easy. You just proved the roots of the word trivial. It means three roads. Tri-via.

[40:22]

So what you said was not trivial at all, because now you can make a choice. When you talked about that in the West, there is not this way of talking about and writing about these kind of things. Original mind. I remembered texts of Meister Eckehardt.

[41:27]

I wanted to ask you whether you think that Meister Eckhart wrote about these things because I got the impression that he writes about these things. Yeah, I have to make an exception for theologists and particularly in the past. Meister Eckhart has brought up a lot in this kind of discussion, particularly in the early days of Buddhism in the West. But there aren't too many people like Eckhart you can point to that are quite clear. I think in some of the Greek mystery cults, maybe they had some kind of relationship to this. But again, this is definitely just a human capacity.

[42:41]

It doesn't belong to Buddhism. It's a question of how you develop it. and whether you develop it within the rigor of the all-encompassing view of emptiness. That makes sense? Something else? Yeah. Also something trivial. Okay. I'm ready to follow your course. So passivity, then to do things and at the same time not to do them and energies and to write on energy fields which appear.

[43:41]

That's good. Sounds good. How should I deal with that? Set your sail. I mean, the wind is always present, but we have to set our sail. Yeah. So anyway, let me see if I can speak to it. But I'd like to stick right now to finish with these ideas of mind. Ulrike mentioned yesterday about how does this relate to background mind. So maybe I... To work my way toward that, I should say something about how something like original mind functions.

[45:01]

I like this little room. It's nicer to be near you. Thank you. I mean, I wouldn't mind sitting in your lap. Well, a few Hamburgians thrown in there. Here, these are two. Okay. Now, this is not really any kind of coherent list. I'm just going to write it out so you can see. One is... I'm sorry, you're more short than there.

[46:04]

It also functions through its wholeness. And this is... Do you understand what I mean? That it functions through its wholeness? Maybe not the same as what... I do, yeah. It's possible. Oh, really? Yeah. I think the best example to give you is when you have an experience of samadhi.

[47:15]

And at some point in practice you recognize it. This is a samadhi, or sort of close to samadhi, what I've been experiencing. In other words, you have a rather empty state of mind, with very little thinking and truth. And then you might at some time, in such a state, and suddenly you think, oh, this is samadhi. And samadhi tends to go away. All right, so what has happened is you've intruded... with another kind of mind which is dispersed samadhi.

[48:17]

Now you can understand it that thinking this is samadhi, made it not samadhi because there was a thought in it. But that's not the problem. The problem is that samadhi was dispersed by the kind of mind that accompanies thinking. Okay. Next step is, it's not just that samadhi is dispersed by the kind of mind that intrudes.

[49:19]

Or rather, let me put it this way, all minds don't necessarily intrude on samadhi. Only some minds intrude on samadhi. Okay. What kind of minds intrude on samadhi? Now, just to keep it simple, let's say dualistic minds intrude on samadhi. Okay, so a non-dualistic mind, we can say, would not intrude on samadhi. The implications of this, I think, are fantastic.

[50:21]

It means that samadhi will teach you what's non-dualistic. Here's a state of mind that now becomes a teacher. Because you begin to find, yes, at some point you can actually be in a samadhic state of mind, mode of mind is better than state, somatic mode of mind, and you can observe it or even think within it without disturbing it. And now you can begin to observe which is what kinds of thoughts, feelings, etc., disturb it and what don't. Now, in some ways, I don't know why should I tell you this.

[51:21]

I don't know. Because I like you. This is not where we speak. Um, But because unless somebody is kind of a professional meditator, you don't usually spend much time distinguishing between what thought disturbs samadhi and what don't disturb samadhi. And to get to that point, usually practice has to be pretty much permeating the whole of your life. But unless you understand this kind of distinction, you don't understand big minds and how they function. No. I say, I make this sound like it's rather difficult and takes many years and all that stuff.

[52:40]

But many years can occur in a few moments. In other words, there's an enfolded quality to experience where it's like this. And there's many surfaces in a very short time. So sometimes you might be in a certain situation, a certain situation in your life, Meditating and the meditation becomes extremely important to you, and you're very concentrated, and many things that might take years to appear, appear very quickly. Yes? I think what Hoshi just told me was the definition of Buwai, which is always misunderstood.

[53:51]

For example, there is a word that says Buwai is simply passivistic. That's exactly the definition he gave about Samadhi, which was once a very dualistic thing. I think what is meant by Wu-Wai is acting through non-acting. What? Wu-Wai. Wu-Wai. What is that? Oh, that's also a charism, a central concept. So he's talking about the same concept of wu-wai. What you said was exactly the definition of wu-wai, like doing without doing. This is normally, from our works and other teachers, not well understood because they interpret it as laissez-faire, just letting go, adapt to circumstances. I know his daughter and I know his grandchildren. But enlightenment is rooted, usually it occurs either emotionally, sort of philosophically in the way our thinking works, or in our body. Yeah.

[54:51]

And some people, I know there's one very famous teacher in the West who I would say was enlightened physically and mentally, but not emotionally. And what Buddhism tries to teach is if you have an enlightening experience in one area or in another, how to mature that and bring it into the whole of your life. Most people have some enlightenment. I mean some people like who we've been speaking about had a very big clear enlightenment experience. So he stands out in the whole population and he then developed it in the area in which it occurred. But most of us have to work with a little bit of enlightenment and spread it over the toast very carefully.

[56:07]

So it's a little bit like it We don't notice original mind. We may notice it quite a bit when we're a kid. But we don't know we're noticing it and we think it's something we have to grow out of. And I think it's so unknown or forgotten to the parents that they kind of train it out of the kids. They teach you not to notice it. And we're very definitely not taught to notice it. That's one thing that would be different in the way I brought my two daughters up is not only did I teach them to notice it, I also supported them when they did notice it and it led them into kind of strange feelings about the world and school and stuff.

[57:54]

That's nothing special. It's just my culture. I've lived for so many years, so I bring my children into it. Can I ask you something? Yes, of course. The other day I was in this monastery with Julius, and there was a tree, and the whole tree was humming because there were so many bees. And I was wondering, and I said to him, listen the bees and then I thought that's strange because then it gets an idea about a bee and tree should just listen to the humming and to experience the humming and this whole tree humming.

[58:56]

So I was thinking how would you deal with this situation? I suppose if I'd been with my daughter in such situation, I would have got under the tree and hummed along with the bees, something like that. But, you know, noticing those things is important in the rest of your kids. Yeah. And I asked him what he would do if he were in that situation, because when you say bees, you immediately bring it into the concept, and how can you deal with it? And he said that what he would have done would have been to stand under the tree with the child and also start to sleep. So let's imagine this blank piece of paper in which there's text.

[60:05]

And what we notice is the text. We don't notice the paper so much because of the text. We're distracted by the text. And the text itself denies the paper. So the more you pay attention to the text, it never references the paper. Now it's obvious, but every page doesn't start with, this is written on paper.

[61:07]

But you have to do something like that when you're practicing. You have to say, oh, this is written on paper. Now, but when you start to notice the paper under the text or within and around the text, the text begins to develop. It starts correcting the grammar of the sentences. And dualistic sentences tend to kind of fall apart. And the text in the paper begins to glow. So the text Paper, as an analogy, metaphor for mind, begins to function and participate.

[62:18]

And sentences which are based on delusion tend to not stick to the paper very well. You begin to realize this is a very special piece of paper. Instead of seeing into the depth now of the text, which leads you away, you begin to see into the paper, and it even has more depth. We could say this is stretching the metaphor a bit, or expanding it a little bit. So the original mind also functions as a base.

[63:20]

And it also functions to purify. And although these ideas are related, purifying wholeness, in other words, the process by which you begin to notice the difference between dualistic and non-dualistic thoughts through what functions without original mind dispersing, The degree to which it functions to distinguish between non-dualistic and dualistic things. It's also a process of purification. Basically, the more original mind permeates, is present in your thinking, tends to purify your thinking and your action.

[64:43]

Because it tends toward wholeness and completeness. So as soon as you have a thought that you feel ambivalent about, This contact with this integrative state of mind goes away or makes it very, you feel horrible at what you're thinking about. Now, I told the story before and I'm a little embarrassed to tell it, and I heard it even as a joke on the Internet. Oh, well.

[65:52]

I mean, I taught last year in Canada and Australia and some various places. I've made a point of not being on the Internet or having a page or anything. Can't stay off the... Because people put you on. Anyway, once I tried, and out of context, this sounds like a funny story, when somebody showed it to me on the Internet, I thought it was a little funny. But anyway, I wanted to notice, and I may have mentioned it before, whenever I had a thought that was divisive. or was predominantly self-regarding.

[66:54]

So I said, whenever I have such a thought, I would like to bite my cheek. And if I have it, if I particularly have it, strongly I want to bite my tongue. And I got so, I would have a thought and... Sometimes, you know, blood dripping out of my mouth. I'm exaggerating, but it got pretty bad sometimes. But I actually learned. I mean, it's so quick. An original mind is so quick in the middle of the thought, my teeth come down and hit my cheek. To think about it, takes, you know, it's much too slow. But I went through a couple of years of, oh, God, I kept biting my cheeks, biting my tongue.

[68:01]

I also had some others I asked that I would trip when I had that stuff. I'd be walking down a straight sidewalk and trip, you know. Trip? Trip is like when you... fall over something. Like in football, they stick your foot out. To stumble or to... Because I wanted to... I wanted to have some way to notice it. And it happens so fast, you don't know. So... So in that sense, you can ask the original mind to purify. So if I say to you now, ask original mind, it means original mind can have an intention. Some kinds of intentions and not others. This is an original mind that's been developed. It just doesn't function in contrast now.

[69:02]

It's functioning as part of the way you think. For instance, if you are dreaming and you dream something, you wake up in the morning or at some point in the night and you realize what would complete something you're working on. Or you noticed something that was you thought something was complete, and you wake up in the morning, oh, I left that out. We would say that's the original mind functioning in your dreaming mind. So not all dreams are like that, only some dreams, but you can begin to bring this quality of original mind which you can begin to feel.

[70:19]

And if I go just a little bit farther out, I can say we learn to carry it in our hand. In other words, if I train my right hand to always know where my left hand is, I begin to have the feeling of mind in my hands. And that's really what the mudra is about. You're training your hands to be filled with mind. So that mudra continues other times. Because if this hand knows where this hand is, it's connected by mind. So again you understand the story of Sukhiroshi I told you about passing the salt. When I watched him I noticed that he didn't ever pass things with one hand.

[71:30]

He virtually always used two hands. And if you can't use two, there's the feeling of two. Because he was clearly passing his mind. And if the other person wanted to receive it, And you can see there's a big difference than just like this or this kind of. Okay. Is that enough on the original mind? Now, we also have no mind. Everyday mind.

[72:46]

True mind. Buddha mind. Pepper mind. Hans mind. One husband's mind. Never mind. Now, sometimes open it true, sometimes emptiness, you know. Now, don't mind. When you're meditating, you don't need to know all this. You don't need to know everything. When you sit, you have these feelings or other feelings, and this is like a topography, a tomography.

[73:49]

You simply have certain experiences. Although we don't usually notice it until we have an attention free of thinking. Now an example of an attention free of thinking, just to give you some sense of it. I have spoken a number of times these days about my effort to make things clear. But I didn't say rational. Generally, when I'm working something through, I follow the clarity, but not the rationality.

[74:49]

I go from the clarity to the clarity. I just feel what's clear and then I go into the next. Clearing appears and I follow the clearing, I follow the path. So if you follow something other than thinking, you begin to notice these different minds and their qualities. Yeah, and they're not, again, for a Zen Buddhist, they're not very, they're not useful until you're a teacher or until you have to work with the Quran. Yeah, and... Everyday mind is usually used to mean the mind of everyday that's not caught in everyday things.

[76:07]

No mind usually refers to the functioning of all things. Of all big minds. And this is the way 1, 2, 3, 4 end on 0. In other words, 0 is nothing, but our whole number system depends on 0. Also in dem Sinne, dass die Null einfach nichts ist, aber das ganze Nummernzahlensystem einfach auf der Null basiert. So no mind refers to that ability to function through emptiness that is the way zero functions. And Buddha mind usually refers to all of these various minds functioning wholly in a realized way.

[77:15]

In Hans' mind, this is a special case we'll explain in the next seminar. Now, background mind. So now I think it's to tell you something about zazen. Now, I wonder that quickly because I think maybe I should mention it, but I don't want to give you too much reason to know all these things. Most people don't know them anyway. Because there's no need to know them. But if you do start studying koans, you'll see that they say, they use these various distinctions, which don't all mean the same thing, but they're like different gates.

[78:45]

I don't think I've spoken to you about the distinction between inward consciousness and interior consciousness. I was planning to last year, but then the seminar was cancelled. And that would be a way to show some relationships between these things, but some other time. Maybe next time. Okay.

[79:47]

We practice that. It's 11 o'clock, is that right? You're right? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we shouldn't practice sasa. Maybe we should have a break. So if we have a break until 11.30, and we then finish sasa and mind before lunch, We'll have faith in the afternoon. And should we start a little earlier after lunch? Instead of at 3, maybe start at 2.30? 2.30 good? Yeah. Okay. Okay, so let's have a half hour break. Lasst uns eine halbe Stunde Pause machen.

[81:11]

Dankeschön. Danke auch. Let's start with... Now there's big mind and small mind. Pure mind and defiled mind. Enlightened mind and deluded mind. and so forth. And what is all this about? These are simply names for the minds that you experience in Samhain.

[82:12]

And the processes that are manifested as minds that occur when you begin to see the mind that is other than psyche, thoughts, mental formations. Once you notice that there is a field of mind that's neither psyche nor thoughts nor mental activity, ordinary activity, then you are faced with a decision.

[83:17]

In other words, if this seems real to you, or significant, or valuable, or the experience of your body tells you, it interests your body, then you have to make a decision to explore these. And the decision is primarily the practices of zazen and mindfulness. And the practice that unites both zazen and mindfulness is bringing your attention to your breath. And it requires an increasing subtlety in the way we feel and think.

[84:41]

Because these minds that are other than our mental formations, have to be noticed or felt in ways that are subtler than our usual way of feeling and thinking. So you move into a world of greater subtlety in how you feel and Think. How you know. And this may, you may feel, or this may nourish you. Now, in fact, very, very few people ever really get free of their sense of continuity in thought.

[85:48]

This is an exceptional thing to do. Possibly we can do it, but it's quite exceptional. What most people who meditate achieve is an occasional experience of that. What more adept meditators realize is a kind of constantly present parallel to their thinking. But to really shift your sense of interest out of thinking is rare. And it's mainly because we don't want to. But thinking is extremely interesting. And it always concerns something that's really interesting to us.

[86:51]

Ourself. What could be more interesting? Yeah. But we've all noticed this field of mind that is not mentation, ordinary mentation. And the main gate is sasen. Dogen emphasized it as the source of all our minds. Now this is an emphasis in Mahayana Buddhism to bring all the teachings together in one practice.

[87:55]

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