I wore this green, forest green, green okesa because it's the only lightweight summer okesa I have here. And there's this little kid, Mark, playing with Sophia. Who's full of intelligence, curiosity, brightness. In the neighborhood known for his mischievous behavior. His attention span could be the measure of a Dharma.

[01:03]

He's a great little kid. I like him. So we had lunch together. And he said to me, why is this guy talking so funny? And she said, well, he doesn't speak German. He doesn't speak German. But he was smiling at me. We had a kind of wink at each other. We had a good time. And I came downstairs and he saw me in a green silk dress. He was standing beside Evelyn. Oh dear. And his mother's our insurance agent, is that right? Yeah. Well, okay. We need insurance. We need insurance.

[02:18]

Yeah, I'm worried a little bit what they're going to get into. Anyway. So, what's his name? Varbhamana was the founder of Jainism. Varbhamana. was the founder of Jainism. He was a contemporary of the Buddha. And it arises out of similar concerns, but it's quite different teaching. It still exists in India. They are known for extreme concern with avoiding killing. So they sweep in front of them always so the insects and things are swept away.

[03:32]

Anyway, when he died, supposedly, his disciples immediately began to quarrel over the interpretation of his teaching. So, who knows if the story is true, but supposedly, Shariputra saw this. And to try to avoid this when the Buddha died, He collected a lot of the Buddha's teachings and the main principle, the essential teachings and compiled them into lists which he recited to the other disciples. Now, I've every day told you some sort of story like this, a version, some sort of, yeah.

[04:56]

Because I really want to keep emphasizing that this is a developing practice. It's not a revealed teaching. And we're part of its development. And because, you know, the Buddha put forth some basic things, the law of interdependent origination and four noble truths and so forth. The Four Noble Truths, the law of dependent co-origination, interdependence. Things are impermanent and interdependent. But for the most part, during his 43 years of teaching from the age of 36 to 79, he mostly just taught according to the particular occasions.

[06:18]

So there was no kind of system to his teaching. And this is quite normal. The same was true of Suzuki Roshi. Mostly he is preceded during his 13 years or so of teaching in the West. He is preceded? He proceeded, went along. Proceeded means he did it. Something was before him. No, not preceded, proceeded. Okay. He proceeded through his 12 or 13 years teaching in the West. By responding to particular occasions. And I think it's unfortunate that this was not recognized in the putting together of his book, The Sandokai.

[07:40]

And... Because what should have been done, because they were really lectures to particular groups of students over some years. Some months, years, years. So somebody should have gone through all the lectures and taken out what part of the teachings and what part of responses to the situation to particular students and so forth. He used the Sandokai as a way to speak to the students. It's not really a commentary on the Sandokai. Of course it is to some extent. That's not... main content.

[08:54]

But that's not its main concept. What I'm pointing out is that what happened in Buddha's time happens nowadays. And so sure she didn't always lecture to the same students. So how do you put together Sukhiroshi or the Buddha's or any teacher's teaching in a way that can be passed on? So in studying, of course, what I'm pointing out, is studying this process from after Buddha's time, in studying this process of putting together teaching during and after Buddha's time. We're also trying to put together our experience of teaching with me and with other teachers you've practiced with.

[10:08]

And your own experience. Okay. So I spoke this morning about monitoring. And now I'd like to speak about scanning. Because I need to use some sort of word like that, activity like that, to point out what I mean by manifestation or duration. And I think we need to look at it because Because the present, as I said earlier, is immeasurably short.

[11:23]

Now, how do we understand that an immeasurably short present Wie können wir verstehen, dass eine unmessbar kurze Gegenwart, nämlich eine Gegenwart, die sofort vergangen ist, wie können wir diese als eine Dauer verstehen? Und wie können wir darin funktionieren als eine Dauer? And this kind of, I think this is looking right in, to look at this is to look right into the process of the Abhidharma. Now I've tried to speak about this before in various ways. But I think at this point I should go back to it. And forward to it.

[12:27]

So imagine you're standing in the garden. And you're standing, let's say, next to the corner of a building. Maybe your arm is on the building, or hand, or you're resting on it, leaning against it. This is an experience. We can have this experience, and we also have to imagine it. Das ist eine Erfahrung, die wir haben können und die müssen wir uns auch vorstellen. Okay, so imagine you're standing next to the building, close to the corner, say. Also stellen wir uns vor, wir stehen neben dem Gebäude, aber ganz in der Nähe von einer Ecke vom Gebäude. And maybe that's a left, maybe on the right there's a tree somewhere. Also das kann auf der linken Seite sein und dann rechts davon ist irgendwo ein Baum. And while you're standing there, a fly or some insect flies between the building and the tree.

[13:28]

Now, how do you see that? It's immediately disappearing. Obviously, you experience it in your experience. But how do you establish this experience? I mean, you have to establish it by some kind of scanning. So you're scanning visually back and forth. Making comparisons. And it's not so different than a television screen picture is created by scanning, rapid scanning of electrons across.

[14:30]

A focused beam of electrons. So you scan back and forth and make implicit comparisons. And the information is received by the consciousness as a picture. Und diese Information wird von dem Bewusstsein als ein Bild empfangen. Aber die Aktivität ist so etwas wie dieser Strahl von Elektronen hin und her geht. Und das Wort einscannen an sich ist schon interessant. Denn die Wurzel davon bedeutet klettern. And this shares the same root with scale. To scale a mountain. Oh, scale.

[15:33]

It's like climbing a mountain. To scale a mountain is to climb a mountain. A scale is also like a ruler, a measure. Also, this is the same as scale a mountain or scale a scale. And scan, it's thought that scan originally came because When you hear a poem and you tap out the beat, it's like you were walking, like you were climbing. Because scan means to step, to climb. You don't have to know this, but I think it's kind of interesting. So it meant to scan music or poetry very carefully and see the meter. Okay. So it originally meant to look very closely.

[16:55]

And then later it turned into look quickly. Have you read the book? No, I scanned through it quickly. But it comes from this attempt to measure and to look closely. So that's what you're trying to do in this imagined standing in the garden by the corner of the building. You're looking closely at the fast scanning that's going on. And the body is scanning too. Your body is an activity, of course.

[17:57]

Of cells, molecules, your cardiovascular system, your breathing. And all of these Activities create a field with a boundary. But this field of activity is also extended around your body. So the body in very little movements is internally and externally creating a field. And if you at some point hurt your eye and you have to walk around with one eye for a while, you can see, you can't scan, you can't see depth, you can't go upstairs easily.

[18:59]

And if you only have one ear, you can't locate a sound in space because you have to make comparisons. So you're creating a sensorial field with this scanning of all the senses. And the mind mentation is scanning too, creating associations and so forth. Und der Geist, der scannt auch und schafft dabei mentieren. So you create a present. Du schaffst eine Gegenwart.

[20:04]

The present to the extent that it exists for you is created in you. Die Gegenwart, zu dem gerade wie sie existiert, In your sense fields. In the field of your body and in your mind. So this is like the ayatanas. There's the sense organ. There's the object or material perceived. There's the object or material. There's the object element, the sight element, and the sensation that arises as a field. So the Buddha and his followers analyzed objects Our experience like this.

[21:18]

So there's our actual way we put together the present moment. And that's the way it's delivered to the consciousness as a present, as the present situation. And the approach of the Abhidharma would be to look through this conscious screen in which it's delivered to see the actual process. The approach of the Abhidharma is to look through this conscious screen of how it's actually created.

[22:27]

And you could do that by noticing the feel of each sense, the feel of the object perceived, and what arises through that. You perceive what, the three steps? There's the eye, the organ of perception. There's the object perceived. And you can pay attention to the organ of perception or you can pay attention to the object perceived. Man kann also Aufmerksamkeit auf das Wahrnehmungsorgan richten oder auf das wahrgenommene Objekt. And you can feel the field arised of a color, a sensation, and the associations that come into it. Und ihr könnt das Gefühl, dieses Feld, das auftaucht, oder das Gefühlsfeld vom Fühlen, das auftaucht von Gelb oder was auch immer.

[23:50]

What are you asking me? Nothing. It's just a yellow. I got that far. Oh. Okay. All right. Sounds good enough. Okay. Now, if the fly goes across this field, you see it in comparison to what? im Vergleich zu was seht ihr sie dann? This is a lot of comparisons made and yet you can see the fly go across it, the insect. Es werden da eine Menge Vergleiche gemacht und trotzdem sieht man die Fliege oder das Insekt das durchqueren. Okay, so you're seeing it in comparison to something what? Also man sieht es im Vergleich zu etwas, aber zu was was? You've created a foreground-background relationship. And what's the background? The field of mind itself. And how is this field of mind established? Through a lot of comparisons, which then allow the fly to be seen in comparison to those comparisons.

[25:18]

And maybe you're helped by the corner of the building, which is fairly permanent. And the tree. But actually, the fly's moving, but so is the building. It's just moving much more slowly. A few centuries from now, Johannesburg might not be here. But in any case, it's not going to be here forever. So it's all impermanent and in a way moving at different speeds. And you create a foreground-background relationship.

[26:19]

And experience it as a present. And yet there's really no real reference point except the comparisons you're creating. You are establishing all the reference points momentarily to create a scene that you can experience. This is also an understanding of emptiness.

[27:21]

There's no real reference point in this space except you're establishing it through your experience. There is no reference point except... you're establishing it in your experience. Now, if we know that the present is an experienced duration, a duration that we're generating, We're not living in a physical world, really. We're living in a world we generate from the physical material. We're not living in a physical world, actually.

[28:22]

We're living in a world we generate from the information. This is all information. Some other kind of being with different senses might get different information from this situation. Like ultraviolet or whatever. So the experience of the present is your experience. That means you have something to say over on how long or short it is. And this partly explains why sometimes we feel time goes very slowly or time goes very quickly.

[29:26]

And how vivid or interactive the present is. And in this, a lot of the sense of energy comes in, which the Tibetans called the winds. And wind, maybe, I don't know if it's not any better than energy, but energy is not a good word. It doesn't cover what this is about. But this is all held together by a certain kind of energy. And the practices of qi are about finding that energy which holds the present in a certain way. I thought that was going to be very easy to explain, but it was kind of difficult.

[30:36]

Ich hatte das Gefühl, dass das jetzt richtig leicht werden würde, zu erklären, aber es war doch recht schwierig. Yes, you can bring up points you'd like to, if there's any no-reference points you have, tomorrow. Also, ihr könnt da Punkte ansprechen, wenn ihr keine Referenzpunkte, Bezugspunkte habt, morgen. Danke sehr.

[31:14]

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