So what you're doing when you're in practicing meditation is you're trying to shift your sense of continuity this function, out of just being in your thoughts, you're trying to shift it into your breath and into your body and into your feeling of connectedness in the phenomenal world. and into a feeling of continuity in the field of mind itself. Okay. What is consciousness? Consciousness is basically the contents of consciousness. But let's imagine, here's this piece of paper. These are the contents of that piece of paper.

[01:11]

But the piece of paper is there. But the way our mind works is it keeps bringing attention to the contents but not to the piece of paper. And that's partly biological, I think, but it's partly cultural. First you have to get away from the cultural habit. And then you can work with a biological tendency or genetic tendency to identify with edges, with thoughts. You can begin to notice this. It's like you can notice Gerald and and me quite easily. But it takes a moment to start noticing the shape of the space between Geralt and myself.

[02:20]

But that's also part of the communication. Now, if you're a movie director and you want two lovers sitting across the table, you make circles of the space between them. If you want to show them one of them gets angry, suddenly there's square lines. There's ones like this and the others like this. And that kind of communication is going on right now. There's a shape in this room, a space we're all modeling by how we create body postures. We're acting in response to that, but it's harder to notice than the objects. That's similar to noticing the field of mind as well as the contents of mind. So you can understand this Buddhist practice as a shift from identifying only with the contents of thought to identifying with the continuity of thought.

[03:50]

of body, breath, phenomena and the field of mind. So you're not ending your identification with your of continuity with your story, you're increasing the ways in which you feel continuity. That makes sense? So it's scary at first because you feel you're losing contact with your story, but in fact I think you create a bigger field in which to mature your story and to hear your story. Because not only do we have a third eye, we have a third ear. And we hear into our story. And we hear into our story listening to the world. Generally, we only hear our story hearing the past.

[05:12]

But we start hearing our story hearing the present. And we begin to hear the world directly. So if you notice, if you understand the functions of self, and you begin to experience how you create separation, So if I were to give you a practice, I would just say, notice over the next few weeks And it's helpful to not just put it in general, but say for the next two weeks or ten days or some specific time.

[06:16]

I'll notice as often as I can when I feel separation, when I feel connectedness and when I feel continuity. First just take an inventory. And then you might spend the next ten days or ten days next month or something, seeing if you can shift the emphasis among the three. Okay, now say, coming back to Barbara. Barbara. In English it's Barbara, in German it's Barbara. It's slightly different. As I said, I commonly think of you, we're separated by space.

[07:18]

Whoever sits in front of me gets to be the subject of the lecture, I'm sorry. That means, if I think that, before thinking arises, I have an idea in my mind already separated. Das heißt, bevor ich anfange zu denken, habe ich schon eine Idee im Kopf, die lautet, schon getrennt. So if I feel we're already separated, then my mental activity is about, well, we are or we're not or she's different or how could we be friends or something like that. Und wenn ich das schon denke, dass wir getrennt sind, dann fange ich an nachzudenken, wie können wir Freunde sein, wer bist du, wie siehst du aus und so weiter. So you recognize you have this view already separated. So create an antidote. Buddhist practice is very simple like this. You create an antidote. Okay, the antidote would be, in this case, already connected.

[08:19]

So I begin to hold in my consciousness the phrase, first as a phrase, then as a feeling, already connected. So I look at you and I feel already connected. Then I don't have to make any effort to establish connection. And I can notice when I create separation. It's a real different ballgame. So you can work with a simple phrase for the next ten days, or let's say ten days after the other ten days, already connected. It changes your whole culture if you feel already connected. I'm playing then off the connection rather than playing off the separation. And if I really begin to feel already connected my sense of continuity begins to change.

[09:49]

Does this make sense? So you can work with space connects or already connected. And to work with phrases like this among the Buddhist schools, this is a particular, a unique Zen way of working with views. To create antidotal views. And I think if you find you work with either space connects or already connected, You've seen aquariums where the fish are swimming along. And the seaweed kind of moves when the fish goes by. And you can see that the fish and the seaweed are all connected by the water.

[10:50]

But if you practice with a phrase like already connected or space connects, then suddenly sometimes the critical mass can shift. You can almost feel like we're all in a water, a medium together. I remember when I first started practicing, after a while I went to Suzuki Roshi and I said, what is this underwater feeling? He nodded. But you do begin to feel a connection. That's enough? So I said I'd give you the three minds of daily consciousness.

[12:10]

Does anybody have anything you'd like to say about what we just spoke about? What's the difference between an antidepressant and a positive affirmation? What is the difference between a polar opposite and a positive support or affirmation? Well, if your view shifts to, yes, we are already connected, And then you say, already connected, that would be a positive affirmation of that view.

[13:24]

But you could try to positively affirm things that aren't true. I mean, they can be the same thing. But a positive affirmation doesn't bring in the question, is what you're affirming actually the way the world exists? For instance, if you think the world is permanent, and you positively affirm that, then you're doing what our culture does. And what most cultures do. Because the senses create an illusion of permanence.

[14:24]

But if you want to work with that it's all changing, all is permanent, then you first have to work with an antidote to the view that it's permanent. Then you can positively affirm that view. We all intellectually understand that everything is changing, right? I think most people nowadays, science says that, everything says that. But if you really believe everything's changing, you will experience this moment right now as absolutely unique.

[15:26]

As a treasure never to be happen again. And if you know that this is absolutely unique and not repeatable and there's no other place we live in, Dogen calls this the stage of the present moment. then you bring your energy into this situation which is the seed of any future but most of us spend our time like we are in a dentist office wait waiting for the future to happen, which was probably painful. So we read some magazines and we sit there and what's going to happen next?

[16:27]

That means, in fact, you think the world is permanent. So you can intellectually think it's impermanent, but if in fact you don't experience this as unique, in fact you think it's permanent. So I wanted to give you the three minds of daily consciousness. And I think I should also make a distinction for you between awareness and consciousness. And if I can do that, perhaps that's enough useful stuff, I hope useful stuff from Buddhism.

[17:28]

It might be useful in your other workshops and you're working with focusing. The three minds of daily consciousness are free mind. And I say daily consciousness because this isn't meditation. And one is borrowed consciousness. One is, we can call, secondary consciousness. And immediate consciousness. Immediate consciousness is, if I look at you, and I don't have any thoughts particularly, I just feel your presence.

[18:54]

I'm not thinking about you. Perhaps it's a little bit like sunbathing. I think people sunbathe partly because they want to be tan. But probably just as much at least because the sun disperses thoughts. And it can disperse thoughts so thoroughly, you wake up with a sunburn. So I think when you're sitting out here by the pool or lying on a beach, pretty soon time slows down. And you hear maybe birds or kids or something.

[20:04]

But it floats in kind of a big space. We could say that's a taste of timelessness. Or a taste of immediate consciousness. And I actually do think people suddenly go sunbathing because it does give them this experience of a spacious kind of mind. And that's immediate consciousness. Now say that we go for a walk, two or three of us. We're walking along and we're not saying much. You're just feeling the path. And if you work with your senses, the vijnanas, we say in Buddhism, you might be working with just, you might be paying, giving attention to just the smell of the path, the leaves, the grass.

[21:21]

Or the presence of one tree, three trees, etc. I took a wonderful walk today, which I went down to the forest and all around and back through this new way. And there's some wonderful stretches of forest here. And the trees each have their own presence. So if you're walking along, say the two or three of us are walking along, and we just are feeling this presence of in our senses of the path and the trees. Again, that's immediate consciousness. But then say, we're walking and Gaurav says, oh look, they cut They've cut, thinned the trees, cut a number of trees out over there.

[22:27]

And that engages me in a certain amount of thinking. And we call that secondary consciousness. Okay. And so, pretty easily though, I can go back to just feeling the path and so forth in the immediate consciousness. And then Guruji says, you know, Johannes said 20 minutes that looks like half an hour. And I have to make a phone call before the break is over. And then we're what we call horror conscious. Now what's the difference? The difference is that the immediate consciousness and secondary consciousness are rooted in the immediate situation.

[23:42]

So while I'm walking, I'm being nourished by the walk. And when Geralt points out that they cut some trees down, that's still the immediate situation. So I'm still nourished by that. As soon as I start thinking about phone calls and the length of the break and things like that, the immediate situation doesn't nourish me anymore. Well, that's okay. I've got lots of energy. But by 8 o'clock tonight, I'm going to be a lot tireder. And what does our culture emphasize? The productiveness of borrowed consciousness.

[24:44]

Let me give you another example. I can look at you in immediate consciousness and feel your presence. I can think about you and say, well, you're younger than I am. That's secondary consciousness. But I don't know your birthday. I can only know it if you tell me. And you only know it because your parents told you. You weren't born knowing your birthday. You didn't wake up saying, July 7th, 1911. But our culture is primarily in borrowed consciousness. Our whole educational system educates borrowed consciousness.

[26:06]

We measure ourselves in comparison to other people how much consciousness we borrowed compared to how much they borrowed. Which is okay. It's nice to be smart and have a good memory. But what you're doing is measuring yourself in terms of a consciousness which doesn't nourish you. Now, we have to have jobs and all that stuff, and you have to function in borrowed consciousness. Let's say you're a computer programmer. It's very important that you know a lot of stuff in order to do computer programming. But I bet if you don't, I bet the best computer programmers spend their day in immediate consciousness.

[27:13]

Because it's where their creativity is and where their energy is. Then they use their borrowed consciousness to solve some problems, but their default position is immediate consciousness. Now, why I think this is useful is you can begin, let's say you take a walk sometime while you're here. You can do it anytime, but a walk is kind of useful. And as you walk along, get a feeling for immediate consciousness.

[28:18]

Sometimes you may just get bored. This is boring, looking at trees. That means you're really identified with your thoughts. But say you can get a feeling for this immediate consciousness. And then you say to your friend, or your friend says to you, well, those trees have been cut down over there. And you can feel the bump. You can feel the shift in your mind when you have to start thinking about, oh yeah, the farmer cut those trees down. But the more you have a feel, actual physical feel, remember, all mental phenomena has a physical component.

[29:24]

The more you know this immediate consciousness physically, you can stay in it. So it pulls this back down into immediate consciousness. Does that make sense? Okay. Now, say that Gerald reminds me of what Johannes said, and I'm going to be late again, and I go from immediate consciousness up into borrowed consciousness. And generally, once you're there, you stay there.

[30:35]

But you can still feel the bump. And the more you know the bump, you can feel when you're in borrowed consciousness where you're being depleted. Depleted means losing energy. You're being depleted, not completed. You can go back down. Unfortunately, I think most people spend most of their time in here. At the end of the day you say, I feel bitter. Or I'd better watch television or something. Because we've been depleted by being in this consciousness all day. So one of the functions of practicing mindfulness, bringing your attention to your breath, and you can use stairways and things like that when you tend to be alone to remind yourself to come back to your breath.

[32:07]

Every time you practice mindfulness during the day, shifting into nourishing immediate consciousness. Now, if I'm speaking with you, Ideally, I'm speaking, but I'm speaking from immediate consciousness. In other words, although I have certain things I know about practice, and I can speak to you about them, it will be much more nourishing for you if I can speak about them while feeling this immediate situation and being nourished by it.

[33:16]

Part of my job as a Zen teacher is to do my daily life based on immediate consciousness. So, immediate consciousness is not just this. Immediate consciousness is also this line. As I'm speaking to you, my attention is always returning back to immediate consciousness. That speaking to you remains immediate consciousness.

[34:17]

One time when I was in Munich, I had to do a seminar. The people said, oh, the Dalai Lama is going to be in, the holiness is going to be in Munich at the time. And then some said, His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be in Munich now. And we have tickets, would you like to go? I said, well, all right, yeah. I got to know His Holiness moderately well because His first visit to the United States, He stayed with us over a week in my temple in California. But he's now a world celebrity and it's kind of like too much to try to see him.

[35:19]

He's got an entourage bigger than this room. But he's a very sweet guy. And an extraordinarily fine person. And he's also not only a monk, he's a little bit of a chipmunk. He's not just a monk, but also a little monkey. He was in this huge Olympic stadium. And he was looking around and scratching his head. At some point he spotted my shaved head where he waved. But he gave a talk which was contentless. And a famous liberal Nobel laureate scientist was giving a talk with him.

[36:25]

And it was interesting to watch. Because the scientist gave a very intelligent, full of content talk. talk. But it mostly came out of borrowed consciousness. Sometimes it went down into secondary consciousness. You could feel that sometimes he realized he was in this room with all these people. But most of the time he was remembering what he was supposed to say. kam es als Erinnerung hervor, was er sagte. Und seine Heiligkeit stand auf und sagte, wir wollen alle fröhlich sein und glücklich. Ihr wollt glücklich sein, ich will glücklich sein. Und lasst wir glücklich sein praktizieren.

[37:26]

Ich mache natürlich Spaß, aber viel mehr hat er wirklich nicht gesagt. But everyone felt fantastic. He made a couple of comments about the Chinese where he kind of went up in a borrowed consciousness. But afterwards, everyone I mean, thousands of people streamed out into the subways, into the underground. And it was after a peace march. It was like after a peace march. You know how, if you've ever been in a peace march back in the... I'm sure you remember when you came back from a peace march in the 60s and 70s.

[38:27]

Everyone is very happy and you walk along and smile. So it was like being after a peace march. And people were singing on the subways. One U-Bahn would come this way and one this way. This would have this song. And so the people in this would start singing their song. So here's a person who talked At most 30 minutes. And he was able to bring a feeling of joy to thousands of people, a whole corner of Munich, for some hours. We would call this a siddhi in Buddhism, a special power.

[39:28]

In other words, his practice is so developed that he is not only able to stay in immediate consciousness, But the things he says are a little bit like fishing lines he throws out into the audience. And then he pulls you into immediate consciousness. And after half an hour you feel like you've been on the beach for six hours. Feel a wonderful kind of spacious consciousness because the content of his talk was immediate consciousness, not happiness. Not words. So this is a very powerful way to begin to know the world. Okay.

[40:37]

Now, immediate consciousness, the more you get familiar with it, begins to open you to hearing the world and open you to meditation states of mind, and we can understand different kinds of minds as different kinds of liquids, with different kinds of viscosity or density. So, waking mind is one kind of mind, in which thoughts float. But for instance, when you first wake up in the morning, and you're trying to remember a dream,

[41:47]

If you're too conscious, all the contents of the dream sink. Because in ordinary daily consciousness, dream images won't float. So you kind of have to get yourself back into the mind Remember an image or a feeling from the dream. Then the liquid, mind liquid called dreaming consciousness appears and the dream reappears or a new dream appears. So you can begin to know the different liquids or viscosities of different minds. And you don't have to practice meditation to do it. Meditation increases your your ability to observe.

[43:06]

Just waking up from a dream, you can feel this kind of bump. between dreaming mind and waking mind. If you begin to know the feeling of dreaming mind, you can have dreaming mind present in daily consciousness because you can stay with the feeling. So we could say that, again, the Buddhist practice is to learn the language of minds instead of the language of words. But maybe consciousness then is a door to meditation mind and awareness. I feel I'm giving you a little too much for one day.

[44:10]

Some people agree, I can see. Sorry. But, you know, I'm going to leave, so I wanted to... So maybe I will just make the distinction between awareness and consciousness and then we'll stop. And this is another... introductory distinction that allows you to start seeing distinctions of mind. Say that you go to bed and you don't have an alarm clock. And you decide to wake up at 6.02 in the morning.

[45:21]

Now it doesn't always work, but often you wake up, you look at your clock, 6.02. Some people do that quite easily, some people it's not so common. But it definitely happens. But you were asleep. What was tracking the time while you were not conscious? We can call that awareness. Awareness is always present. If I get up and I trip, I'll almost certainly catch myself and not hurt myself. What did that? Awareness, not consciousness. Consciousness is far too slow to figure out, well, if you put your hand there and you keep your finger...

[46:21]

So awareness is generally present and very fast. I would say that a Formula One driver at 200 miles an hour has to be driving in awareness, not consciousness. In fact, most of us, when we drive, we're driving in some kind of awareness while we're still thinking about things. So awareness is a different kind of liquid than consciousness. Mental liquid. I mean, we don't use, we don't teach awareness in our culture. We do in sports and learning to play the piano and things like that, but in general we don't teach it.

[47:42]

It's toilet training. We teach our kids not to wet the bed during the night. So what remembers not to wet your bed? Awareness, not consciousness. But now yoga cultures emphasize educate awareness more than they educate consciousness. So when you practice mindfulness, you're beginning the education process of awareness. And awareness is present always right now, although we notice consciousness. Although you notice consciousness, awareness is present.

[48:52]

And the more you bring your attention to your immediate situation, how you're sitting, breathing and so forth, you're beginning to create a way in which awareness can come to the surface. Now I've tried to show you during this short period of time some of the dynamics of how mind and body are understood in Buddhism. with the hope that some of this might be useful to you and observing yourself. Because to really observe yourself you have to free yourself sort of from your habits of observation.

[49:53]

So I would suggest you notice things like awareness. Notice your breathing. Notice what nourishes you on each moment rather than depletes you. Notice what makes you feel complete on each moment rather than what makes you feel incomplete. Notice ways that you feel connected rather than ways in which you feel separated. If you just bring these little seeds into your activity, a new garden can flower in your life. Thank you for translating.

[51:05]

You're welcome. Thank you for listening. Danke fürs Zuhören. I'm sorry I didn't... I'm sorry I may have burdened you a bit. Vielleicht habe ich euch zu viel aufgegeben. But that's my job, to burden you. Aber das ist meine Aufgabe, euch eine Bürde zu geben. If I didn't do that, I would be... Yeah, I'd like to burden you a little bit. So maybe we can sit for a few moments. Not for hours, though. Just... It's been great to talk to you. Focusing has made you focused or absorbent.

[52:05]

So different from a telephone, huh? Telephone throws us into borrowed consciousness. This draws us more into stillness or immediate consciousness. thank you So let's withdraw our focus from our thoughts and almost become non-focused and become focused on the field of mind itself.

[53:49]

The mind in the body. Awareness is more mind in the body. And breath can draw the mind down into the stillness of the body.

[54:57]

Meow. Thank you.

[58:41]

Thank you. Focusing must be a powerful practice because it feels particularly good to be in this room with you and to meditate with you. Thank you very much. Thank you for translating again.

[60:10]

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