It's nice that you started with sitting. I didn't expect it, actually. You might think, why wouldn't I expect it? Isn't that what Zen is all about? Yes, of course, but I'm not sure you've all agreed to sit. You came for a lecture. And I don't like to coerce anyone into sitting. But if you decide to come to the seminar, maybe you're going to have to sit some. It's nice to see so many people I know. And some of you I don't know.

[01:06]

That's nice too. I like the Greek idea of friendship. Which is that affection... which evolves through a shared vision. Maybe we could have some lights so that we not only have everybody sit, we put them in the dark. It was all right a minute ago. That's okay. That's fine. Which means that you take care of friendship, a good friendship, at least my experience of good friendship, takes care of the shared friendship.

[02:16]

or possibly shared vision. That means you make some effort at noticing if you do share a vision, And articulating the vision. And I notice that when friendships, kind of, you know, somebody you're good friends with, after a while you'll see them much. The main thing that I've noticed changes is you... slipped away somehow from sharing a vision. You haven't taken care of that anymore. Can you hear way back in the back there? Why don't you come forward?

[03:25]

You too. You know, this is a shared vision. I want you all cozy. Thank you very much, Ivan. Yeah, so that's really in the end for me why I practice together with people is because it's really a process. of sharing a vision. Yeah, we have this topic, of course, topic for the seminar. Yeah, and it's Buddha nature or what is Buddha nature. And this question is... Yeah, it's caused a lot of problem in Buddhism.

[04:42]

I mean, it's not easy to understand what is meant by Buddha nature. It sounds easy at first, but it's not so easy. And how you practice with this idea or sense of Buddha nature, what we should talk about. But it's not so easy to get there. I think we have to get there through a series of questions, probably. And I think we can get there through some questions. Possibly. Like, what is this body?

[05:47]

No, I presume, I think most of you... No, not most, but some of you don't practice and some of you don't sit regularly. But the... The idea and practice of Buddha nature is rooted in the researches of people through meditation practice. So even though we're not going to probably meditate anywhere near as much as our forebearers who... tried to develop this practice and tried to develop it too so that it could be shared because deeply rooted in this practice is the sense of a shared vision of realization, of enlightenment.

[06:53]

A shared vision of its possibility, the possibility of enlightenment, and a shared vision of the world that arises from enlightenment. So when we talk about something like Buddha Nature, where you're entering into sharing a vision, with a lineage of friends, of practitioners, that goes back two and a half thousand years. And when you really share a vision, friends in the past aren't so different from friends in the present. And the deep sense of being is the sense of those who continue.

[08:27]

If you imagine the world ended with this generation, There was some terrible war, a nuclear disaster or something. Probably all of us would grieve, each of us would grieve for everything we imagine that could continue. So when you have some, you know, When you think of it that way, you can really feel how our full sense of being is also those who continue being. A full sense of being is inseparable from those who continue being.

[09:40]

Of course our children, if we have children. But really just the people beside us. Each of us is continuing being. Being what being might be or is. But what is being? Today I spoke about when someone comes out of the forest, you've been lost for a while and somebody appears and you're freezing cold and they show you the way out of the forest. At that moment you don't think, oh, I don't like this kind of person. I don't think I'll take his suggestion of how do you get out of here. Yeah, you just don't think that way.

[10:41]

You say, oh, a human being. Oh, great. How do you get out of this place? In a way, we could say at that moment you're feeling something like pure being. Yeah, so I think we could all, we probably all had experiences like that, and we can certainly imagine it. But if that's a feeling of generosity of affection of pure being, as I asked earlier today, why don't we always feel that way? I think that's actually a deep and profound question. Why don't we always feel this sense of pure being with each being?

[11:56]

Yeah, so now we have one question, what is Buddha-nature? What is being or pure being? Not as some philosophical concept, but just as the sense you might have of somebody appears when you're lost or hungry or something like that. But I also said a few minutes ago, what is the body? Do we even know what the body is? So let's go, let's kind of, even though, as I said, we don't, all of us don't sit, we don't have a regular sitting practice. Let's look at our sitting practice for those who sit.

[12:59]

Let's look at sitting practice. Yeah, if you're used to sitting, you sit regularly. And you sit in the Zen style, which is without stages. uncorrected mind. Yeah, you have some experience of sitting. Something's happening. Well, if you don't name it, if you don't identify it, What can you say about it? It's some kind of living territory. It's hard to name it. And you can practice actually with what am I and Who am I?

[14:10]

And it's surprising, I don't know how it works in German, but in English if you say, what am I? What is this? It's actually a different, it's a, somehow it's different and it calls forth a different feeling than if you say, who is this? If I say, who is sitting here? I mean, implicitly, there's some kind of comparison between you... who's sitting over there or not sitting. So if I say, what's sitting, what is this?

[15:17]

On the surface it sounds more impersonal. What is impersonal? Who is more personal? But if I try who? What is this? What is this? What is sitting? I actually feel more connected with you than if I say who is sitting. Because the what-ness of my sitting is somehow something like the what-ness of your sitting. You can practice with, and you can bring the idea into your thinking, what is sitting? Who is sitting? You can ask, who is observing the sitting? You can ask, what is observing the sitting? Is it necessarily a who?

[16:23]

Yeah, so here I'm, you know, if we have a topic like Buddha nature, what is Buddha nature? Yeah, we have to ask some other questions. We may not know what Buddha nature is, but we ought to at least know what our body is. Or what our self is. or our who-ness or our what-ness, why bother with these questions? There's more important things to do. But even when you do these important things, you're actually always in a situation with others And how you decide what you want to do, how you decide what you want to do, so actually you're really, even in such a question as that, we're in fact asking who

[17:42]

Who is living this life we live? What is living this life we live? How do we know what we want to do, really want to do? Men, you know, men who have long working lives, often put off until they retire, deciding to be who they want to be. And some even then had nervous breakdowns because they got so much karma of being who they didn't want to be to earn money. It's often too late to decide who you really want to be, how you really want to live. So I think at least I think it's wise from the simple point of view of mental health and personal integrity.

[19:12]

To now, now, whatever your now is. Find out who and what you want to really do. It doesn't mean you have to do it. You may not be able to because of circumstances. You may think, well, it's going to be too painful to know that. I'd rather not know because I can't do it, so I'd rather not know. That's a tactical error. It's better to find out and not do it than to not know. Hmm. seeing this

[20:37]

Excuse me, cute little big girl over there. I have a three-year-old and I'm pretending very successfully to be a young father. And it looks great to be a child. Sometimes it looks great to be a child. But the child is... deeply wants to be an adult. So the child is living a child's life while Thinking, oh, it's going to be great to be an adult. All the things that I can't do adequately now, I can do adequately when I'm an adult. And then finally you become an adult. It ain't that great. And you think, it was so nice being a child.

[21:50]

Adulthood does not live up to its promise. But maybe practice is about finding a way to make adulthood live up to its promise. Yes, so now I want to go back again to this question, what is the body? So let's say you sit, or you can imagine sitting. And you kind of let go of your sense of body and mind. And the main reason for this posture is it's energetically very... Yeah, successful, healthy. If you can get used to pretzeling your legs.

[22:54]

It's a very good posture in Germany. Pretzel legs. And because the architecture of your posture supports you. So you can kind of let go of everything. You are sort of taking an inner vacation. Excuse me, goodbye for a while. Oh, excuse me. It's like that. I'm not sure.

[23:55]

After you're really sitting, you don't want anybody to ring the bell. It's something like going to sleep. Going to sleep where you release yourself out of consciousness. And another kind of mind carries you. Yeah, almost... All of us go to sleep once a day or sometimes twice a day. It's actually quite good to see how conscious you can remain throughout the process of going to sleep. It's quite good to see how consciously you can stay through this process of falling asleep.

[25:07]

Yes. If you want to study the mind, study how our mind is present in all our activities and our moods, if you don't want to practice pretzels then, you can practice going to sleep zen. So as you're falling asleep, just see if you can follow the process of falling asleep. It's a way of, actually a way of developing mindfulness. So you get closer and closer to going to sleep.

[26:08]

And then suddenly you're asleep, but you don't know you're asleep because you're no longer conscious. Yeah, and if you really stay conscious, you can't go to sleep. But it's interesting. You can begin to discover an awareness that stays pretty long into the process of falling asleep. Comparing, thinking, self-referential consciousness. The surface of the present. Yeah, the present is something we establish. I mean, I have a sense of the present here.

[27:18]

But it's actually established through a sort of sensorial scanning. If you take a photograph, it's pretty difficult to get it all to fit into the But what actually what I'm doing is I'm looking there and looking there and looking there and looking there real quickly and in minute ways. And my brain, my body, my brain puts it together with a sense of duration. As if the present actually existed for a length of time. But the present doesn't exist for any length of time.

[28:21]

It's like that. It's already past, already past, already past. But why do we experience it as having some kind of duration. That's another actually profound question. What is the experience of duration that we call the present? Well, it's done by a combination of, we could call it, Sensorial scanning and memory scanning. Because I'm recognizing things in terms of memory. If I had no memory, I couldn't make any sense of anything. And consciousness is very linked to the present.

[29:28]

We're establishing a present and we're establishing a consciousness in the present. and they're closely related. When you wake up into the morning, And the present establishes itself. And consciousness establishes itself. I have to go to work, I have to do these things. Once that starts, it's real difficult to fall back asleep again. You've established both a present in which you're going to act and a consciousness.

[30:35]

If you really don't want to... You're really sleepy and you... The dream you just had was great. Somebody the other day said to me, Jonas Hoff said, you know, when I wake up in the morning, I've had a really great dream. I think it's part of me. When I wake up in the morning and I've had a terrible dream, I say, it's just a dream. Isn't that funny that we do that? Yeah. So the reverse is happening when you go to sleep. The present slips away or even sort of breaks into parts.

[31:40]

It sort of disintegrates. And the sense of consciousness, yeah, if you're going to go to sleep, consciousness has to slip away too. For me, when I notice this, I know when I'm going to sleep because my breathing changes. I can hear and feel my breathing change. It's an interesting moment. Because your breathing becomes involuntary. If you go into a room where a kid or an adult is pretending to be asleep, you can almost always tell they're pretending.

[32:41]

Because it doesn't feel involuntary. It's conscious. Yeah, you know what I mean. But if the breathing really you know in your own body, it's involuntary, you know your child or your friend or whoever it is, is asleep. So there's a difference between voluntary conscious breathing and non-conscious breathing. unconscious breathing. So if you do if I do follow my my follow something into sleeping because once breathing becomes involuntary consciousness is gone. Now there's some kind of knowing that continues, that feels and is present in the sleeping.

[34:05]

When you're meditating a great deal in unusual circumstances, actually this awareness can continue all night long. You can be completely asleep, but know what's going on in the room, and even have certain kinds of conversations with somebody who might come in and ask you something. Man kann vollständig festschlafen, trotzdem auf diese Weise anwesend sein und sogar Unterhaltung mit jemandem führen, der in den Raum kommt, dich etwas fragt. Wenn denken dafür notwendig ist oder denken gefordert ist, dann weckt es einen gewöhnlich auf. Aber wenn euch einfach jemand nach einer Information fragt, Where did you leave the car key? On top of the refrigerator.

[35:08]

Now, most of the time, if I do this practice, I'm not so aware after five or ten minutes that I just sleep. Okay, but what, then I'm asking, what is consciousness? What is mind? What is a, what kind of consciousness consciousness continues in sleep and what kind of consciousness is tied to the present. The people, the way it is is fine. The way it was was fine. You couldn't hardly see me. Oh, that's good. I think you can see me now.

[36:27]

Now I can't talk about going to sleep anymore. I was being programmed. They're on top of the refrigerator and I wish you'd quit waking me up. Yeah. So what in the mix of consciousness, what part of consciousness goes away when we sleep and what part of consciousness stays aware? Or perhaps when we fall asleep, consciousness is replaced by another kind of mind we could call maybe awareness.

[37:33]

So maybe awareness appears... in which we dream after consciousness goes away. Or maybe awareness is Always present, even during consciousness. Much like the stars are there all day long, but we don't see them. We even call Venus the morning star in the morning and the evening star at night. It has a different name.

[38:34]

So the stars are just covered by consciousness, by daylight, by the present. So maybe awareness is just covered by consciousness and it's actually there like the stars all day long. Now maybe awareness is functioning in us. Maybe if we could see deeply into consciousness we could see the stars of awareness and consciousness. No, here I'm not talking about anything esoteric.

[39:39]

I'm just talking about what in fact is our experience if we study our experience. And so I'm saying that this practice, these people who explored these things, They necessarily started from their own experience. And then they tried to notice their experience. And mindfulness practices and meditation practices simply are tools to notice our experience. They were developed so that we could notice our experience. There may be other reasons.

[40:43]

A friend of mine who is a poet and an anthropologist and one of the pioneers of Zen in America Gary Snyder. He thinks that probably hunters hit upon meditation. Because to hunt You have to stay very still for long periods of time until your chance to catch an animal occurs. And so pretty soon they're sitting there waiting for the animal and they're so blissed out they don't care if an animal comes. Buffalo, tiger, I don't care. Isn't that why people fish? So there may be other roots or reasons how people discovered meditation.

[42:06]

But it certainly was developed as ways to study our experience. Yeah, and so One of the fruits of this kind of studying of our own experience, like falling asleep or awareness and consciousness, is the idea of Buddha-nature. If we're really going to get a feeling for Buddha-nature, we should get to it through our own experience or understanding our experience. Then if I try to give you some historical or conceptual sense of Buddha nature in the context of

[43:07]

Chinese Zen. So this practice of sitting in a posture which supports you so you can just let go let go like you do let go into sleeping, in much the same way that you let go into sleeping, you let go into zazen, into meditation, but you stay, because the posture helps you, you stay upright. It's just because of this reason that falling asleep in zazen is such a problem.

[44:22]

Because the letting go of consciousness usually, for us, triggers sleep. So as we in meditation let go of consciousness, we also have to develop a body with a lot of vitality in it that keeps us awake. And that vitality that keeps us awake is also closely connected to the awareness that can be present in sleeping. So you go into the meditation is somewhat like going to sleep. But you stay awake in some other kind of mind that carries you but doesn't establish a present or usual consciousness.

[45:43]

Who or what is that? Is that Buddha nature? Don't be too quick. Let's not jump to any conclusions here. But at least it's the territory of our experience if our mindfulness is developed enough to notice. All right, so let's imagine you've slipped out of consciousness, but you're in some other kind of knowing, some other kind of awareness. And then what happens?

[46:45]

Sometimes not only does the present disappear, but our usual sense of the boundaries of our body disappears. Somehow we're still a body. There's still a sense of the front to the body. There's still a sense of up and down. I mean if something happens, somebody called fire, if you're sitting on the meditation platform, facing the wall. You don't all jump off backwards thinking the back is the front. For the most part, your body still remembers what's front and back and what's up and down. But the usual boundaries of the body are different.

[47:49]

You're in some kind of living territory, some kind of living space. Is it not way inside the body? It's not at the walls of the meditation hall. But sometimes it might be at the walls of the meditation hall or even farther, it feels like. Actually, you begin to discover sometimes a body feels... Pretty wide. I ask, is this the body? It's not just mind. It's something more like a body. And it has a center.

[49:08]

And part of practice is to establish a center. And we usually establish a center through our breath. And feeling often our breath in our backbone. And if you establish a sense of breath, it almost becomes like a rope. You can let the body of awareness float out, away, but you can pull it back in with the breath. This is not And that is not esoteric. This is just our actual experience if you find out how to stay aware but not conscious in meditation.

[50:15]

Now let me just end because it's time to end, I think. Yeah, I started, oh, I don't know, a few months ago, I was really, really, really dark at Crestone. And when there's no moon and you have a black, black desert sky, and we're at Crestone, I don't know, 2,500 meters. And it's one morning at 3.30, I didn't have a flashlight. Usually I have a little tiny flashlight I keep in my sleeve and at least shows me the rocks. Because I have about a 10-minute walk down to the meditation hall.

[51:18]

through the sort of forest over a lot of rocks and things, cactus. And for some reason I really like to wear a kind of traditional Indian style, not that I think I'm an Indian, Indian style moccasins that have no sole really, just a rounded leather. And when I walk, when I step on sharp stones, it brightens me up. I really feel where I'm walking. And where it's a lot of pine needles and something soft, I think, oh, if I could only make the world soft for everyone. But then the sharp stones brighten me up. I think, maybe that's okay, too. So I'm in complete darkness going down the hill.

[52:25]

I'm thinking, you know, let's see if I have a little awareness here that doesn't need consciousness that can feel my way down the mountain. Sometimes I miss the path and then I'm really in some kind of brambles. Because this has happened two or three times. But this time I suddenly found myself in some kind of being space. There was some kind of aliveness all around me. I found I was in the midst of a herd of large deer. And the deer are much bigger there than here in Germany.

[53:40]

Later I saw the group and it was usually a group of 11. They somehow weren't disturbed by me, because I had Indian moccasins on. And I wasn't disturbed by them, but I thought, hmm. Because they weren't moving. And I needed to move, but I didn't want to walk right into them. Because a big male deer disturbed... can think, what's this guy bumping into me for? So I'm in some kind of being space which made me feel my own being space.

[54:45]

And I couldn't quite say... What's my body and what's my mind? It was some kind of being space. Well, I moved slowly and somehow I and the deer figured it out and I got to the meditation hall. Where I was sitting with another kind of herd of being space. Is this being space Buddha-nature? Okay, that's a good time to stop. Now, Carlotta, do you want me to... Since not all of you are coming to the seminar, right? We should have some sort of questions after a while? So we take a break.

[55:48]

When we get tired of the break, I'll ring a bell. And if anybody's still here, we can have some discussion. As nice as I said the other night at your group, I won't notice if anyone escapes. Okay. Thanks a lot for coming.

[56:16]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_71.52