Some question about what I've said or what Nicole said. Let's start with any of those. If you have any questions about what I've said or what Nicole said, let's start with these questions. But you can't ask me about what Nicole said. I would be interested in what you said yesterday about having a leak. Having a leak? Yeah, nothing being done. That somehow, that's working in me.

[01:01]

Good. I have something to say. So she says she could also in the same vein ask me whether in the talk that I just gave, whether I felt a leak just by giving a talk. Because our understanding is that having a leak has something to do with sharing through compassion. In other words, was her dharma rain leaking? Well, when you, for instance, if you do a sashin, after the sashin, if you talk about it, your experience, sometimes you feel a loss of energy.

[02:36]

That's leaking. Okay, but that concept, and the word leaking works quite well in English at least, is that every activity you take on is at least, unless you're just silently sitting in meditation, something like that, even then it can be leaking. In German, leaking and licking is the same word, so that makes it a little ambiguous in German, but... In English, leaking and peeing are the same. So we have a problem here. So we could say that the practice is, you discover in meditation practice a certain intactness.

[03:49]

You feel intact. And then beginning practice is to notice that feeling of intactness. And further to notice when you lose the feeling of that intactness. Now, can you then in meditation discover the physical component of intactness? And so we could say that the physiology of meditation, physio-mental-ology of meditation practice, is to continue to develop the feeling of intactness until that actually and does become a kind of imperturbability.

[05:20]

And the image of Akshobhya as one of the all-encompassing Buddhas, his or her quality is imperturbability. And that is the development of discovering intactness and then in all kinds of situations noticing when you lose your intactness. And then the koan implies, how do you lose that intactness and yet still maintain it as you're teaching or practicing it? When circumstances, as sometimes the Bodhisattva is described, as the one who goes into the weeds, how do you go into that intactness?

[06:53]

that end the loss of intactness and yet still somehow maintain it. Now I've met a number of Korean teachers, Zen teachers, And they emphasize that realized practice is maintaining the Buddha position. And nothing disturbs. But the Chinese emphasis, and certainly the Japanese emphasis, is the bodhisattva position. You can be in any circumstances and still function within the potentiality of enlightenment.

[08:05]

Now, these are distinctions. that kind of articulate the topography and tomography of landscape, mindscape, buddhascape. which are distinctions which help us make our life the path in all of our circumstances.

[09:09]

Okay, that was more than you expected maybe. Yes. There's a crack in everything. That's where the white comes in. Could one say that a crack or a leak is actually the necessity to develop a feeling of compassion and consciousness? In relationship to what was just said, Leonard Cohen's phrase comes to mind where he says, there is a crack in everything and that's where the light comes.

[10:12]

And to bring that into relationship with this Cohen, could one say that the crack or the leak is necessary for compassion to come in? Yeah. And awareness too, because if there is something not really working, then we start to think about it. Yes, and when I decided to use the word exquisite, I thought of your emphasis on beauty. Okay, someone else? Yes, Andrea. Ever since you've begun speaking about consciousness being invisible and the function of practice to make it visible, that's something that I've been very concerned with.

[11:25]

And I would like to really appreciate once again how you, Nicole, They're your shadow boss, and you get me, Nicole. Yeah, how that person described this little aspect or stretch or something of your practice, yeah? Mm-hmm. I have three images that I would like to share, and my wish is that maybe you can speak about that today still.

[12:46]

Not about my pictures, but about this exploring. I promise, Christina, so I have to do it. One is that the quality of noticing in me is like a platform, that somehow doesn't quite have space, but if I was to make it material, it's more like it floats in space. But still, it's a kind of surface I can't stand. And that is the one, and that is something that plays an extremely important role in our work. That's the one thing and that plays such a big role in our work to develop that.

[13:52]

And the second thing is that last weekend, when you spoke about it, I was asked two questions. The first is, who actually does this consul? And the other thing is that when you spoke about this last week, I started asking myself two questions, and one is, who is doing this constructing? Never ask that question. ... Ja, das mache ich irgendwie, nach meinen Selbstüberzeugungen, Gewohnheitsmustern, Erwartungen usw. And I encountered this feeling that somehow I am doing this through my habitual patterns and my convictions and my feelings and so forth. And that there's also a second aspect to it where it's almost like it's constructing itself like an autopoetic process.

[14:58]

And I find this pulse between the two interesting. And the second question is, from what? So one of my passions is I like to cook. And so from that point of view, my question is, from what is this soup made of? What are the ingredients? Well, it's all part of it. So keep in mind what you say. Somewhere. Yes. I would join that. I found it very touching what Nicole said. That's a way of speaking that's very close to my own practice.

[16:20]

If, for example, when driving, I notice after a long stretch that I keep just being in my head, Then I try to rest or drive onto some kind of gas station or service station there. And then I go, what's the word for the sticks that you say when you pull your foot on the floor? Shuffle? Yeah, then I go shuffling really such that I feel my soul on the floor. You feel your soul? All right, good. Time's let us underfoot. And that, for example, in the toilet or in the bathroom, I wash my hands so that I feel contact with myself again.

[17:43]

It's also good that you went to the toilet. Probably, if you drank. ... Just so that I come into contact with my feeling reality, the reality of me. Yeah, yeah, I understand. My question is now in this form of remarking, from which you emerge and what moves you at the moment. Because at this moment I can express this remark. When what do you mean? Because at this moment I can express this remark. Okay. Yes, dear. And so then my question is, when in this moment of feeling, when something appears and my noticing it or feeling it, when I'm able to expand that sense of the noticing?

[18:52]

This was the . And that which appears, that I also accept, that I allow for it to appear and accept it. Unhook. Then this moment of noticing starts having this quality of, it's like unhooking. Yeah. And my experience is that at that moment, a shift or a change can occur almost by itself. And my question is, you also have And so my question is, I think in what I said, he understood as if I was adding something to that moment.

[20:04]

Yeah? And the question is, doesn't this change occur all by itself, just through the space of acceptance? I have such a practice, I can show it through a gesture, which is, I think, pretty close to what you're saying. If I notice something, so if there is an object in the perception, then I put it, I have such a feeling, as if I have doubled my attention anyway. I just put it on and wait for the moment until the contact is there. And then I let go. That's actually all. I have a second question.

[21:10]

Let me respond to your first one a little bit first. When you say you allow, you notice appearance. And you allow it to take whatever form it does. Or you feel some unhooking. This is to notice the construction process of consciousness. And the more you can notice that construction process of consciousness and experience its articulation, then you're developing your ability to articulate the experience of consciousness.

[22:18]

And it is much easier to participate in an articulated consciousness than one that just seems to be experienced as a picture, which you're not participating in. So all of this is a process of incubation and articulation, and it takes time, but you're developing a yogic skill. Okay, number two. There is a new word that can be used, but for me it is still this sentence from Dongshan from his poem.

[23:48]

about the word to leak again. For me still, this poem from Dongshan in his Enlightenment poem. It is now I, or it is now me. Yet I am not it. It is very important to keep this process going. That line is very important to me, to keep that process going. That means, my inner loop, or my inner energy, will therefore not, or there is nothing where I can catch, where there is no catching, in anything that comes to me, but I take it, recognize it, Yeah. My inner energy, there's nothing in what appears where I could hook onto, but it's more like I'm receiving it, taking it in, and then I'm releasing it again.

[25:14]

Okay. Thank you. Congratulations. No, he says, no congratulations. Don't shadowbox now. I congratulated him. Someone else? Yes? Why does he have a gavel? Why does he have anything, you mean? A hand? A head? A nose? Well, because a gavel represents a juridical statement, establishing a law. So sometimes the word dharma means the law. So he's establishing... the rules. It's not a hammer, it's a gap.

[26:16]

It's a hammer if you use it to put up a picture, though. It's a hammer. About the visibility of consciousness and awareness. If we look for an object, one can't find it. But if you get a feel for the activity and the function, then it very much can be felt. In consciousness, the way it is putting itself together and then disappears again.

[27:39]

And in awareness, maybe the presence. Yeah. You always, usually when you find something, it's in the last place you look. But finding that last place is quite hard. Well, maybe I should... Christoph, will you just... Yes? Hi, over there. Much of what has been said is wonderful, and I feel like I can learn a lot. And at the same time, I feel like I could write an essay much like Russell wrote, Why I'm Not a Christian.

[29:12]

I could write, Why I'm Not Buddhist. My attempt to practice hasn't worked out. There are different aspects to that, and one of them is that I still feel that it's dangerous. The practice is dangerous. Meditation as a human being, but also in the context of learning. not meditation practice itself i do have a good i could encourage meditation practice but i would say in the context of a buddhist practice but as i said there are various aspects to that what what is the danger

[30:29]

for example, physiological changes, because I haven't understood them. I don't understand. For example, when I would speak with colleagues at work, I wasn't able anymore to interpret their voices and what they were saying. You mean because you were meditating? After I had started to try to practice. In a Buddhist context? Yeah. An analogy would be a radio that's simultaneously sending on different wavelength frequencies.

[31:57]

And the result then is only incomprehensible noises. Or another example would be like seasickness when the sense organs Yeah, I understand. maybe I should say this. Yeah, but you can, yeah. Yeah, when the sense organs receive dissociated or different contradicting kinds of information, and then one gets nauseous from not being able to integrate the different information. Yeah, I understand. My thought is, That's why I can say it's wonderful and wonderful to be able to do it myself.

[33:04]

Because, of course, I would also like to do it myself in the next ten years, because it's just so beautifully done by my father and mother. So the question is if you can say something about that ambiguity between what's wonderful and what's dangerous. And one of the reasons I don't speak in seminars is because my feeling is that everything is simplified quite a bit and talked about as if it's wonderful, but that's not my experience. Yeah, good, good. Thank you. Well, I would say from what you've said, and from my feel of you and looking at you, that you clearly have the capacity to practice. And that you can notice and feel these differences and dangers is actually indicative of your capacity for practice.

[34:12]

And it is not the case that everyone has the capacity to practice. You have to be capable of a certain kind of experiential differentiation. And you have to have a certain kind of power of intention. But I think every serious practitioner feels some kind of dangers like you're talking about.

[35:17]

And I think most people, most practitioners make, for the sake of necessity, make a compromise about it. Because the first few years of practice, serious practice, strongly intentional practice, is that you're going into the unknown. And you may be changed in ways you have no control over. And you know these images of dying as if you're going down a tunnel and you're not going to come back.

[36:18]

And I remember I had such morphic images when I first started practicing. And I consoled myself by how could a simple posture hurt me. So I was in such bad shape that I was willing to take the chance. So I decided, I'm just going to trust this posture. How can it harm me? And see what happens. But it is true that... potentially developed practice, changes you psychologically, but also changes you physiologically.

[38:04]

Dogen says somewhere, the world of those who practice regularly is simply different than other people's world. And most people make a compromise and say, well, I can feel that I'm only going to change enough so that I can still fit in. And that's one of the problems with... You know, and I hate to go into this too much, but it's one of the problems with not having much... or monastic-like practice as part of your life. Because there's a degree to which there's a kind of destruction of you.

[39:08]

That the teacher ideally is good enough to precipitate kindly. And like one of the measures is if you can still insult somebody, they are not very developed. The other day I was packing and I was short of time. So I was trying to get ready.

[40:29]

I knew I was almost certain I was going to miss the plane, which I did. I don't know if I should tell this story, but I've started. No, no, no. So we knew there was this huge construction zone right outside the Zurich airport, and you just can't get through it. It's like being in a parking lot. So finally I had to call Eric and Christine and say, I'm taking a little plane. But before, we were trying to get into the car, and I was pretty sure I was going to miss the boat anyway.

[41:37]

So I was getting my bags downstairs. And as we were going down the stairs and she came up to help me, And Atmar had taken one bag down. I said, what the hell? Pick up that damn bag! Didn't I say something like that? Yes, you said something very much like that. And then later, because I could see she was a little disturbed by it, So I didn't have to make it better, but I thought I should try to make it better. So I said, have you ever heard me holler at someone like that before?

[42:40]

She said, no. And I said, don't you imagine it might have been a test. Because I was laughing afterwards at how she was reacting. But if you're really intact, even approaching in particular, these things don't bother you. You say, well, this is funny. What the hell is wrong with you? But you can't do that with practitioners, particularly in the West. People in Dokusan in Japan, they use a stick.

[43:43]

So if somebody says something obviously kind of self-interested or stupid, you whack them. And I stopped doing that because I found people 10 years later remembered it as an insult. So before you can give real feedback to somebody, they have to have given you permission. And you have to... really be capable of handling any kind of feedback, even exaggerated wrong feedback. So you want to create a kind of imperturbability. And I can say, I don't know, I can say Sukhiroshi once in front of the whole sangha.

[45:00]

Took me by the scruff of the neck like you do with a cat. And he's only about this tall today. I always thought he was bigger than me until I saw photographs. And he literally took me by the scruffle neck and put me flat on the ground and started hitting me with a stick in front of everybody. And he said, you should understand under my blows. You should understand under my blows. And I just thought, well, this is what he's doing. It didn't bother me at all. I just thought, well, this is what he has to do.

[46:03]

So... And I knew he was also doing it for another person we couldn't do that to. And he could do it to me because he knew I could handle it. He's doing it actually for Philip Wilson as well. But he's dead now, so I can say as young. But you can't do that in the West because people would call 911. Anyway, it doesn't take a mean teacher to solve your problems.

[47:23]

But it is the case that this sense of, this may change me and I have no control over it, needs to be faced if one's going to practice. That feeling, that what they said, if one's going to practice, then what? You have to be willing to face the feeling and the dangers, the real dangers, that you're going to change. And I was always, at that time, I was always already a bit crazy. So I thought, I may go completely crazy, but I thought, I have to take the chance. Okay. So that's enough. Enough of enough for a while. So let me use this opportunity to say something about seeing consciousness.

[48:46]

And lunch is at one o'clock, right? So we have another two hours, are you ready? I'm lying, I'm lying. So maybe we could stretch a little or change your posture if you want. How are your legs doing?

[49:55]

They're okay. She's having a hard time with her legs these days. Okay.

[50:57]

Now, first of all, as I said, we have to be aware, it's necessary to have the concept that consciousness is difficult to see, but can be seen. You have to establish this view in your basic feeling, responsive feeling, respond... responsive feeling to the world, that consciousness is a construct. And in fact, it's always under construction. And there must be a way that this construction process can be observed.

[52:27]

Now, I've said this recently in a number of different ways, and I keep trying to find ways to say it. But if you slide that slide back into the view projector, Aber wenn du dieses dir zurück in den Sichtweisenprojektor hineinschiebst, wenn dieses Bild konzeptuell und intentional da ist, dann beginnt das zu verändern, wie du bemerkst. And if you're practicing meditation regularly, which means once a day for 30 or 40 minutes at least, your inner attentional skills are developing.

[53:33]

Even without your doing much, because the posture itself, with the mental posture, don't move, begins to change you. And the energetic posture of the spine is always important thermometer and barometer. You know, Husserl. Husserl. Anyway, who is Husserl?

[54:45]

I don't know who he is. I'm so dumb, I'm sorry. Anyway, he says that consciousness is always a consciousness of something. And that's not exactly true. If I use this, which I've mentioned many times, And I ask you to concentrate on it. And you really concentrate on it. And you exclude everything else. Now I'll just say, this is also a basic early Buddhist technique, because the more you can concentrate on something, you get distracted and it goes away. And you notice when it stays and when it goes. And the next stage, you notice that it... tends to return by itself.

[56:09]

And then finally you find it just, wherever you put your consciousness, it just stays there. Your attention, let's say attention. Let's say your attentional consciousness stays. Okay, now you've established attentional consciousness which stays. Now I take that away. But I can still feel that attentional consciousness staying. Now what is the focus of its attention? Now the focus of attentional consciousness is attentional consciousness itself.

[57:22]

Now that's something you discover in zazen, or you can discover it by such simple practices. until you have an intentional consciousness in meditation which doesn't need an objective consciousness other than itself. We could call that a basic yogic skill. But in that process, you begin to discover the physical feel of attentional consciousness. You can feel attention and consciousness together. Now you can learn to separate them. So, I can create a field of attentional consciousness here in this room.

[58:48]

Then I can maintain the field of consciousness and separate attention. And then I can move attention around. Okay, so this is the dynamic of how I give talks. I basically establish a field of consciousness which you all occupy. And then I can move, without losing that field of consciousness, I can move attention to a spot in my body, or different spots in my body, from which different kinds of speaking occur.

[59:50]

And one of the truths of the chakras is proved, the chakras are proved as a kind of truth, in the sense that if I locate this attentional spot in one chakra or the other, I talk about things differently. And then I can, as I've said before a few times, I've spoken about this, something similar to this, I can allow attention to bounce around. You remember in those movies they used to have a bouncing ball which helped you sing and so on in the movie theater?

[61:17]

Row, row, row your boat gently down. I'm not good at singing, but I can do simple ditties. Karaoke, that didn't exist when I was young. But anyway, go ahead. that that attentional ping-pong ball starts bouncing around on its own, and I don't think about where it bounces, but I let it affect me. So it might be the presence in your thumbs and the movement of your thumbs. And all of it sort of comes together in a field that creates itself once the framework of a held-in-place consciousness is present.

[62:26]

Now, again, to look at this from a different mosaic perspective. We know conceptually that everything you see, every particularity or generality, is accompanied by what we can call mind. Now, I'm trying to respond to Christina's question, statement, with the practicalities of the craft of yoga. So conceptually I know that every sensorial appearance has to be accompanied by mind.

[64:01]

No, I don't see it. I just see the object. I just see you or your glasses or whatever. Okay. But I... So I have to create a contrast. And so I can look at Susanna, and I see the particularities of Susanna, some of them at least. And then I can look at Nico, and I can see those particularities. Now, doing something like this sounds kind of stupid, I don't know, but it's investigating how you perceive. And it's not something you can read about or learn exactly, you just have to keep experimenting and wondering, what the heck's going on when I perceive something?

[65:35]

So you spend some time noticing the particularities of Niko in this case and the particularities of Susanna. And it's useful to go back and forth between two people, or two whatever, you know, two trees or two canines. Two what? Canines? Dogs. Oh, okay. I didn't want to say dogs because I'm not treating them as dogs. And then you can notice that if I notice Nico and then I notice the field that is generated by Susanna, And then I go back to Nico, he's different than he was a moment ago.

[66:50]

And no matter how much I go back and forth, each of them is slightly different at each moment. Und egal, wie sehr ich vor- und zurückspringe, jeder, jeder Einzelne, ist in jedem Moment ein bisschen anders. Und anzufangen, diese Unterschiede zu bemerken, das bringt dir im Grunde genommen bei, Unterschiede zu bemerken. Es erhöht deine Fähigkeit, Unterschiede zu bemerken. And that begins to erode your sense that things are entities or remain the same. I used to, at breakfast in the 60s with my wife at that time, Virginia, Anyway, we always had usually some flowers on the breakfast table.

[68:02]

So I know the table's changing, but it's not obvious. It's changing slower than I am. But the flowers I wasn't so sure about. So I took the flowers as an object of direct perception. So it's really nice to just have flowers there in the way they articulate space. Es war eigentlich schön, einfach die Blumen da zu haben und zu sehen, wie sie den Raum zum Ausdruck bringen. Either without fragrance. Mit oder ohne Duft. But then I began to notice that even cut flowers in a little case change every few moments.

[69:09]

The petals are a little different or something happens. Slight differences as they take up water or, you know. And so that sensitized me to not look at the flowers. Oh, there's flowers, and there's a vase, and the vase doesn't change, and the flowers don't change, and they're just there, and they're nice, and I stopped thinking that way. Okay, so it sensitized me to always notice change and not sameness. Okay, so that was sensitizing attentional experience to and expecting change and differences.

[70:19]

That was sensitizing me to change and difference. And to undermine, undo my assumption of sameness. Okay, but there's a basic teaching, a basic term in Buddhism which is translated as the experience of sameness. Now, where that comes from, that term, if I now embarrass or at least use Evelyn and Regina, I look at Regina and I see differences.

[71:30]

I look at Evelyn and I see differences. But I also know, and this is just looking at the simple craft practice, and I'm a little embarrassed to be so obvious, But really you have to look at the simplicity, the obviousness of things sometimes to notice subtleties. So now I've developed a sensitivity to differences in what usually my mind creates a picture and I see the same picture even though I go back and forth. So I'm undoing the habit of my mind and the way the brain works physiologically.

[72:33]

And . to establish images and then assume they remain the same unless there's a big difference. So I have this attentional sensitivity. And so let's call that now Use the distinction, let's call that now consciousness. But mind is also present. Is mind different from the peculiarities I'm seeing? But mind also makes possible my seeing the particularities. But when I look at Evelyn and Regina, both of them are appearing in the same kind of, the same mind.

[74:07]

So now I can begin to distinguish the particularities of consciousness and the sameness of mind on both Evelyn and Regina. So now I can begin to have an experience of mind as underlying all the differentiations of perceptions. Now this begins with conceptually knowing about it or assuming it must be so. And then beginning to develop the potential articulation or skill to notice the sameness of mind on each perception which is differentiated.

[75:23]

Okay. So now my habit is as an ordinary human being my consciousness gives priority to the distinctions established by consciousness. But my yogic practice begins me to be aware of the sameness. Now a big step or stage in Zen practice is when you can shift the priority of noticing to the sameness of mind away from or not so dependent on the

[76:31]

of differentiations of consciousness. But then the sameness of mind opens up into a complex bodily experience of the filling in of the fingerprint of the world. Was it on Friday and not yesterday that I mentioned the fingerprint? Friday, yes. Okay, that's with the Apple computers and with... the U.S.

[77:52]

government and so forth, and you go in and you're not a citizen, you have to do your thumb sometimes, roll it around, and the patterns start to fill in. And the software is sophisticated enough that you can even move your thumb a little bit and it still fills in the patterns as if fairly accurately. Pretty soon you have a fairly highly detailed image of your thumbprint, fingerprint. Well, as I said, so-called Shikantaza isn't about doing nothing. Just sitting.

[79:00]

It's about establishing non-conceptual mind. Which I could say the dynamic of non-conceptual mind which seems to be doing nothing but sitting around being non-conceptual. But it's actually filling in the phenomenal fingerprint of the world. opening into another way of knowing things. That's not consciousness. We can call, for now, one way to look at awareness in contrast to consciousness. So in noticing the experience of differentiation and then the sameness of mind, you begin to develop the physical field, the physical component of mind,

[80:10]

So now you can feel physically mind arising, not just as an idea or meditation, mind arises physically on every perception. And you can locate your sense of, your location becomes this intactness of mind itself. That's why it's called in Zen mind-to-mind transmission. It actually means something. So mind appears as a partner. It's of perception.

[81:36]

And now we leave for another time the noticing consciousness. The first step is noticing mind. And this mind-to-mind transmission It's also conceptually parallel to the presentation of this koan one. There's two dynamics or two processes of transmission. One is simply called formal transmission. And that's when you establish that a person can recreate the teachings exactly as they have been transmitted.

[82:45]

It's a kind of exercise. And once you can really do that on many of the basic teachings, You can actually know when you're changing the teaching or deviating from it or extending it. And this is expressed traditionally in the rubric that the disciple should surpass the teacher by half at least. And that half is the way in which you extend the teachings through your own experience of the multitude of meanings in every circumstance. But it's also, in effect,

[83:56]

because the transmission of the lineage teachings is actually a person-to-person event, you end up studying another person in all of their attributes and flaws. as the conduit of the teachings, but an imperfect conduit. And the experience of trying to fully know another person opens you to seeing yourself in new ways. So that emphasis on the teachings is formal transmission.

[85:24]

And informal transmission is everything you've done since you met, started practicing, until now and into the future. So informal transmission includes how does she react if I shout at her? Or how is she living her independent life? Or not just her. Each one of you is involved in informal transmission, whether you like it or not. I'm sorry. Yeah. Let's have lunch. Thank you very much. What?

[87:31]

When should we come back? When do you want to come back?

[87:43]

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