At the basic what we call an accurately assuming consciousness. If we develop a consciousness that makes accurate assumptions about the world, then we will begin to perceive the world in a way that feels very integrated. That sees the world differently. More accurately. Now, Buddhism says much of our problem is that the basic assumptions we make about the world are inaccurate. And that leads to endless trouble that we're trying to sort out here when all of it's projected from a single point.

[01:06]

So you're beginning to see, I think today, how thorough the practice of Buddhism is and how it's been developed. Now I would like to, a couple of people spoke to me about difficulties in sitting and facing difficult anxiety and so forth like that. So maybe I can say a little bit about that after lunch. And so let's have lunch and shall we come back at... Sit comfortably.

[02:22]

Sitz bequem, bitte. Now, this time we've had together, I've tried to give you a feeling for the relationship between the body and the mind. And more particularly, the mind as posture and the body as posture. And it's perhaps through this understanding of both mind and body and posture that you can begin to see the actual relationship between mind and body. You know, the concepts even of mind and body are kind of recent. As an opposing relationship.

[03:25]

It's actually mostly since as is... often said since Descartes. But in any case, using this language, I hope what I've done is not so much present to you a teaching as open a dialogue with yourself about what this can be. Opening a discussion with yourself. For instance, you can use as a point, you can use these practice phrases or turning word phrases as a way to create a kind of nub or create a focal point for a discussion with yourself.

[04:59]

For instance, you could take something like, each moment is a precise physical act. And such a phrase moved you away from thinking of time in some general generalization, like time is out there and I don't have enough time and so forth. For in any personal fundamental sense, time is you. You can't be out of time. Dogen says that life is a boat. And you set sail and you use the oar, but you couldn't get anywhere without the boat. And the boat is not different from the ocean and the sky and the stars.

[06:21]

So we could say that the life is unending activity. And death is unending activity. So you take a phrase like that, each moment is a precise physical act. So without the generalization of time, Without the generalization of time. This moment is my heart beating, my lungs, my speaking. And as you get deeper in meditation, you'll find that each thought is a precise physical act.

[07:25]

And you begin to feel the physicality of thought and feeling. Yes. Don't make faces. Don't make faces. Thank you, yeah, good. There's a difference between what is physical and German. She said it's more in connection of, should be understood more as bodily, something bodily. Yeah. That was her remark. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard. Physics. It's a bodily act, but it's a bodily act, at least in English, a bodily act sounds like your whole body is involved. And sometimes it's just, you know, I don't know how you'd say it in German.

[08:37]

Physically? Did you mean more bodily or did you mean more the science of physics? Not physics as a science, no. You could say it is an biochemical act. Well, see, in English, in English, biochemical is also physical. Not science. Physical and biophysical mean the same in English. I mean all of that. Okay. Let's stop.

[09:48]

It's not important. It's not important. What you want to do is find a phrase in your own personal way of thinking about it. That makes you see Each thing that happens is something that's done. Whatever's going on out there, the bus or a car, each of that is a physical act or a doing. This sense that mental phenomena, spiritual phenomena, everything has a physical base is a truism of yogic culture.

[10:52]

Now one of the, an aspect of meditation that can't be, that's also different from mindfulness and part of the more psychological process of meditation is being able to sit without moving. Now, I'm mentioning this because several people spoke to me about problems they were having, as I said, before lunch in facing certain things, etc. There are many reasons you sit still as part of practice, but One of the psychological reasons is you get so you can sit through anything.

[12:30]

In other words, you break the adhesive connection between thought and action. Because we have a certain fear that if you think something, you might do it. And, you know, I think Dostoevsky at some point says, if the thought of killing the father is also killing the father, or something like that. And if that were true, you couldn't practice meditation. Because one of the things that happens in meditation is the possibilities of all human beings are there.

[13:34]

Murderers, lovers, sick people, healthy people. So the more you develop the strength to sit without scratching and so forth, for some period of time, 30 or 40 minutes say, so you know during that time, no matter how bad the itch gets, you don't have to scratch it. This is a very simple instruction, don't scratch. But it has very deep psychological implications. Because if you really finally have the confidence that this itch, real or imaginary, I can just let it be until it disappears or moves somewhere else, you know.

[14:41]

And even if the building next door is burning down, if I can't help, I'll just sit here. If you could help, of course you should go help. But... This kind of sitting allows a psychological release where many things you think you couldn't face will come up. And there's a kind of physical confidence which becomes a mental confidence that you can just be in the presence of things and not have to be afraid of your thoughts. Now I think it's always useful if you have some disturbing problem coming up, is to turn toward it, but not so much it overwhelms you.

[15:47]

And you little by little build up your strength. And generally, it's interesting, we seem to get stronger in meditation at the rate at which we need to face things. OK, that's enough on that, I think. So, coming back to mind. I would like to give you, and I mentioned it in the Peace University too, at least five Buddhist terms which can be names for mind.

[17:12]

And I'm mentioning these things not so much that you can learn them, but to just give you the idea, give you some sense of the way mind can be looked at. I'm not trying to give you I'm not giving you these definitions exactly as you might find them in some Buddhist sources. Though it's generally what I say is traditional. But rather I'm trying to give you a feeling from my experience and in Western languages what these things could mean. And one is a citta, or c-i-t-t-a, and it means mental processes, or thoughts.

[18:18]

All of these terms in Buddhism usually have a way is that you're looking at what it's naming is looked at in some essential and transformative way. And so it's just thoughts and mental processes Primarily seen as thoughts are also intentions. Even if you call a tree a tree, You're in a way making it a tree by calling it a tree. You're confirming a certain reality by saying tree. And also, if I look at my mind as thinking processes, that looking itself is an intention, so you're looking with an intention.

[20:06]

So the word citta means to look at the mind as mental processes, which are also intentional processes. And also... It's looking at mind as, or mental processes, as reflecting their sources. So where they came from and where they're going. Now, so citta also means the thought of enlightenment. The thought of enlightenment.

[21:07]

Because at the deepest sense, the intentional structure of language is the thought of enlightenment. Okay, that's the word citta. And that's one word for mind. And the way I've defined it is also characteristic of a Buddhist way of defining things. Now, a second word for mind is manas. And that means mind as structure. For example, when we talked about accounting, this is a... mind having a structure of separating one thing from another.

[22:07]

When I talked with I did a panel with Dan Millman. Is that his name? Dan Millman. He said, have the idea that identify these obstructions to happiness, and once you identify them, put them on a shelf. I did a podium with Dan Millman, and he said, look at the obstacles to happiness, and if you look at them, put them on the shelf. Until all the ones you can identify are on shelves. Now, the ability to identify one and to imagine it on a shelf is a kind of structure of consciousness or mind.

[23:10]

And what I said is that as soon as you look away, the shelves tip and they all slide back down into where they were before. And the fact that the shelves tip and everything slides back where it was is also the structure of mind. So if you, as I said yesterday, if you look at this and can... and your mind can come back to it without effort, this is a kind of ability to give structure to consciousness. Now in Tibetan Buddhism you practice with a deity imagined as yourself and you locate that deity in different parts of your body. And you locate it in different parts of your body.

[24:26]

And what that teaches you is that you can take the identity location, what you mentioned, the point of observation, and you can move it in different parts of your body and in different parts of your mind. And this is one reason Buddhism is a teaching of non, not of no self, but of non-self. Nicht das Unselbst ist, aber eine des Nicht-Selbst. Weil das Selbst ist eine Funktion, an der ihr teilnehmt und wo ihr auch festlegt, wie das funktioniert. And the chakras, for example, are also possible locations of self.

[25:42]

Or a kind of self, or in the sense that identity is an own organizing or self-organizing process. So Manas means the structure of mind and the structure of mind that permits the development of identity and the location of perceptions. Okay. Now, this is pretty hard for you with the structure of your mind to think about the structure of your mind and how it might be something different. But the more you practice meditation and find a kind of relaxed mind which you're not always correcting, that you're not always correcting.

[26:54]

Tsukuyoshi used to call zazen a process of rebirth. Because you let it all settle or let yourself be, abandon yourself to your posture. When you get up, you come back to life in a slightly different way or you can see yourself coming back into mental activity. Then you can do that when you're waking up in the morning. In fact, it's a healthy way to wake up, to take your time waking up. So, in a sense, your body is dispersed or... attenuated during sleep, something like that.

[27:59]

As you wake up and move out of dream space and the image space of that kind of mind, You regather yourself. And you can feel yourself, if you slow down the process and observe it, you can feel yourself regathering until finally, oh yes, I'm in such and such a place and I have to do these things today and so forth. And that regathering process, you're actually putting your identity together It wasn't always there. Sometimes there in a lesser or greater extent. So that's... Manas.

[29:16]

And I think you can see that Manas then mental processes and the structure of consciousness which allows mental processes are something somewhat different. And even if you don't meditate you can study this as you're waking up or going to sleep. Except going to sleep you're not too aware of the latter stages of the process. We had to translate all these little gathas once at Tassajara. And we had one traditional one and we had it that you chant before you go to sleep. And the next one I titled the one you chant before you wake up.

[30:20]

And we printed it and then someone came to me How do you do this? How do you chant this before you wake up? Well, excuse me, after you wake up you chant. Okay. The third word is vijnana. Another word for consciousness. You want how to spell these things? V-I-J-N-O-M-A-N-O-M-A-N-O-M Hey, you're getting as good as Eureka.

[31:37]

And... So Vijnana means, and in many seminars we've discussed some of these, but Vijnana means consciousness as it arises from the six sense fields. And so with the Vijnanas you work on, the word Vijnana literally means to know consciousness things separately together. So it means don't just know you know, consciousness, see each part, the hearing part, the seeing part, the bodily proprioceptive part, and the smelling part and the tasting part, and the mental part.

[32:42]

And you actually work with separating those out. And then you see how they work together. And we I'm going to do it with my friend Michael Murphy who wrote Golf and the Kingdom and who founded Esalen. I'm going to do a seminar next week on a golf course for golfers. Yeah. I don't play golf. So I'm a little scared. But my mother got two and a half holes in one. A hole in one is when you tee off and the ball goes to the green and goes right in the hole.

[33:54]

She's gotten two and a half of those. That's my only claim to golfing fame. Well, Yeah, anyway, it's just to do something with Michael. We thought we'd have fun. His book, Golf in the Kingdom, is going to be filmed. Clint Eastwood has bought it, and I think Sean Connery is going to play Shiva's Irons, the mural of it. Yeah. It's called Shiva's Irons. Shiva's Iron. Irons, yeah. Shiva's Iron, yeah. Anyway... Oh, yeah. Shiva's Schlager, yeah. I used to be a... I used to be a caddy, though. I've caddied for years.

[34:56]

You know what a caddy is, right? Yeah, it's the one who carries the bags. We didn't have carts in those days. No, you didn't. You really carried them. Yeah. So I'm going to teach them the Vijnanas. I'll teach them what they do between hitting the ball. I don't know how I get myself in the Vijnanas. Anyway, so that's the Vijnanas. Well, we don't have time. I don't, you know, if you want to come to this golf course with me, you know. We have four days or five days. But golf is a kind of yoga, yogic practice, actually.

[36:01]

It's very involved with how you posture, exactly where your hands are. Okay, so then ayatanas. Now, ayatanas means perception as a field of phenomena. Now, again, I can't go into this very deeply, but it's simply like if I look at you, there's me and you, but you and I are both impermanent, and But still a perceptual field arises by my looking at you and in addition you're looking at me. And that perceptual field is the realm in which we actually exist. So if I hear, again, a typical example, your voice I'm not hearing your voice.

[37:17]

I'm hearing myself hear your voice. Again, if I hear a bird, I don't hear the bird the way another bird hears the bird. I can only hear the bird the way I hear the bird. So basically I'm hearing my own ability to hear. I'm hearing my own, when I see you, I'm seeing my own ability to see you. And I can develop that ability. So actually everything I am seeing, hearing now is in my own sense fields. This whole room is not out there. For me, actually, it's all in my sense fields.

[38:21]

And it's all in each of your sense fields. So when I relate to this room, I relate to the room in you, not to this room. That's what Dogen meant by the boat of life. And that's what Dogan meant with the boat of life and sailing. And why it's also the same as the ocean. Can you say that again in German? So when you play with little Richard you are awakening his sense fields and teaching him to exteriorize his sense fields

[39:21]

and widen them to include you and eventually you. And I think it's very important to not do what we usually do, is teach children that only that exteriorized consciousness exists. Because as soon as you do that, you disassociate a person from their own power. Yes, Richard, we're taking care of that. So that's just a taste of what Ayatana means. In other words, there's about 60 people here, so there's 60 rooms here. And there's 59 versions of each of us.

[40:41]

Plus one. That's the troublesome version of ourself. Somebody in the back had their hand. Yeah. These terms are Indian or Sanskrit? Sanskrit. That's a good source. I'm the good source. Is there a way we can find out more about this Yeah, there is a Buddhist version and there's a Hindu Buddhist, the big book is both Hindu and Buddhism, not so big, that's actually in German. Yeah, it's published in English by Shambhala in the States. But it's a translation from German. And it's quite contemporary and quite good.

[41:53]

Yeah, but that's predated. Yeah. All of these things are in every sutra. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But in the Lankavatara, there's a very particular definition. In another sutra, there's another definition. There's not a consistent definition from sutra to sutra. I mean, there's a negotiation about it. Yeah? The ability to exteriorize your inner space and to perceive the interior space of someone else, is that an ability which grows and which we perceive more and more? Yes. And these people, Qigong people who can throw people at a distance and all that stuff, they're all working with their interior consciousness which can relate to another person's interiorized consciousness.

[43:22]

But I think it's very helpful and humbling to know too that when I perceive you, for instance, I'm only perceiving what I can know of you and you are a much greater mystery than that. And I find that it is also something, it makes you rather discouraged to know that what I perceive from you, that this is only my perception of you, that you are in reality a much greater mystery. That's okay. That reality that means also that reality is subjective. Yes, reality is subjective. But that doesn't mean subjective in the negative sense. In contrast to objective, which is real.

[44:24]

Yes. But that would mean that if I meet someone now and perceive this person as disturbing and negative, that then maybe not the one is disturbing and negative, but that my perception of him is so, that I am possibly disturbing and negative. That would mean that if I perceive someone as disturbing and negative, that would mean that not necessarily he is disturbing and negative, but my perception of him or I am myself am disturbed and negative. Yes. Or boring. Yes, but it also may be that he is disturbing and negative, he or she. Or that he or she has a particular ability to disturb your subjective consciousness. But it also means you still are ultimately in possession of your consciousness.

[45:27]

And if you practice the way I've been suggesting, you get the ability to absorb, without it being negative, other people's negative influences. Yes. Since everything is inside, I mean, all the existence inside of my mind and... In the big sense. Yeah. Mind is what has no outside point. That would be like, you know, in a Christian sense, the concept of God. Mind is God in emptiness. I don't think so. Consist of Dutch, then? If everything that is in me, in my mind, means that which has no point from the outside, then it seems to me as if it were a concept of God from a rabbinical tradition.

[46:44]

I think let's just say that you're an actor. When you step out on the stage, you're stepping out into everyone's mind. And I suppose if you're a good actor, you find a way to bring everyone's mind to the point you wish it to be brought. But as soon as you step off the stage, all of that disappears. Or it shrinks back into each person in their own version, which may fade. And there's no quality of permanence or inheritance. person in their own version which will fade. And there's no quality of permanence or inherency or God-like quality to that. It's not outside the situation.

[48:01]

It's always part of the situation which is always changing. Yes. You said tomorrow morning that space does not separate us. Mm-hmm. Tomorrow morning. This morning. Oh, this morning I said it, yeah. Tomorrow morning we don't know. And just now you said we don't hear the bird, but we hear our hearing of the bird. Now I have the impression that if I don't see or hear the bird, but my

[49:01]

my image or my impression of the bird, then I am even more separated from the real bird. Isn't it? Yes. That depends what you mean by the real bird. The only way you could be connected to the real bird is to be the bird. May I say that in German again? I would like to try to compare two thoughts with each other. From this morning, when it was said, the room does not separate us, as we usually think or are taught, but the room is connected to us. And that is also one of the common thoughts, to think so. And I wanted to use this in relation to the previous question, where I said, I don't hear the bird, I don't see the bird, but actually I see my hearing of the bird.

[50:23]

I am actually directly connected to what is in my spirit of the bird. Excuse me, we keep coming back to these basic things, but we're going to work together and we've got to not just keep coming back to them. Any culture you're in, or wherever you are, self has to perform three functions. It has to establish separation. I have to know when I'm touching my hand, it's my hand, not your hand. My immune system is always telling me what belongs to me and what doesn't belong to me.

[51:39]

Connectedness itself also has to tell us how we're connected. That could be in social terms, psychological terms, spiritual terms. Because we are not only separated, we are simultaneously connected. And self also has to tell us what continuity is. One of the main things Buddhism is doing, Buddhist practice is doing, is not doing so much in the first two. It's changing how you experience continuity. When you are using your sense fields, you are working with both separation connected.

[52:46]

The sound of the bird is one way we're connected to it. But we're connected to our own senses. We're both connected. Connected to him. You told me to hold it just a moment. Which are... They connect us, but they also are our own scent. Each is a scent. Each of us is a scent and connected. Also, they connect us, but at the same time each of us is a scent. But what do we do? No, no, don't close the door.

[53:49]

Now, and even if the bird doesn't sing and you don't see it, we're still connected with that bird. Well, in the sense of chaos theory, where a butterfly's wing, a common example, can cause a tidal wave on the other side of the earth. There's many, many ways we're connected. We can only point out a few of them. Now, we are in the midst of some big topics here. And I think in a relevant way, we're speaking about some pretty big, not easy to grasp, important ideas. But still, it's getting close to after 4 o'clock and maybe even Big relevant ideas have to come to an end.

[55:04]

We have to leave something to do some other seminar. Anyway, I'm not stopping. I should stop pretty soon, so I think maybe I should deal with all the words we put. What means continuity? What relates? What's a relation? Yes, you did. Yeah, continuity is like how do you establish your experience and identity from one moment to the next. And different cultures establish that differently. Different persons establish. Some people establish it by keeping themselves anxious all the time. I'm alive because I'm worried.

[56:07]

How does Buddha denounce this? Because this isn't Buddhism. You said Buddhist works mainly on continuity. Yes. Because we Westerners, for example, primarily establish our continuity through a story of ourselves. Christianity is a story about Jesus. And in psychology, psyche is a story. But you can establish your continuity of mind outside of your narrative and outside of past and future references. Just for example, you could establish it in a feeling of nourishment. You can establish it by always feeling your mind connected to your breath.

[57:40]

And if your sense of continuity is established by a breath body, you don't need almost any references to past or future unless you have to think about the past or future. So I can show how these three can be transformed both into the paramitas, which is the basis of the Bodhisattva identity. Oh, not now. No, no, no, no. Oh, Samadhi. Maybe we have to repeat the last hour. I must start moving backwards then.

[58:56]

Are we ready? Yes, thank you. Samadhi. Samadhi. Samadhi means... The ability for consciousness to be concentrated on itself. Like pouring water into water. And I responded, yes, he would. So samadhi just means the ability for the object of concentration to be concentration itself. for the object of consciousness to be consciousness. Now this is not only a blissful feeling like taking an inner vacation. It also purifies consciousness. It's a little bit like you actually take water and you purify it through some distilling process, say.

[60:18]

Then you put it back in the stream and it takes a while for it to get dirty again. So the experience of samadhi purifies consciousness. And the more samadhi is a home base for your consciousness, it's like you're purifying consciousness all the time. And that's different from just having a calm mind. But it's related. So, the last thing I think I should do, and I really do think we're getting mentally tired and our legs are hurting. If we take these things, and you can yourself, can everyone see this?

[61:19]

Anybody who needs to see it? Anyway, you have these various things. And what Buddhism tries to do is says, okay, there's various aspects to our mind. What's the relationship between these things, or is there one? They're all part of this larger mind. So this is where the ideas of the Ayatana and the Vijnanas and so forth come from. So if you take some of these, we can circle. Let's circle thoughts. Feelings. I'm going to keep this fairly simple.

[62:33]

Emotion. Intention. Connectedness and relatedness. And we'd have to add, hmm? Well, now structure the different level. So we could use concentration or we can add consciousness. Okay, so we can take these five actually, intention and connectedness belong together.

[63:35]

And what Buddhism says, these five interrelate and are at the same time. Not at the same level, they interrelate. And they're part of the structure of mind, and they're called, as I've taught many times in seminars, the five skandhas. Now, if you start looking at... then you're more looking at the ayatanas in the sense that mind has the quality of being more condensed or less dense and so forth. And all of these then would also relate to whether they're structure or... So in the time remaining, I will briefly put the five sandals on the top here, OK?

[64:42]

No. Maybe I won't teach them, because it'll take too much time. I'll just present it, and I will do Zazen, and maybe we should just do Zazen and end. No, please. Zazen? Okay, I'll do it in five minutes. So mostly we start with consciousness.

[66:36]

And we, you're all conscious now. And what that consciousness is made up also of a lot of associative elements. intentions, feelings, memories from the past, et cetera. That's here, impulses. And all those impulses or associations, this can also be called association, are started by some perception, like you heard something, smell something, you felt something. And more deeply rooted than perceptions is the feeling, the non-graspable feeling, which allows the perceptions to occur. And more rooted than that, then, Is the bird or the stone or the wall or whatever is the source of the perception.

[67:57]

Yeah. So one of the things you're doing when you're practicing in meditation is you're beginning to observe how consciousness when you're counting to one, you know, and you begin to see all these associations come in. And you begin to see a dynamic of mind which allows these associations to come in freely or in a hindered way and so forth. And you start to see how the dynamics of the mind works, which makes this assertion easy or difficult or difficult? And then you begin to see that these associations were instigated by a particular thought or something like that.

[69:04]

And perception means, the word sep means to grasp, it means something to be grasped, so emotions are also here. So, this perception, there is the word, so, ergreifen, so, mit drin, und da sind auch die, da sind auch die Gefühle kommen, also die Emotionen kommen da mit rein. Emotionen. Und Gedanken. Da können noch Absichten mit dabei zugeschrieben werden. Und Assoziationen. When you get drunk, for example, and one reason people do get drunk is because their conscious level and associated level gets less and they end up in an emotional level. The educational system

[70:05]

is primarily a psychological system. We're primarily here to control impulses and to structure consciousness. And we don't do very well with emotions. We don't know what to do with them. They cause trouble. You get drunk, you can be more emotional. And we can't deal so well with emotions. So they start to make difficulties easy or get out of control. And when we are drunk, then we stop there. Because you're less acculturated at this point. Now here you're distinguishing, which most people don't do very well, between emotions and feelings. And here I mean non-graspable feelings. So the process of... Not grasping or graspable.

[71:27]

Graspable. Not grasping, but graspable. The process of practice is going like this. And then it goes up through here and you return and this is awareness. So here I'm distinguishing between conscious and awareness. But I won't explain more. I said I'll do it in five minutes. Keep your body in mind. So let's sit for a few minutes and then we'll stop, okay?

[72:30]

The discussion that I have tried to begin with you is that the mind is body and the body is mind. If you look at the body, you see mind. If you look at the mind, you discover the body. Through the posture of the body, we discover the mind. Through the posture of the mind we discover the unity of mind and body and the phenomenal world.

[74:29]

This is the way it is. And discovering this awakens you to our possibilities. To our integration and our happiness and our friendship. And our wisdom.

[75:01]

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