So I'm presenting... Oh, good afternoon. Oh, good morning. Good morning. Sir, you haven't finished your part. So I'm trying to... I'm presenting to you... in the time we have...

[01:05]

The eightfold path. And, you know, I can only... I can't do it justice. And I'm also inadvertently introducing you to aspects of practice which, you know, are the fruit of practicing a long time. But, you know, after, when you've been practicing a long time, you realize that the fruits of practicing a long time actually were there even in the beginning, but you didn't really notice them so much.

[02:17]

Perhaps they were more bud, not yet fruit. So I don't mind introducing you to things like that. And I also think it's probably useful to feel the... the wider world of Buddhist practice. not just the part there right ahead of you.

[03:42]

It's probably good to recognize that through meditation, It's kind of like a womb. That gives birth to a differently rooted life. In fact, in Mahayana it's called Tathagatagarbha. Which means something like suchness womb embryo.

[04:44]

Well, the path can also envelop you, so it's a kind of path that surrounds you in all directions. Yet you don't have to maintain a special state of mind to... to... to sustain this newly rooted life. You don't have to live in a cave or wear a hair shirt. A hair shirt. That's a shirt with the sharp part turned inside that you wear.

[06:10]

It's an aesthetic practice. Oh, that sounds... Don't you have hair shirts in Germany in the old days? I had one. Did you? I had one. Uh-huh. At least as old as him to know a hair shirt. Don't go out there with a hair in his hand. Hair in his hand. You ought to put more on with him. I will, too. Thank you. You know, the term right livelihood

[07:11]

I didn't say... These are usually right views, right intentions, right speech, etc. But right, not like right and wrong. It means right in the sense of a complete or whole. Or what's perfecting. But generally, anyway, the term is like right livelihood. But in a normal way, the term is called right livelihood. And right livelihood in English and in the United States, I don't know about in Germany, but in the United States it's become a term, a very common term, independent of Buddhism.

[08:20]

Right livelihood in America, I don't know how it is in Germany, has become a commonly used term, regardless of Buddhism. from the 60s on, in the environmental movement, the New Age movement, and so forth. Yeah, like organic food and so forth. People always talk about right livelihood. In this context, people always speak of right livelihood. And its meaning has something to do with the Eightfold Path. But mostly it has a moral meaning. Now that you should have a...

[09:22]

One livelihood which benefits others. And doesn't harm the planet. Neighbors here, Robert and Birgit, would be examples of people trying to practice livelihood as farmers. Growing wildflower seeds and protecting wildflower seeds and so forth. And in the practice of right livelihood, you're supposed not to sell alcohol or weapons and so forth like that. And it had just this idea which sprung loose from the Eightfold Path.

[10:46]

And it's very interesting how a phrase or an idea, if it's graspable... It comes to have a kind of institutional identity of its own. For example, during the Vietnam War. Yeah, many people refused to serve in the military. Because being a soldier wasn't considered right livelihood. One of the common posters that used to be up during the 60s was, join the army and see the world.

[11:56]

meet interesting people and kill them. That poster was up everywhere. But even more interesting, it was used for many people, scientists and engineers, in university laboratories and companies to refuse to work in the field of science. If in any way their research or work was connected with building weapons. wenn Ihre Forschung oder Ihre Arbeit in irgendeiner Weise mit dem Herstellen von Waffen verbunden war. So, that's interesting. You know, how such a term as right-wing could kind of jump out of the eightfold path

[13:22]

and affect, I mean, it affected lots of people and affected the war. And somehow it was used to justify people quitting their jobs and so forth. A package called Right Livelihood that was unwrapped and had a big effect. But in the context of the Eightfold Path, it perhaps implied in how the term was used generally. The understanding from the Eightfold Path was perhaps implied in how people used it.

[14:41]

But in the Eightfold Path it means very particularly that livelihood which breathes your energy. Aber im achtfachen Weg bedeutet es ganz im Besonderen der Lebenserwerb, der deine Energie freisetzt. Dieser Lebenserwerb, der dich nicht behindert. Der keinen Kompromiss von dir fordert. Es ist schwierig, solch eine Arbeit zu finden. Even jobs that look good from the outside, boy, sometimes when you're inside them, they learn. I think I've got one of the best jobs in the world. I've got one of the best jobs in the world.

[15:43]

Yeah, but... Well, I don't. I feel I'm failing all the time. I know what's possible, and I know how little I'm able to convey it. So you see there's a movement in the eightfold path. You know, that if you begin to speak, express yourself in a way. Yeah. or relate to the world in a way, which, to put it simply, nourishes you.

[16:47]

And then you And your conduct is similar. And you don't have a big division between how you are with your friend and what your job is. Your speech, your conduct, your livelihood are all of one piece. Deine Rede, dein Handeln und dein Lebenserwerb sind aus einem Stück. And even if it's not that way, you work to make it in that direction. Und wenn es auch nicht ganz so ist, du doch darauf hinarbeitest, in diese Richtung hinarbeitest. And to make an effort in the direction of is almost as good as succeeding. Und eine Anstrengung zu nehmen in eine Richtung ist fast so gut wie Erfolg zu haben.

[17:54]

And miss 99 times. And you only hit the target the 100th time. All 99 times. arrows hit the target. All hundred arrows hit the target. But some of us die at the 45th arrow. Or maybe the third arrow. But those arrows still hit if the direction is there. So this is a demanding path. And asks us to accept the consequences of the truths of the path.

[19:01]

To have the courage of the truth of the path. And this is a path that... As I said, we can learn a lot about Buddhism. Primarily, I think we learn the relationship between views and meditation. And how our world is rooted in our views. and how there's virtually no way to change or transform those views without meditation. But first you have to come into the midst of your own life.

[20:23]

Through yours. speech with others, through the way you talk to yourself, inside yourself, and why sometimes to yourself, and through your conduct and livelihood. And that opens you to a new kind of energy and effort and a new kind of mindfulness and meditation. At the same time we start with mindfulness and meditation. Mindfulness is both the beginning and the end of the path.

[21:28]

The path we find ourselves circling through. This is a path through which we find ourselves in a circular motion. Yes. Yes. I have always suggested the same thing in the same way, that the path must be understood as the sequence of lines. And now Mr. Bosch has also just said that it can be the beginning and the end, and that the police would not interfere in the relationship. Is the consequence of 1 to 8 coincidental, or is there really a significant change in the arrangement? I never really understood the sequence of the path, and now you're saying you find yourself circling in it.

[22:35]

Is it more, is it kind of accidental how the turns are put in the sequence, or is there a... Yeah, okay. Yeah, is there a special sense in it? Yes, there is. First we're circling in the speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness. We're practicing mindfulness and we begin to be more present in our, physically as I put it, present in our speech. More inside our conduct. Without any comparison. I think most of us never taste what it's like to actually live in a completely non-comparative sphere.

[23:48]

Ich glaube, die meisten von uns erfahren niemals, wie es ist, in einer Sphäre zu leben, die ohne Vergleich ist. How absolutely particular the world becomes. Wie absolut besonders die Welt dann wird. And it extends widely in all directions. And there's absolutely nothing to do or any place to go. That's conduct. But rather real-life conduct. But not hard to understand. The third patriarch, the third Buddha ancestor wrote, The great way is not difficult.

[24:56]

Only don't pick and choose. How could it be that simple? The difference between a mind that habitually picks and chooses and one that absolutely does not So at first you circle in this area of mindfulness, speech, conduct, etc. Our livelihood is one of the last ones we can resolve. But when the middle part of the path begins to be clear, then the path and your mindfulness begins to reach back, not to speech, but back to your intention, And then after, dare I say, a few years of reaching into your intention, it begins to reach into your view.

[26:04]

So it begins to give you the ability to transform your view, to be rooted in wisdom view, and then your intentions, resolve, speech, conduct, and so forth, arise out of wisdom views. And in the fullest sense, that would be a description of a Buddha. Did that answer your question?

[27:04]

So, only when you resolve the middle part, can you really work on the beginning part? And only when you've fully resolved the beginning part can you really fully resolve the wreck. Now, an interesting question. That's very important to question these teaching volunteers. Why does it end with concentration rather than end with... Meditation. You don't like my question? No. Yes, go ahead. I have been saying yesterday when you said use and distance is like action.

[28:05]

But what is the difference to concentration? Concentration is not touching. Concentration is not touching. because suckness is the absence of concentration. What? Concentration is the absence of concentration. There's no effort in such... Okay. But what concentration represents is what you want in eight. It's something you can bring back into each of the previous seven. You can't bring meditation exactly back into speech. But you can bring the concentration that arises from meditation back into speech.

[29:22]

Does that make sense? Yes. It's amazing that we talk about a path all the time but we never talk about the motivation that brings us onto this path. So for two days, for example, I haven't heard the word love Yeah? Oh dear. Oh my God. Yeah, I don't know.

[30:27]

What do you mean by love? What do you mean by love? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. we talk about a path and something brings me onto this path. It's like the source of energy, of my energy, of energy. Okay. I started to say that From this path we learn a lot about Buddhism. And from this path we can study ourselves. And this path also shows us how to transform ourselves. And more than that, this is understood.

[31:46]

It's the fourth of the four noble truths. This is the path that frees, can free us from suffering. Now, I speak about this as something interesting. Something useful. I even speak about it as something amusing. But I also... I could speak about it. It's something deadly serious. Martino, it's a little harder to speak about. Let me go back to Sophia.

[33:16]

I have to tell Sophia at some point that she's going to die. Yes, she'll figure it out for herself. Somehow I have to tell her or recognize that with her that she will die. I think that's a tremendous shock for a child. Yeah, and of course the parents are going to die. And their father is probably going to die before most of her friends probably. And she also, as I said, has a lot of this tanha, this thirst for not less than everything.

[34:28]

We have to teach her conduct. And in English, conduct is really the same root etymology as educate, to draw out. Und conduct in Englisch hat dieselbe Wurzel wie educate, das heißt herausführen. I don't know in German, but duct in the middle of educate and conduct, the same root. Das ist dieselbe Wurzel, dieses duct von Dukere. And so she has to lead herself away from, you know, All the things she wants that she won't get. Yeah, she probably won't be as beautiful as she'd like to be.

[35:28]

She's as beautiful as I'd like her to be. She probably won't be an Olympic athlete. Yeah, she probably won't be so smart as she'd like to be. Yeah, I'm just saying obvious things. But she's going to have to recognize a whole lot of limitations and deal with those limitations. Yeah. And she's going to have to learn to ignore the suffering of a lot of people. I remember, I don't know, this is kind of a ridiculous example, but... Once when I was a kid before I went to school, a frog got hit by a car.

[36:34]

But it was still alive. But it only had one rear leg and its guts were all hanging out. It was trying to hop across our yard. Mm-hmm. And I couldn't do anything. I couldn't put it back together. It was terrible for me, actually. I remember it as being really terrible. And I must have stayed with it an hour or something, and my mother kept calling me into lunch. Finally, she came out and got me and said, you know, we can't do anything about the frog. Come on in. And after lunch, I went out and looked for the frog. I couldn't find it. But that I couldn't do anything about it really made me suffer.

[38:08]

I can't explain, except it still burns in me. And also that my mother was so casual about it. Oh, it's just a frog. I mean, we can't, you know, don't worry. I couldn't understand why she was so casual. And then another, I don't know why, you know, what these two things are connected in my mind, but... At some point around the same age. On a sort of barn shed on one side of our house. There was, you know, some bird, a wild bird, had a little nest.

[39:22]

And it had quite a few eggs in it. So somehow I went back to it for two or three days, and I decided I should see if they're like the eggs in the... So I opened several of them. I think I left one. And then, you know, my family was quite, my father was kind of a scientist, engineer, and so I brought them to him and I said, look, they're the same as eggs. And my father was quite angry with me. So I remember I suffered some because my father was angry at me. And I suffered more because I couldn't put those eggs back.

[40:30]

And I suffered even more because I couldn't understand how we ate eggs in the kitchen. Why did we eat those eggs and we protected these eggs? couldn't get it. I still feel it. I mean, I eat a hamburger or something equivalent sometimes, but I still feel it. Questions? Whatever at this point. Yes. I noticed that when you talk about attention, bringing attention to your speech you also maybe have to talk about bringing attention to listening. Yeah, sounds like a good idea.

[41:46]

I say that selfishly, because when I try this with this right attitude towards speech, It takes longer for me to come up with something because I watch this whole process of how words are forming. This whole process takes a long time, at least for me. It is exciting to watch yourself, but for other people, it takes too long.

[42:55]

They interrupt me. I can't finish. Well, you're in the process of studying yourself, and you bliss out, and no one knows what you're doing. And then they shake you. It's not like that. But I also would like to see that we also speak about listening attentively. Yeah. Yeah, part of this, as you in fact are pointing out, is a whole way to study and listen to the world. To put it in a traditional framework, You listen with your heart and body, not with your mind.

[44:23]

And you listen with a sense of being present in the listening. This is in particular to a teaching. In particular to a teaching, listening to a teaching. But applies to listening to anything. Listening to the snow. There's a poem, I see if I can remember it, called Listening to the Snow. And it goes something like, night, Cold, no wind.

[45:32]

Cold, no wind. Bamboos. Some separate, some bunched together. A pine trees. A fence. Listen with the mind and not the ear. Yeah, it doesn't sound like much. Yeah, particularly in my translation, my version, you know. But it's quite interesting. It never mentions the snow. It says there's no wind. But it talks about the... sound of the bamboo, which are sometimes bunched together and sometimes separate.

[46:53]

And the pine tree and the fence. Yeah. And listen to the mind, not the... for the mind, not the ear of the typical... For us who meditate, we know the difference between our own hearing of something, which is what the poet means by hear with the mind, And hearing with the ear. And hearing the object. So the poem suggests that listening to the snow is actually listening to the difference between the pine tree, the fence, and the bamboos. When it's snowing, it's a different kind of quietness from the objects in the garden.

[48:10]

So whether it's a teaching of the snow, a certain kind of listening is recommended. So first you listen with the heart or the body. Then you mull it over. Turn it over, turn it over. Yeah, I don't know. I tried to find how do you say mull in another way in English, but I can't find another way. Mull, chew it over, mull it over. And then you hold it in front of you.

[49:25]

And you hold it in front of you until it releases. And there's an insight. Or an opening. And you feel like you've entered something. You feel like you've entered a stream. Now, if you do that every time someone speaks to you, you're going to really have people impatient with you. What are you doing? I'm holding it. I'm waiting for release. But anyway, you're on to something. She's on to something. On to something. I'm trying. OK. Someone else?

[50:29]

Yes. I don't know if I can put my question already. I tried yesterday, and I couldn't do it then. Oh. I have to try. Yesterday you started out with your talking about your daughter, how she connects appearances with crawling on the floor. connects the way things are connected, sees things connected through the floor, yeah. And that now she can see things being connected through the air, too.

[51:36]

Yeah. And now my question. Language is kind of symbol for experiences or appearances. And the question goes into the direction of, what is the difference between material appearances and the appearance of words and thoughts?

[52:48]

And the question came up. Also, when you mentioned that a person who is here is more real when she's here than when you just know she exists somewhere. More real to me. More real. Or more real to the perceiver. So give me an example of what you mean or what you feel between How do you put it? Knowing something through words and knowing something through... Can you explain what you mean again?

[53:56]

Give me an example. You know, I look at a tree That's right up there. Is it more real than a shot about my experiences with cheats? My feeling is that what I see there also has to do with my experiences with kids. Otherwise, I maybe wouldn't see them, really. Trees are hers. They're masculine in German.

[55:16]

It's about German, not just English. I've been hugging all these trees all this time and they're masculine? Well, you know, you're asking questions that from Aristotle to the contemporary philosophy, no one's been really able to answer. So I can beg off from answering those questions. Since it's just us here in this room, I'll make it try it. Well, what you brought up is where I think what I should talk about a bit when I speak about conduct.

[56:26]

Because the study of proceeding is a big part of Buddhism. But just to give a brief answer to what's response to what you said, of course our experience of a tree and all of the information we have about trees is part of our memory. And it comes into play right away.

[57:30]

Part of practice is to kind of stop it coming into play right away. To be present. to the presence of the tree and your own presence that arises through the tree without any or as little memory or information about trees as possible. Yeah, so you might sort of feel like this could be a Martian tree. Yeah. You could feel, oh, another tree from Mars. Yeah. So actually we spoke about this in our little pre-day discussion yesterday.

[58:44]

Now we can go back to the five dharmas. When the tree first appears to you, There's almost an immediate tendency to name it. That's true. As soon as you do that, what you're doing is you're taking a kind of potentially wide sense of mind. and you're drawing it up into the word tree and then it's hard to see it because then you see mostly the trees of your experience and it probably will look kind of boring

[60:00]

Und dann sieht der irgendwie langweilig aus. It's got the same old bark and, you know, et cetera. Der hat dieselbe alte Rinde und so weiter. But the degree to which it's not boring means you're kind of keeping what happens in your name aside a bit. Der Grad, zu dem es nicht langweilig ist, ist der Grad, mit dem du das Benennen auf der Seite hältst. When I take walks with my little daughter, who's now 11 months old, I walk up to, well, if I'm outside, it's a tree, but if I'm inside, it's something like this, and I hold her right here like this. She just looks at this thing. Five or ten minutes, she can look at it. When I walk up to that one, I put her face right in that one, and she finds that one equally interesting. She tastes it and everything. So... What happens when you go to naming and then into discrimination, thinking about it?

[61:32]

We produce consciousness. And then we know, once we produce consciousness, consciousness tends to reproduce the structure of the consciousness. And then we tend to see the object only through the structures of consciousness which are infused with memory. then we tend to see the object only through the structures of consciousness, and these are then confused, permeated by the inner. Yeah, without going into it in more detail, we could say that part of the practice of mindfulness is to let things appear.

[62:53]

as if they never existed before. Yeah, that's enough. So this would be an initial mind. And it is possible.

[64:09]

And again, one of the secrets of its possibility is, again, what I keep repeating, all mental phenomena has a physical component. And all sentient physical phenomena has a mental component. And you actually learn to feel different states of mind. And it's much easier to hold a physical feeling than a mental feeling. So if the mind of appearance only arises, And you know that physical feeling.

[65:18]

You can hold yourself in that physical feeling. And even if the process of naming arises, it arises very slightly. And it doesn't lead to discrimination. Yes? Manish Sharma. Manish Sharma, yeah. Can this initial mind lead to an enrichment of our words? A tree, for example, so that they are enriched by this experience. Of course.

[66:28]

I think that's what a poet does. We could say poetry is the effort of someone to... put words in a conjunction that makes you feel the object, the reality behind them more clearly. Yes, Bert. Oh, I'm sorry. Did you want to say more? Oh, okay. You're welcome. Could you give an example of what you mean by a physical feeling and a mental feeling? Uh, well, um...

[67:50]

Well, yeah, why I'm hesitating is because it's just with looking at a tree. You know, when you take a photograph, well, my habit when I take a photograph, which is not very often, But if I have a camera and I take... I don't try to compose the picture. I just take the... When it first hits me to take a picture, I take the picture. The thought occurs to me to take a picture, so I go... And I don't think, oh, this would be better. Probably why I take such lousy pictures.

[69:21]

But, you know, doing that that way is sort of part of my practice, though. I'm not trying to be a photographer. Yeah. But if I notice a tree, for instance, I would stay with the first experience I have of noticing. But if I walked up to a tree, just like with Sophia and wanted to look at it with her, I would probably do two things at once. I would take my... This is interesting. I would take my... feel my energy come out of my head then I'd probably initially put it here with my breath.

[70:32]

And that would produce a certain kind of mind. But I could do it in other ways, too. I might stand in front of the tree with my stomach instead of my my chest area. That's a process of using the body to produce a certain mind. And you can do that in zazen. And you can also do that in sasana. When you sit, for example, and you have arrived in a posture, then you can feel in different parts, the chakras are a part of it, and enter a particular state of mind.

[71:51]

Now, normally, if I have a ten-minute period available to me, I do something like that. If I have a 40 or 50 minute period available, I don't do that. I don't want to control my zazen that much. I'd like each period of zazen to go somewhere I've never gone before. But the posture of where I've never gone before is also a certain particular feeling. Now let me say something that I think is interesting. It relates to what we're speaking about. And in a way, this relates to what I'm speaking about.

[72:55]

Can one of you change that one? You get a reduced, you know, a reduction. And pretty soon we'll consider you staff and she won't go home. Yeah, in speaking about conduct, I want to speak about how we are in the world. how we are a share of the world. Now, putting that aside, coming back to what we were speaking about. I think most of us feel our awareness or mind somewhere in the upper part of our body.

[74:12]

The most common example, I suppose, of that, easy to understand example, is to think that your feet are down there. That means you locate the site of self or the site of awareness is somewhere in the upper body. We could call that an experience of mind or the experience of the presence of mind. Okay. Now, in yogic practice, in meditation practice, one of the experiences of a yogic mind is the top of your head begins to itch.

[75:13]

And that's often marked in a lot of Buddhist statues with a bumper, a flame, and all kinds of stuff. But in actual fact, you begin to feel a kind of itching here. Like the top of your head might open up or something. Sometimes it's very pronounced, sometimes it's just a sensitivity. You also feel a general sense of... aura, a circle, a field here in your chest. And you can feel it. You can put your hand and you feel like you're entering something.

[76:37]

One wants to make your hand vibrate or something, and then it lifts when you come up. And in your hara, you almost feel like there's a hand there that can take hold of things. Now, I don't know if I should be talking about this weird stuff to you. But it's actually not so weird. It's fairly common to, you know, you may notice yourself with sensitivity here. And the feet, the heels, are called the bubbling spring well. The bubbling spring well.

[77:58]

We live on Quelling Wig. Because, and those things I just described, including a certain fluidness in the body, pliancy in the body. That's called mind in Buddhism. So when you experience that, you're experiencing your mind. And we would say, most of us, well, when I experience looking and feeling and thinking about the world from here, that's mind.

[79:02]

And that's only from a yogic point of view, that's only an unlimited observing kind of mind. So if you're in a situation, and while you're in the situation you feel this become very tingly, A yogi would say, ah, mind is present. Does that make sense that there's a difference in what we're talking about when we talk about what is manifest as minds? You know, in a koan, there's a certain code involved.

[80:11]

In a koan, there's always a certain code involved. By the way, what time are we supposed to eat? 12.15. Okay. I'm trying to get out of to knowing. Like they say, blah, blah, blah, something or other, and then they say, he raised his eyebrow. Yeah, I could have translated that. That's a code for the arising of yogic mind. Now, it's not a mind you'd normally experience unless you meditate. But your feeling of being present in the world is...

[81:13]

has a different physical location than the usual observing mind. The feeling of being present in the world has a different physical manifestation than how we locate our usual observing consciousness, how we feel the location of our usual observing consciousness. So this Fourth path of the Eightfold Path. Remember I said each is like a little package, you open it up? First you open it up and it says, you know, follow the precepts.

[82:36]

And then you open, unwrap it further. And it says, observe the fields of perceiving. The Vijnanas. And then when you open up further, you find this apes. Yeah, I can say subtle mind or something, but that doesn't mean anything. A mind with different boundaries. Different manifestations. And in response to what you said earlier, what is your name? Agatha?

[83:50]

I suppose I could say I think knowing the appearance of the tree without so much memory is more real. Ich vermute, den Baum ohne so viel Erinnerungen wahrzunehmen ist möglicher. In the sense that it's closer to the root of the language and the root of the experience. In dem Sinne, dass es näher ist an der Wurzel der Sprache und der Wurzel der Erfahrung. But really to say more real is not very important, I think. Aber wirklich zu sagen, es ist wirklicher, ist nicht wirklich wichtig. I find it more useful just to say different. They're both real, but they're different kinds of real. Okay, now we're in hot water. Yeah. So why don't we sit for a few minutes?

[85:03]

Cool off. No.

[85:04]

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