Rather than a state of mind that's unwholesome. With much the same reason you pull your hand out of hot water. It's like... Father Kirst here in the middle of a cup of coffee. That's enough coffee. You don't finish the cup. Stop. So that kind of sense, so you can begin to distinguish here between the mind of the essence of mind or pure mind, or the artesian mind that arises from the body, And the mind of thinking and so forth.

[01:13]

And you can choose with this mind to relate to the phenomenal world instead of relating to it with this mind. So, now some questions. Do you have any questions? Your last little loop means the mind rooted in the emotion after the mind rooted in the feeling. Is that correct? Yes, this is the mind... Yeah, go ahead, Deutsch bitten. Now you have to read me. When you were talking about this inclusiveness, were you talking about the mind rooted in the emotion? as opposed to the mind rooted in the feeling. This is the mind rooted, this is the mind which can feel pleasure and non-pleasure.

[02:18]

So it's a way we experience this mind coming into responses and definitions. But it's not a mind that gets caught in likes and dislikes. In grasping and rejecting. Yeah. So... So this mind is the mind of emotions. This mind is a mind which you can say feels, but doesn't have emotions. It doesn't mean emotions are bad. It just means that you experience your emotions now not as definitive, but in contrast to pure mind.

[03:28]

And you can distinguish then more clearly how your the roots of your emotions. And I think, I usually say, I think it's pretty much true that all emotions are rooted in caring. But very quickly they get captured by self-interest. You get angry because you care about something and pretty soon you're angry because you're offended. Now one of the things that's important about this drawing And I wouldn't necessarily have noticed it unless I drew it, is here I see that the

[04:39]

relationship to the phenomenal world is primarily the mind. So the major shift in the dynamic of the four foundations of mindfulness is that mostly the phenomenal world is known through this artesian mind. It's a mind not known, that you don't know through attachment, but rather acceptance, Without grasping or rejecting. It's a mind known to... Knowing and not understanding.

[06:06]

And mind you act in without understanding. You may have to understand, but basically your initial, most of my reactions are way more nuanced than I can understand. Standing here, do I know what I'm doing? I don't know, I'm just trying to... I have a feeling, and I'm trying to make it clear, and I feel something with you. Of course, I know I have to stand upright, and I have to hold this in my right hand. That's a kind of mechanical thing. So anyway, and I noticed that when I drew it. I didn't draw this, I drew this.

[07:08]

Now, in my experience at least, there's a big difference between these two. And this is really a fairly accurate drawing of how I felt until I was 30 or something. Now we have to go to lunch. I think I can come back to looking more carefully at the second, third, and fourth foundations of mindfulness, and the craft of practicing them. And I'd like to speak about the installation of essence of mind as the seed of bodhisattva. And how that can be matured and realized through the six paramitas.

[08:18]

And how the Bodhisattva is not just a religious ideal. But a very practical and accomplishable practice. Okay. Can we sit for a minute? 10,000 miles. 10,000 miles of space.

[09:21]

Thank you very much. Thank you for translating. So what I'd like to do today, this afternoon, It's actually not take too much time right now. Since we will have a session this evening. Yeah, and it's becoming sort of a nice afternoon. So during the seminar, I'd like us to have, or you to have, at least a couple times to have a discussion.

[11:49]

But I'd like to go more into the Third Foundation of Mindfulness. Particularly as it relates to, if I can imagine it, to therapeutic practice. And tonight we'll try to look at this evening, look at the fourth and final, fourth and can't say final, foundation of mindfulness. And tomorrow I'd like to see if I can say something about how this relates to the four foundations and everything we've been talking about relates to bodhisattva practice.

[12:53]

Okay. Why not? So does anybody have anything you want to bring up though right now? This is, by the way, the least talkative year, least discussion we've ever had. Is that because the group is smaller or because I'm louder? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm coming back to the term board consciousness and foreign installation.

[13:58]

And my starting point in thinking about it is that I assume that human beings are functioning in a way that Does that make sense? So if we assume that starting from infancy, all the time during your life, something like foreign installation is built up in your life. I have difficulty seeing this as something alien or like an enemy.

[15:10]

It also has to have some use or how it functions in your life. It's a very compassionate question. Yeah, I don't like actually saying foreign installation or borrowed consciousness very much. And I think you have to understand those terms in the context of the possibilities of being beyond culture. Or the possibilities of being in addition to culture. Now, all... all... Basically Buddhist teachings make such an assumption.

[16:24]

I think a realized Chinese Zen master, say, would think being Chinese is only one way of being. So in that sense, it's something he's borrowed from his brothers and sisters and parents. Yeah, it's okay to borrow it. But you also want to be able to give it back. Yeah, or something like that. So if you, you know, we just, otherwise, if we don't see it that way, then the terms foreign and borrowed are too negative. But if you don't, at some point in your life, see it as foreign...

[17:26]

then you over identify with it. So within the intimacy of a conclave of adepts, we can speak about these things. Yeah, and And it's often called, the bodhisattva enters the weeds. But the weeds also is a somewhat pejorative term. Because it means everyone's culture. But it also means compassion. And some people take a Buddha position and refuse to participate in the society.

[18:41]

I think it might be better to call Buddhism the Bodhisattva Yana. The vehicle of the bodhisattvas rather than Mahayana or Ekayana. And then there's Ekayana, which means there's Hinayana, Mahayana. Ekayana is the one vehicle teaching which... which Zen falls into and Dzogchen and so forth. But Zen has never set this up as a third school. It's a kind of in way of speaking about it. Tantrayana. But in Japan they did think of it in the early days as a third school. It wasn't Mahayana. Okay. Yeah, I guess as a Buddhist parent, I tried to give my two daughters and now my third daughter.

[20:25]

Yeah, I'm looking for the fountain of youth. Yeah. I want to give them a feeling that what they're learning from Marie-Louise and myself, this is one way of being human. And maybe it'll be easier for her to learn that because she'll have a sort of German way and a... American way and so forth. And since Marie-Louise doesn't think she's German and I don't think I'm an American, we'll see what happens. We'll bring her for examination once a year. Okay. Now, poor Elizabeth had a terrible time with me.

[21:46]

I'm not very easy to interview. I don't know how to talk to a tape recorder. And even after I talk to the tape recorder, as some of you already know, once I'm sent the material, it's very difficult for me to even look at it. So with true warrior spirit, she persevered. Yeah, with Christina at her side. I still don't have much to say. I still didn't have much to say. I just am not good, I'm sorry. But I did say, she asked a number of times, what would a Zen teacher do in certain circumstances? So I said I'd read to her what Yuan Wu says. He says real teaching in... What's his name?

[23:07]

Yohan Wu. Ah, Yohan Wu. Yohan. Yohan. He's not German. Yohan is Wu. He's half German and half Japanese. Yeah, that's right. Yohan is Wu. John Wu. John Wu. You know... John Woo? Maybe so, the guy who did that, Dragons and something. Okay. It's interesting, the difference between her and Eric's humor. We have a different fun when you translate it. Real teaching and real learning since high antiquity.

[24:10]

The source vehicle has been transcendence and direct realization. Transcendence and direct realization. with teachers and apprentices, joined in understanding, there is nothing haphazard about it. This is why the sixth patriarch pounded rice in the fifth patriarch's community. This is why other Zen adepts worked diligently for 20 or 30 years. The seal of approval cannot be given lightly. In general, genuine Zen teachers set forth their teachings

[25:12]

Only after observing the learner's situation and potential. Real teachers. This is actually, before they said, I think you're just making it up as you read it. Now we have a description. Real teachers smelt and refine, you know, smelt. Make metal. Their students hundreds and thousands of times. Whenever the learner has any biased attachments or feelings of doubt, the teacher resolves them or breaks through them and causes the learner to penetrate to the depths. and let go of everything so the learner can realize equanimity and peace in activity.

[27:06]

Real teachers transform learners and I think maybe I should resign from being a teacher. This looks too hard. Real teachers transform learners so that they reach the stage where they cannot be broken, like a leather bag that can withstand any impact. Only after this does the teacher let the transformed student go forth and deal with people. And help them.

[28:10]

This is no small matter. If the student is incomplete in any respect, then the model is not right and the unripe student comes out all uneven. And full of excesses and deficiencies. And appears ridiculous to real adepts. Yeah, okay. When such adepts meet with potential learners, they examined each and every point in terms of the fundamental.

[29:14]

When the learners finally did understand, then the teachers employed techniques to polish and refine them. It was like transferring water from one vessel to another. with the utmost care not to spill a drop among the methods the adepts employed we see driving off the plowman's ox I don't know if you can do that in psychotherapy. There's the farmer, he's got his ox and he's plowing. It's his only way to support himself. And you drive off the ox.

[30:37]

He's scared of something, you push him right into it. This won't work in psychotherapy all the time. Maybe sometimes. Or taking away the hungry man's food. Yeah, okay. Like that. This poor guy, when he first went to see his teacher, he says, in the old days when I first met my teacher, woo-zoo. Can you Deutschify that? Woo-zoo. I blurted out my realization and I presented it to him. And I looked at him and I realized it was all empty talk of Buddha Dharma, essence of mind and mystic marvels.

[31:38]

So I went back to the cushion. Yeah, so the approach is maybe overlapping, but somewhat different. Okay, so let's look at the second foundation of mindfulness again. So what you're doing now after you've practiced the mindfulness of the body, and this will be more true the more thoroughly you've practiced the mindfulness of the body, you now practice noticing the arising of sensations.

[32:50]

sensations that come from each sense. And you notice from which sense they come. And you notice whether they're pleasurable or displeasurable. And you see how the contact of sensation can easily turn into desire or craving. So you learn the difference between desire and craving. Yeah, and... Just pleasure and displeasure. You can feel the shift again between pleasure and displeasure and likes and dislikes.

[34:09]

You walk into the room. Empty or full of people. It has the odor of a sweaty gym. And full of cigarette smoke. Oh my God. But it's displeasurable, but it doesn't have to be disliked. And particularly you don't have to go into grasping and rejecting. So it's like that. And usually in the situation there's a territory that's actually okay. the more you can feel this shift from pleasure to like or want.

[35:22]

you can find a mind which rests in simple pleasures. Some things are pleasant, some things are unpleasant. That's all. It's normal. You feel an appreciation for being in the world. Some gratitude and appreciation. And pleasure and displeasure are part of that. So you can actually feel quite good virtually all the time. Moods and so forth rooted in likes and dislikes don't happen much. You can always root yourself in the most simple pleasures. The soft light of a gray day

[36:34]

Das sanfte Licht eines grauen Tages. The sun on a leaf. Die Sonne, die auf einem Blatt fällt. Sometimes people feel that in Sashin when they have the walking kin hin outside. Ich denke, manchmal fühlen die Leute das im Sashin, wenn sie draußen im freien kin hin machen. I don't know why it is they can take the same walk outside of Sashin. Just walking along in Sashin with no place to go and nothing to do. Tiny things are ravishing. Yeah. But that also is occurring not just because you're looking, because somehow it's a different... The more mindfulness of the body is realized, appreciation of simple things deepens.

[38:01]

It may sound silly, but it does do this. Maybe it's like being on a vacation when you don't get sick. Or maybe it's like in a sashin where several days of sitting forces the mindfulness of the body upon you. So The second foundation of mindfulness allows you to establish yourself in an appreciative, caring mind which is not yet flooded by mentation. Okay, now the more you have established that, you can then practice the third foundation of mindfulness, which is generally translated as to know the mind in the mind, which as a teaching means

[39:28]

To see the products of mentation. And then you note each one. You see it's aggressive or not aggressive. And you just do that. God, my mood today is such and such. And if you want, you can practice returning to the source of the mood. This takes some meditative or mindfulness skills. But the more you've developed the second foundation of mindfulness, the more you can be present when a mood changes. Or a headache started. or a kind of anger started.

[40:49]

The more you've developed the first and second foundation of mindfulness, the more you're almost never surprised why you're in such and such a mood. Because you know exactly when it started. You saw a letter on the table, and the letter is from somebody, and they, you know, bleh. So you just, like a surgeon, you take that little thought out of your mind. When I read the letter, I'll worry about it. And you really, for example, get the simple skill To not worry about anything until it's necessary to worry about it. You know you've got a bill for $1,750 on the... In the envelope.

[41:52]

You know you have $222 in your account. This is often my situation. And you know the bill is not due until the 21st. You have to mail it on the 15th. So you don't think about it till the morning of the 15th. Yeah, it may drive other people crazy, but you know. Why should I think about anything I don't have to think about? Yeah. I'm not going to produce any more money between now and the 15th, so what the hell? Yes. Like that. Okay, so you really get, so you can see when mentation arises. When a mental construct arises.

[43:08]

You know it's a mental construct. So at first you just try to develop the skill of observing it. Yeah, so I suppose if you had a client who has a compulsive thinking or something, you might get them to observe each thought. You might get them to try to transform the thought into an image. And knock on the floor or table every time the thought occurs. Which reminds me of an old joke. Shall I tell that old joke? About the three old people? Did I tell you that? No. There's three old people sitting around.

[44:17]

And the one says, Jesus, I'm getting so forgetful. He says, you know, I stand up from my chair and when I get up, I cannot remember why I got up. And the other one says, it's even worse for me. I start upstairs and I pause, I'm out of breath. And I can't remember anything. whether I was going upstairs or downstairs. And the third one says, thank God that hasn't happened to me yet. Let me knock on wood. Come in. So you get the person to note, you yourself, you note, you know the classic pattern.

[45:24]

You get the person to note. You know the classic pattern. You're angry. You're more angry. Less angry. If you can get a person to just do that, I think that's already quite powerful. Now, what is the more adept practitioner trying to do? The dynamic of this noticing. You notice whatever the mental formation is. Mood or emotion. Whatever, thought. And you... you notice the mind noticing it. So you're not just noticing the anger, you're noticing your own mind noticing the anger.

[46:43]

Then you feel This is the shape of my mind. This is me at this point. You're not trying to get rid of it. This is just who I am at this point. It's okay. If I go crazy, I go completely crazy. I'm going to sit here and go crazy. And you begin to merge the observing mind with it. So you know the mind is, you're experiencing the mind, noticing the mind. You don't try to escape from whatever's happening.

[47:57]

It's just you. I suppose if I was... You just sit there in the middle of it. And you also feel the mind that's observing. And then you try to let those two minds merge. Absorb each other. And you find yourself in a new kind of mind. And then you let that mind lead you. And that mind often leads you to resolutions. Resolution like solving or changing or transforming.

[48:59]

But it doesn't come out of trying to transform. It just comes out of accepting. But the stronger you've developed the first and second foundation of mindfulness, the easier this practice is. If you don't have a really stable feeling of body-mind, it's very hard to do this successfully. But the process of noting And just saying, oh, this is the way it is. It's already a process of removing some identification with it. And that's already a process of touching essence of mind.

[49:59]

Okay, so I think that's enough on that. Part of it, of course, is just getting familiar with all the forms of mentation. And not feeling it's the whole of your mind. So you accept it as completely you right now, but not the whole of you. And the development of that allows you to go to the fourth foundation of mindfulness, which is to see the world as dharmas. Okay, what does that mean? That's what we'll talk about tonight.

[51:12]

But you already know all this stuff. I'm just reminding you. So you said you weren't going to take a break. You said... They said they weren't going to take a break. Do you want to have some discussion now or whatever? With or without a break, that's up to you. Because I think we should start the fourth foundation of mindfulness from a fresh base. Okay. You look worried. Thank you very much. Thank you for translating.

[52:22]

It interests me to some extent if I It's possible to work with these things like this practice of mindfulness with a patient, with a client. I can imagine doing it in the past. I can't imagine doing it in the present. But because I've learned, at least for me in this lifetime, that there's too much bonding involved for me to be involved with people psychotherapeutically. Because of the bonding that comes with meditation practice and so forth, often I don't have

[53:35]

distance from people. And I found that if you get Bonding gives you a lot of authority in people's lives. And too much authority to have the distance to work therapeutically. I don't know if what I'm saying makes sense, but it's the case for me. I don't have relationships where I see a person an hour and then don't see them again. Okay. So it would be interesting to... I can imagine when I used to try to respond to people's distress...

[54:52]

To get them to stop and to see if one can create a situation where you can feel the other person's state of mind. and feel what they're going through. And in general, my tendency was in the 60s where I had to respond to all kinds of things. If a person was crazy, I'd get crazy with them. So forth, like that. Yeah, I'd agree.

[56:08]

Let's burn the building down. What the hell? And several times I had to deal with arsons and people about to leap off roofs. Yeah. But what I'm going, just going back to identifying with the mind, mindfully identifying with the mind of another person. My experience is you would have to let yourself feel the power of the other person's mind. Much like this recent storm we had. Now, what I'm really saying is you have to feel that power in yourself if you're going to practice mindfulness. If I just talk about it as I did earlier, rather quickly without much pace, then it's mostly perhaps understood intellectually.

[57:39]

But you really, to feel it in yourself, you have to be in this sky. And feel the roiling clouds. Seeing if you knew the word roiling. I don't know whether I knew it. You can guess. Roiling means to stir up so everything becomes muddy or disturbed. And then to feel the clouds, the power of the clouds against the sky. And sometimes the clouds are, the sky is as dark as the clouds. And sometimes the sky is clear.

[58:51]

So anyway, when you really have a experience, as I've been talking about, from within the body of the body, that kind of experience becomes an experience of being, not looking at your mind, but being within your mind, looking through the mind, being within the mind, looking as if you're in the room of the mind. And you are the room of the mind. So you don't say, oh, why am I thinking this way?

[59:52]

There's no question about it. You are this thinking. And you can explore a room much better than if you're looking through the window. So if you're inside the room of the mind, you find much more there than if you're looking from the outside. So just to know the mind in the mind. This is not just words. This means that if you really develop the practice of the first two foundations, a body in the body and the feelings in the feelings, you now have some ability to feel the mind from within the mind. So, yeah, again, you don't

[60:54]

You don't say, oh, I have this kind of thinking. You are this kind of thinking. So it's kind of scary maybe. And you don't know where your boundaries are. You don't have a convenient outside. It's all inside. And your stability then isn't just sidewalks and washing dishes. Your stability is this clarity of a rooted mind, what I call an artesian mind, rooted in a really stable feeling, no inside or outside body. So if you really know the mind, the mind in the mind, this is actually the words of the sutra,

[62:16]

you have a kind of yogic experiential shift. So you feel inside your body and mind and emotions as being inside a room. Inside a house. Yeah, then a house is much more... Knowing a house from inside is different from knowing it from outside. And the interior space has much more definition than you would have guessed from the outside of the house.

[63:30]

So this experience of being in the space of the mind And at the same time the contents of the mind is the personal practice of the Buddhist realizing practicing with mental formations. Okay. So what's the result of that? You really feel familiar with yourself. Intimate with yourself.

[64:34]

And I'm going to put a couple more poems up on the, I printed them out up on the board here. One of them I've mentioned a number of times in the last few weeks. This poem of Rilke's. Which relates to what I'm saying right now. Yeah, and it's a poem I don't know the name of. It's something tree, but I know it was first published in 1924. For those of you who might want to look it up. I think it was 1924. He says, the space outside of things, the space outside of yourself violates things.

[65:40]

If you want to know the existence of a tree, form it from the space, form it from that inner space, invest it with that inner space, whose source is whose source is within you. Surround the tree with constraints. This space has no boundaries. But it can only be known Through the heart of your renunciation.

[66:52]

Anyway, that's my version of the poem. From German to French to English to German. We don't know where the poem is actually wandering. But anyway, this is a quite powerful... thing that Rilke has said. The space outside of things violates. The space outside of yourself violates. There's a shift He wants a shift. The tree arises from the space within you. Yeah, so there's a difference between looking through the window and being inside the room. So the four foundations of mindfulness... are to get us inside the room, the space of our body.

[68:07]

Inside the room and space of our feelings. So we don't just feel their effects. I can't really explain what this inside feeling is like. Maybe you know it. I'm sure you know it. But somehow through the renewed and often renewed practice of mindfulness of the body. A kind of subtle mind is evolved or generated. A mind of clear comprehension. Naturally clear. which allows us to feel from inside as if there's no outside.

[69:19]

Now, this may actually have some pertinence to your constellation work. Because when I think about it or I notice it, you're creating a mind which knows And the fourth foundation of mindfulness is the mindfulness of the phenomenal world. Okay, so, but what's the phenomenal world? Hmm. Hmm. You're carrying translation too far. Okay. Well, if she's inside, I guess that's what happens. Okay.

[70:23]

If everything is impermanent, and you know everything is impermanence, then you know everything is space. Because impermanence has the quality of space. Everything arises. Its impermanence means it's appearing and disappearing. How fast do things appear and disappear? Well, that big plant over there will disappear eventually. The plant makes space, makes a kind of space. We can take it away. The space it made lingers for a while and then melts into space. Now, what did I just say? I said objects leave traces in space.

[71:43]

You take the tree away and the space remembers the tree for a while. I don't think science would say this. Maybe it would mean some idea like ether or something. Water poured in water, space poured in space. There was this big homeopathic, homeopathy, homeopathy, homeopathic scandal some years ago about French research showed water retains a memory. Yeah, so the scientists investigated it and found it wasn't true. So I find myself, though true or not, having some kind of feeling like that. Yeah, I could perhaps misapply Dogen, where he says, this...

[72:53]

Trace continues endlessly. Okay, in any case, phenomena is impermanent. These flowers will disappear sooner than that plant in the pot. And we'll all leave this room. So one of the practices of the The fourth foundation of mindfulness is to see the phenomenal world as dharmas. That means to see the phenomenal world as impermanent. That means to see the phenomenal world as units. It means to see the phenomenal world as mind. Because it's not permanent. What forms does that impermanence take?

[74:28]

Here we need again an active awareness of impermanence. Yeah, this doesn't mean anything. You just know, oh, everything's impermanent, great. It means on every step you feel the floor coming up to you. A while ago I was in Portugal with my daughter. And there's some great big tower that was part of some World's Fair type thing. And we took a cable car which goes over to this tower. Have you been there? It's pretty high. It was fun, you know. So we got up there to this tower and I decided to go down the stairs. It's sort of like going down the stairs of the Eiffel Tower.

[75:31]

Yeah, it was solid enough, made of steel. But I found an open door, so I went while my daughter took the elevator down. It's all kind of space and wires you're walking on. It's very solid, but it feels impermanent. I finally got all the way down to the bottom right and the door was locked. So I was about to climb over something and some workman came and said, you're not allowed to be there. And my daughter came out of the elevator and said, it's only my father.

[76:33]

Because I wasn't about to go back up, so... But if you practice this, you begin to have some sort of... When you put your foot down, you feel maybe the floor is there. And I actually, I mean, I don't expect you to go this far. I actually practiced for some years with the feeling that the floor might not be there. And I learned to step forward with a watery foot, the water element foot. I didn't do anything. I know, you didn't do anything. That's what they all say. Okay. But my point is, you have to really actively, on each mind moment, bring the awareness of impermanence.

[78:00]

Everything's changing. Okay, so one change is just noticing activity. Another change you observe is phase change or aggregate change. Seasonal change. Rightness change. And you become aware that there are stages all the time. I find that myself has about something in the vicinity of a week to two weeks change, phase change. And I find during that period I'm working on slightly different practice questions.

[79:13]

If I ask myself, what's here, what's here? And I don't expect the same answer. I find I get the same answer for seven or eight, ten days. And then the answer is slightly different. Maybe I feel sort of sad, some kind of sadness. Yeah. Or something else for a while. Yeah. This isn't moods, this is more like kind of slightly changing orientation. how things are okay so that's phase change and more sensitively ripening change as fruits ripen is it time to pick them

[80:14]

If you're a painter, there's a time to stop painting. The painting is finished. There's a time to finish talking. There's a time to say something to somebody and wait for that to be drawn out of you and not say it when you think of it. You wait for the... when the time is right. As I said earlier, this sense that there's no... continuous time, there's only a series of right or wrong times. It is part of Asian thinking. So you're noticing ripening time or time in stages or aggregate change.

[81:39]

Then there's something that I could call impermanence or signlessness. Things actually don't fit into the categories of their names. Things the world doesn't fit into conceptual categories. The world not only is slipping out of our grasp, Much of the world is beyond our grasp.

[82:41]

Like, you know, maybe there's three or four dimensions, but maybe there's eight or ten or twelve or fourteen dimensions. Sometimes this is called knowing the signless. or allowing the signless world to function in you. But that the world is somehow fundamentally not within conceptual categories is also considered a kind of impermanence. Because a permanent thing is something you can grasp. The sense that the world is outside of categories is, whatever it is, it's not something you can grasp. This is also a kind of impermanence. Okay, the world is also momentary.

[83:42]

Extremely momentary. Where is the edge? How wide is the present? How quickly did that become past? I mean, when you think that way, the time present is so narrow and such a knife edge, how do we have any experience? But we have some experience of duration. So the word dharma actually means duration, what holds. But it contradictorily means what holds when in fact nothing holds. That which holds in a world in which nothing holds.

[84:57]

So what is this holding? How do we enter into this dharma moment or these moments of holding? Well, we develop the habit of experiencing things in units. So you really consciously bring the sense of impermanence into your moment-by-moment thinking? Now you're not noticing impermanence, you're just noticing the temporariness of, I don't know what to say, the unitary, I don't know how to put the words. Okay, you notice units.

[85:59]

And one way to practice that is by noticing things in breaths. Yeah, it's quite easy. If you're breathing, why not use it? So you notice I'm speaking on an exhale. I'm speaking on an inhale. I'm speaking on an exhale. I'm speaking on an inhale. I can notice that as I'm speaking. I'm rocking away up here. When I'm in this kind of mood, Marie-Louise gives me Sophia. She goes to sleep. So I'm rocking and breathing. So I can feel this kind of unit. I can notice when I look at somebody, there's a momentary experience.

[87:01]

Mm-hmm. Now, another way to look at this, as I mentioned recently, is junctures. We just heard this storm, right? Yeah, the lightning, etc. We weren't asleep. I think maybe you were, but I don't know. So there are several moments where you actually feel the storm. You know, the lightning, the sky, you feel something. You feel a juncture with the storm.

[88:08]

That experience is often clearer when you wake up in the night and hear a storm. And so I looked out the window and you were walking in the... The storm is swirling around you. But if you do wake up and hear a storm, and you mention it to someone the next day, oh, I slept through the storm. They didn't know. They didn't have a juncture with the storm. How long is such a juncture? As I say, if you know somebody, sometimes you feel something with a person for a moment. Some feeling of acceptance or understanding or recognition.

[89:14]

A lifetime friendship can develop in such a moment. So you start noticing junctures. Perhaps in a whole conversation there might be only a couple junctures. That's also, we can say, a dharma. And there's junctures with the natural world. There's junctures with other people. There's junctures with yourself. When you Know yourself, accept yourself.

[90:17]

There's junctures with the teaching. We call them insights. But every moment can be a junction. The more you practice Dharma practice, feeling the temporariness of things, The momentariness. The way in which perception itself is really very brief. So that's the more you're familiar with that, the more you commonly feel these junctures. Something reaches you without an inside-outside feeling.

[91:18]

Okay. Now we have the practice of these units. And that's what, as most of you know, the Genjo Koan is about. To complete that which appears, knowing everything is simultaneously particular, and interpenetrating. So you begin to sense each thing appearing. Now your sense of mental formation is not just now I'm angry, now I'm less angry. Every sense impression.

[92:18]

As Sukhiroshi said, it's like lightning in a dark sky. Because now you've got the habit through the three foundations of mindfulness of feeling the field of mind. Yeah, so a smell appears from a flower real precisely. And the flower is the size of the fragrance. Yeah, or whatever. Yeah. Because you're present at the beginning and end of a perception. And that's the fruit of the three foundations of mindfulness.

[93:21]

And you feel the field of mind in which this beginning and end happen. So what you're doing through the fourth foundation of mindfulness is we could say really you're developing a feeling for the space of everything. the information-rich space, the space from which all things arise. And that space also doesn't have duration. It's also an all-at-onceness. So this teaching says, if you want to know dharmas, if you want to know the phenomenal world, which is impermanent, and is impermanent,

[94:28]

only known as appearances. You don't know the world itself, you know the appearances of the world. That mind is identified with space itself. And there's an all-at-onceness to this. Simultaneity to this.

[95:07]

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