Then proceeds to eat your food without salt. In the bowl, which is also a sign of it. And the point is, it's used to illustrate that all words actually have shades of meaning, which you have to find out in the context. Now, I probably, I mean, maybe tomorrow I'll try to speak about the unbelievable emphasis, I think, from my experience on context in this kind of thinking. Sorry. On context. So some things that are false to us are true in another way of looking at things. Okay. And also it's confusing because we're not used to it.

[01:23]

Once we get used to the distinction, it's clear. Okay. Now there's practices involved in this. And the general way of feeling is described is as the usual sense of feeling. Is like, dislike, and neutral. Now in Buddhism, although it sounds boring, we're more interested in neutral feelings. To see if you can develop the ability to feel a situation without like or dislike coming into it. If I talk about that, some people think, I'm not going to walk around with neutral feelings. What do you think I am, an automaton?

[02:25]

No. No robot, yeah. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Your most famous Austrian. Yeah. And yours, too. No, she doesn't like it when I say it. I like him. Yeah, I like him, too. I wish I could shape-shift like him. But he said a very intelligent thing to a friend of mine. I've told you before. He said, one pump.

[03:25]

Yeah, I've said that before. One pump with a mind in it is worth ten without the mind. So all these people exercise watching the news aren't doing much. Yeah, okay. So let's say that I walk in this room. And there will be a few people coming to join us at some point because we're going to do a lay precept ordination later on Saturday or Sunday. And some of the persons who couldn't come the whole week were going to come for the ordination. So if they walk into this room and they, oh, they like the atmosphere. That's not this kind of feeling. If they walk in and dislike the atmosphere, that's not this kind of feeling.

[04:31]

If they walk in and they feel it, without liking and disliking, then that's this kind of feeling. There's an interesting... You mean it's a sensing without judging? Yes, without even liking or... Without any... Liking and disliking is some sort of... Yes, yes.

[05:34]

...valuing or judging. Yes, yes. And... Deutsch, bitte. Why do we distinguish it from perception? Why do we distinguish feeling from perception? I would say it's perception. Yeah, but we don't want to say it's perception. Okay. You could call it a kind of knowing. It's important that you... It's important why you make these distinctions. Because... Let's try this. So, one of the practices of this neutral like and dislike is to notice on each moment

[07:07]

And everything in Buddhism is on each moment. Because the world is understood to exist really in this way. Although you experience a continuity, in fact things are existing this way. And it's very important to be able to act on each moment. Because that's not only how things exist. It's also how we most definitively act. Es ist auch so, wie wir am entschiedensten handeln können. You may think about moving out of your house or something or going to college, but at some moment you say, OK, I'll change my job.

[08:18]

How long did that take? Überlegst dir vielleicht, an die Universität zu gehen oder auszuziehen aus deinem Haus, aber irgendwann entscheidest du, ja, das mache ich. Und wie lange hat das gedauert, diese Entscheidung? But going through all the information and thinking about it takes time, but the decision itself was instantaneous. And realization, this turning around we call realization, exists in this very precise, tiny moment. And like and dislikes, obscurities. Okay. Okay, so when you practice with noticing like and dislike, and then you begin to draw the like and dislike out of your feeling, just look, say, just hear, this neutral feeling becomes quite deep.

[09:32]

It's much narrower in like and dislike. Mm-hmm. And you begin to, in effect, train the mind not to swing back and forth like a pendulum, but you know, I like this, I don't like that, I like this, which is, you know, it's a hopeless situation. Okay, so you walk into this... We're going back to the people who are arriving late, and they're walking into this room. And they come in, and they have a neutral feeling, and then they most definitively will enter into the feeling of the room. Okay. And then let's say that feeling turns into, they see somebody or something, a strong feeling of liking or they say, oh, this is like once when I fell in love.

[10:54]

That then is an emotion. Okay, so that belongs... here, in perception. So when the feeling turns into anger or love or whatever, it belongs here. Because it has a shape at beginning and end. So this is a knowing, but not shaping or reacting to. So I think the first thing we should do is get these categories fairly clear. If you can get the categories fairly clear, then you can begin to see them in your own experience. Then you can begin to see the value, discover the value of this as a practice.

[12:09]

Okay. So before we go further, let's have more questions here. Yes. These neutral feelings, they have different qualities. It's not always the same. No, it's not. Nothing's always the same. Yeah, but neutral sounds somehow neutral. But it's neutral. And if it's not the same neutral, how can it be neutral? Ah! I mean, how I understand it is it arises from everything. It has a specific quality dependent on what the object or whatever it is, on what, you know... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe it's better to say unconditioned. Okay, unconditioned. Fine.

[13:10]

Unconditioned. Okay, so we could say conditioned by like or conditioned by dislike or unconditioned. Now that's maybe more precise. But again, the point is, this is experiential. It's more experiential than it's rigorously philosophical. Now most people know likes and dislikes. And if you say to them Unconditioned feeling. But you can talk about something neutral or something that's neither like nor dislike. But maybe unconditioned is good. Okay. Now, we say like the custom in the diet, for instance, in this kind of system because this system also applies, not this, but this whole yogic system applies to food.

[14:27]

Every meal should be built around a neutral taste. So it should be built around like plain rice. Or plain potatoes. So... If you also flavor the potatoes or flavor the rice, then you lose the real effect of the other flavors. So it's this kind of thinking where there should be neutrality even in the food. Now, rice doesn't taste neutral, but it's... nor unconditioned, but you understand it's just what rice is.

[15:30]

It doesn't have salt in it, it doesn't have this. That's why the Japanese and Chinese tend to eat plain boiled rice. They don't put anything in it. Okay. Are you going to translate that or is she going to translate that? It's just interesting, you know, of course, of course, I think, yeah, of course, it's in Japan and China and these Asian cultures, you find rice is the staple.

[16:37]

But when I think, really, I can't think of any cultures that don't have a neutral, not a naturally occurring, like neutral staple, whether they're yogic cultures or not, they naturally seem to... Perhaps traditional European food was probably bread. But as far as I know, Europe doesn't have the kind of system where the meal should be organized according to twelve tastes, five textures, three, you know, and there's a whole system where every meal should consist of these various colors, certain colors and things. We don't have that kind of system. And this system works best, I believe, when the neutral is part of that system.

[17:41]

It's true, most of us have... Yes? Could physical pain be part of those feelings? If someone wouldn't say, oh, this hurts, I don't want that, but say, my hurting knee helps my concentration, it wouldn't... Yes, if you just feel – that is a big change in Zazen – you want to say that in Deutsch, bitte? The crash course in learning unconditioned feeling where we would say in America the boot camp Boot camp is where they try to break the soldiers when they first train in the military.

[18:44]

Is when you can sit and there's pain, but you no longer have to like or dislike it. It's just information. And if you know it's not damaging you, it's amazing how much the difficulty of pain is your reaction to it and not the sensation. And that's one of the greatest things you can learn in Sashin. It hurts like the proverbial hell. It hurts like hell and at some point you just relax. and it's a kind of buzzing in the knee and it doesn't go up here and get it's just a kind of buzzing and suddenly it's gone it like just washes away and you can be sitting there and there's virtually no pain you don't know

[20:08]

Moment before, there was tremendous pain, and then there's none. And it usually occurs with a mind that doesn't move. And it helps generate a very still mind. And you learn something about still mind through that. As soon as the mind starts Thinking. And moving. And thinking, well, it didn't hurt, but, you know, the bell's still ten minutes off. The pain says, ah, weakie. Would you say that without dislike and like you wouldn't know no truth?

[21:23]

Probably yes. Dislike and like is teaching you neutrality or unconditioned. They're not independent, yeah. It's the same as we need form to know emptiness. You can't know emptiness separate from form. Because form is exactly emptiness. That's why emptiness is not something out there that's waiting for you to like it or something. Yes. As a medical doctor I have a question to pain. Pain is really a function of protection in our body. Pain is really a function of protection in our body.

[22:26]

Would it be to the best of people if they thought, if they're undergoing a heart attack, if they're saying, well, it's just pain and I don't have to react to it? That would be kind of stupid. I mean, you still feel something. It's depending on how you react to that feeling. And I think when you're in a serious accident, for instance, often people have no pain until later. Because they need to function and your body just simply... Yes. Yes. But I once, after I'd been practicing two or three years, went to the doctors and had a multi-phasic general, they call it multi-phasic medical exam. So that's just a complete medical exam.

[23:54]

And one of the things they did is they measured my pain threshold. So they had this little gadget like they screwed up against my ankle. So I was kind of like just going through this test and going from room to room. So I went to this room and this woman was doing something down there. I didn't know what she was doing. She didn't tell me what she was doing. And she was sitting down there screaming. And she was sitting down there screaming. And I could tell it wasn't doing any damage. Well, it was her job not to damage me. So she kept tightening it up. And finally she said... Are you all right?

[24:58]

I said, oh, what? And I said, doesn't it hurt? And I said, well, I feel something. Because I had gotten to it. Unless it was doing physical damage, it didn't bother me. So that's what I said. You have to know when you're sitting whether it's doing physical damage or not, because you can damage yourself sitting. Yes? This was my question, to differentiate when it does damage and when in my... And when I'm in my watching place and watch how I react to pain.

[26:06]

At least my experience is you can tell the difference between pain that's mostly all these other factors and pain which is actually something's wrong. Yes, that's my experience, you can. I'm not sure because I'm always dealing with people who are sick and they are always coming rather late. They had a lot of pain and they are coming rather late. Yeah, but that's probably for a lot of reasons, like they don't want to go to the doctors, they don't want to admit they have a problem. I think that this increases your ability to discriminate, not lessens it. Yeah, yes. My feeling is because they are in this dislike and likes, they are coming late.

[27:21]

If you are in this neutral space, people are not just noticing what's wrong. I think so, but you'll find out. I don't know. I mean, sometimes, you know, these martial arts folks, which there are a number around here. They make good Zen students. But a while ago when it was quite cold out and everybody else was bundled up, all the martial arts people had little thin t-shirts on. And a friend of mine saw them and said, cold? What cold? Sometimes I think with that kind of attitude you may sit in a way that damages you.

[28:42]

And when I did Tangaryo for 10 days at Eheiji, which is sitting all day without breaks, there was a Japanese guy sitting beside me who actually had an open sore on both legs where his legs came together. And it just blistered together every time he sat. And then when he pulled it aside, the blister would break. But this is this young man, gung-ho kind of military spirit. It's not Zen practice. So I'm sitting right beside him and I didn't have a blessed hair.

[29:44]

I was taking good care of myself. Okay, so what else? Yes? This is maybe a different subject. Can you talk about some of the ways we interact with each other that create separateness? I'll let you inspect that. Maybe I can talk about that, but mostly you have to feel that out for yourself. And some things which are separateness for one person are communication for another. And you notice whether it causes a feeling of separateness in you or causes a feeling of separateness in the other person.

[30:44]

Because if your feeling of connectedness makes people run the other direction, You have a problem. But I want to stick to the five skandhas today. What else? Well, I have a question about this neutral feeling. If I use the word neutral, it doesn't smell very good to me. If I look at a beautiful Picasso picture, I say, well, objectively, this is a fantastic picture. If I look at another picture, which is next to it by an artist, a young artist who just started painting, and I say, well, my feeling to both of these pictures is very neutral. They are about the same. We cannot judge. I think there's, I have the feeling that there is a difference, that you mean something else, that you should be able to distinguish between the things and also give an

[31:55]

must be able to distinguish between things and also between feelings. If you say neutrality, the feeling of neutrality is empty of positive and negative, how can one judge? So for me it's not a very clear category. Yeah, I think that's why the word neutral is good. It causes just the problem you brought up. I knew somebody who was a collector of drawings. Yeah, in fact, the main collector of drawings in the world. And he was able, and he sort of created the drawing market in the last 30 years.

[33:02]

And when he looked at drawings, he looked at them completely dispassionately, with no likes or dislikes. But he loved paintings and drawings. He basically bankrupted the family buying drawings. But he was able to look at drawings and he spotted many forgeries that nobody else had spotted. Many forgeries. Because he could switch between just a neutral looking to liking. I'm not saying we shouldn't like and dislike things or love or... I'm just saying that the feeling that knows but doesn't discriminate is very important to develop in practice as I understand it.

[34:21]

Does that make sense? Yes. Yes. We were talking about the observer and to find out about the five skandhas and to somehow dissect them, you slow down. And another way would be to observe it as neutral as possible. And then we found out, well, we have two different kinds of observer. One is going out of the body, I don't know what it is, and looking from far. Another one would be to go more into the body and going through the body out. And we didn't get it clear. In your group, you mean? Yes. So what does it mean, the neutral observing?

[35:25]

What does it bring and how can you develop it? In German, please. We talked about what the neutral observer is and saw two possibilities, that he can get out of the body and look from the outside as if he was not involved, or another possibility, that he can penetrate through the body and expand himself. And there was a third thing that watching my breath, for example, I'm changing it. So it's somehow connected. It's very hard to bring it upon. Did you say that in Deutsch too? Well, again, this goes back to the two main yogic skills, I think, are one-pointedness and a non-interfering observing consciousness.

[36:35]

For example, that can observe samadhi without ending samadhi. And this kind of practice is enhanced by a non-interfering observing consciousness, of course. And your breath practice doesn't really develop until your observation of the breath doesn't interfere with the breath. So all these practices, all these practices are closely interrelated. And what I'm emphasizing always, as you probably observed, is the craft of practice. Now, maybe we should stop soon.

[37:49]

I picked up the suggestion that we might go on a little longer and then have dinner later. Okay. So it's a possibility. Oh, it's a possibility. Well, if I keep talking, it's a definite possibility. Okay. Yes. I have a question. Somehow I'm still not clear how to practice the skandhas. And also term consciousness is still not clear to me within the five skandhas. Once in meditation I had an experience where also in one moment I saw somewhere I became aware of a smell and out of that I had a particular feeling and then I decided there was a possibility is it a good feeling or a bad feeling so I decided it was a good feeling and then I had a memory being in the kitchen with my mother as a child and then I let go but what what is form what is consciousness and this experience

[39:09]

My question is how I can practice the five first skandhas and also what the relationship of consciousness in the skandhas is. I had an experience in meditation which took only one second, but where I perceived a smell and then there was a feeling of this smell and I could decide whether it was a good or a bad feeling. It was a good one and then came the association that I was with my mother as a little child, where I was as a little child with my mother in the kitchen. And then I could let go of the experience. And I don't know exactly where the consciousness or even the form has its place there. I would say that in a way what you said is an answer to Andreas' first question, which was, how did this practice of the five skandhas arise? So I think it arose because people have experiences like yours. And then they notice that they have this ability to decide whether it's this or that and so forth.

[40:41]

So then they start examining this. They examine to see how it works and if it's consistent at other times. And it can be quite complex, more complex than this. But then they say, yes, we'd like to teach this to others. So they develop it into a system which is teachable. So this is not just a description, it's also a teachable system. that then opens you up to a variety of things, which this is kind of like the five-windowed door. So I come back to that. Someone? You? Yeah. Yes. One person asked, the five skandhas are counted in the Heart Sutra in such a way that they begin with consciousness.

[41:56]

And yesterday, Roshi said it was the other way around. He counted with form and Roshi spoke with consciousness yesterday. So the direction is different and he wanted to know what the function of the directions is. one person in our group wanted to know in the heart sutra the five skandhas start out with form and it ends with consciousness and you did it the other way around and this person wanted to know what is the meaning or relevance of the order okay Do you want to have all three questions? Oh, sure. Why not? One person sees these skandhas like fields. Like feet or fields? Fields, okay. The fields are in a staircase.

[43:04]

And what is in between these fields in this order? The transitions. This is when the Zen teacher hits you with a stick. What meaning or what importance has human warmth in Zen? We tried to find it in the skandhas and we thought it may be where the emotions are in the perception field. Emotions are limited and as it says, unlimited joy and unlimited compassion and so on.

[44:13]

And compassion and joy, I cannot imagine it without warmth. Now, it's presumed by warmth you mean caring or feeling or caring about. Well, I mean If we really are talking about heat or warmth, then heat is connected with consciousness and concentration. And the generation of heat as part of energy, as a form of knowing, that's a whole other subject.

[45:37]

I don't think the person means that. They mean something more like caring and feeling for. But this whole system is based, this arises out of caring about human beings. This is permeated by warmth and care. I mean, when you look at it and say, well, where is warmth in this? You're being too philosophical. It's like my drawing of the square. Squares are always made of five points, right? What have we got? Have we got any blank paper in here? So, you know, I said, there's a square, right?

[46:40]

So, a square is four points. Why do I say it's five points? Where's the fifth point? I'm sorry. So every system in the system of the five skandhas has somebody did it out of love. If you forget that, you forget that every square is made of five points. We're not talking about something that's, you know, some kind of flat philosophical system. Somebody brought us these flowers because they feel warm. Okay, so I would... Do we have more papers in here? Yes, you do.

[47:46]

But let me say that I think in the practice of these things you first want to just notice the things you associate with self. And often that is a whole lot of things. And most of us are a mixture of attitudes about self. We don't feel good about ourselves. Or we like ourselves or we compare ourselves favorably always to others. Or we compare ourselves always unfavorably to others. Or we feel there's a glass wall between us and the world. There's all those kind of feelings that are connected with trying to sense who we are in relation to the world and to others.

[48:54]

Okay. Now, I think it's useful to notice those things and try to refine your attitudes about yourself and move into a less comparative mode about yourself. It may be good to do psychotherapy and stuff like that. Okay. So practice, I think, is first that kind of inventory. Then the next step is you look at, as I said, the three functions of self. Separation, connectedness and continuity.

[49:55]

So I think if you're going to practice with this, the next thing you ought to do is to notice when you're establishing connectedness, separation and continuity and how you do it. Okay. Then if you're going to practice, you want to develop attitudes Attitudes are usually a construct of intention, concentration, caring and so forth. So you consciously develop an attitude to feel more connected.

[51:03]

And again, I'm sorry to be so specific, like motivation, concentration, attention, and so forth. But for some reason, these Buddhist folks who developed Buddhism really looked at these things very thoroughly. And they studied how an attitude is put together. And when an attitude has effect, powerful effect. So you bring attention together with motivation and concentration. And caring. And it starts to work in your tiny little million filaments of activities. And you can shift, because most of our identities are based on separation and you can shift your identity so it's more based on connectedness.

[52:34]

And you can use phrases like already connected and so forth. And as I will try to talk about tomorrow morning, it's a significantly different world When knowing is through connectedness. Okay. So that's a good picture. And you have to then develop, as I say, sealing and get rid of armoring. Because one of the factors itself is we often feel very vulnerable and everything influences us and we're too dependent on others and so forth.

[53:36]

And we feel, many people feel invaded by other people's energy and so forth. They have a weak sense of self. So you have to learn the feeling of being sealed but not armored. Eventually, you can be in a group of people, one person or 30 people or a group of trees. It's just about the same. You feel so centered within yourself. It's not disturbing if there's a lot of people or two people or whatever. And you want to study how you establish continuity.

[54:37]

And most of us establish continuity through mental stories. A conduit of thoughts. Now, as I've talked about this a lot recently, I will just say it briefly. When you bring your attention to your... You have an intention to bring your attention to your breath. You're doing something profound. I mean, you're doing a lot of things. One is, as I again very often point out, is you're physicalizing mind and body.

[55:42]

You're mixing mind and body. You're cultivating mind and body. Mind and body are not automatically together or separate. It's a relationship that's cultivated. So it then becomes the yogic dictum that all mental phenomena as a physical component and all sentient physical phenomena as a mental component becomes really very present in you. Sorry. that all mental activity has a physical component, and all physical, sentient activity has a mental component. So language then becomes much more like poetry because it's very physical and not just mental. But probably the most important, at least equally important thing you're doing is you're shifting your sense of continuity from the thought conduit to a sense of continuity in the breath.

[56:49]

In the body. And in the phenomenal immediate context. This is a huge shift. This is when you enter embodied space rather than mental space. It makes you extremely more stable. Because mental things don't affect you the same way. Not because you don't have mental events, but you don't establish your sense of continuity and identity mentally, only. Your sense of continuity is right here in this immediate present. And then there's a flow that I spoke of this morning, this flow of continuity with the world.

[58:17]

And every time you are... And as I say, it's the easiest thing in the world to bring your attention to your breath. Everyone can do it. All of you can do it. For about one minute. It's one of the hardest things in the world to do for hours or the rest of your life. But if you can do it, you'd start living in a different world. So I recommend it to everyone. So once you see the three functions of self, you can begin shifting the emphasis on the functions.

[59:23]

You can begin to shift more toward connectedness and a continuity in the embodied present. You can shift more toward connectedness and to the embodied present. You mean you can shift to the functions? You can shift from the main function of self being establishing separation to the main function of self being connectedness. And you can shift continuity from thoughts to the embodied present. That's what it means to live in the present.

[60:26]

Every time after one minute or so that your mind or your attention goes back to your thoughts, In Buddhist terms, it means you have a subtle belief in permanence. Because you're seeking permanence in your thoughts. You're seeking continuity in your thoughts. Yeah. All right. Then you're ready to practice the five candles. Now you can practice these all simultaneously. And they're all helpful. But there is a sense of see. And then the Mahayana says the next step is to see means in. And that's basically the teaching of the Heart Sutra. Except we start with Avalokiteshvara instead of the self.

[61:37]

Yes. So... What time is it? 6.23. So I would like to give you a sense of how you practice responding to you, that question. How you practice with the five skandhas. And in relationship to awareness and consciousness. and how your experience is an illustration of the five skandhas, and can be understood specifically in regard to the five skandhas, I think.

[62:43]

But maybe we ought to leave that to another day. Don't you think? I think this is fun. Are you enjoying yourself? I mean, it's nice to know how we exist. Or at least to know such an interesting theory about how we exist. So let's have a few minutes, a few moments of sitting. And she's getting really good at translating, don't you think? It's almost like a boxing match. She's punching and I'm punching.

[63:44]

But not at each other. She's the only Schwarzenegger of translation. Okay, I hope we have some more questions about the five skandhas.

[64:57]

And about anything else you'd like to speak about. Yes. I tell something about group two. Sure. Some questions. In the first section of our discussion, everyone told something about her or his form to practice the five skandhas or with the five skandhas. Maybe she could translate as we go along. Yeah. From this first part arose the question, do we practice these five skandhas without knowing it?

[66:09]

Already, you mean? Are we implicitly practicing them? And in the second part we mainly discussed about the relationship of the self and the five skandhas. We would like to ask you to talk again about this relationship. Especially about the trait aspect that the five skandhas are a substitute for self. What kind of substitute?

[67:10]

Are the five skandhas a helpful structure to study the self? Mm-hmm. Are they a helpful structure to study the self? Is that the question? Yeah, that's the question. Okay. Okay. Well, the first question, are we already practicing the five skandhas? No. Are we already living more or less through the functioning of something like the five skandhas? Yes. But practicing them means that you're making them clear. To just live them doesn't make them clear.

[68:35]

And probably when we make them clear, we live them differently than we did when we lived them unconsciously. When you speak about practicing, do you always mean meditative practice? No. Deutsch, bitte. Ah. It's a little hard to define practice. But it means something like to enable, to bring attention to and to enable what you bring attention to. Yes.

[69:44]

Don't we do this when we have conflicts, for instance, or when we want to, we had an example, if we want to, we behave to a child unkind, and then we get into a shock, and then we try to understand the child and what image. And what has now led to the fact that one was unfriendly and changed systematically. Isn't that a kind of objectification of scholarship? And if you read the reaction of the child and then you systematically change your reaction to the child, isn't that what the five skandhas also teach you? Well, there's some similarity, but it's what you described as sort of normal behavior in correcting one's own behavior. You can do that. for your whole life without having any idea of the five skandhas.

[71:06]

But there's some similarity in the desire to notice and modify your behavior. But the idea of practice here is not so much to modify your behavior. Of course, that's part of the motivation, but it's not... But that motivation is the background of the practice, not the instrumentality of the practice. And what I mean by instrumentality or modality, did you say, of the practice, is... that the practice is... Well, I like the translation of the word vijnana, which is to make... to understand separately together.

[72:32]

To understand things in their separateness and then bring them together. So the instrumentality of practice is to simply understand things in their separateness and then allow that to be part of your functioning. For example, let's take the vijnanas, for example, the six senses. And I always suggest that you take some walks or do something where you concentrate on one sense alone. Almost maybe pretend like you're blind and walk through the garden and see how you function. Say concentrating just on your ears.

[73:42]

And a natural practice to do with... with this sense of avalokiteshvara as the hearer of sounds of the world, is emphasize the tapestry of sound. So all day long, you take a day or something, and just try to keep your ears listening to whatever's present while you do other things. One of the ways I practiced many years ago in the 60s, I guess it's part of the quality of the 60s in San Francisco. I'm not recommending this to anyone. But I would, in my apartment, make the room entirely dark. or close my eyes and put on music and dance as fast and rapidly and wildly as I can throughout all the rooms and see if I never touched anything.

[75:02]

I got quite good at it. And then I would try, I would take some furniture and move it in unusual places, which I could only remember for a moment, and then I'd see if it affected, I usually didn't make any difference. So you can have fun with practice. I was thinking, what a good room this will make for our next dance. I mean, Gerald and a few of us may have trouble with the ceiling, but... So to really develop skill, like it's nice to walk through the forest, as I've said again, just smelling the path with your eyes and ears blocked.

[76:18]

Because there's a sensitivity to each sense. It's not the eye that sees, it's the mind that sees. And the eye gives you the information. But there's a sensitivity to the eye that can be developed. Just like I spoke this morning, there's a sensitivity to the mind as a sense organ. which can be developed so that you know the totality of a situation. So if you practice the skandhas separately, Many things happen, which I will try to describe.

[77:26]

Okay. What else? Yes. We had a second question. The relationship of self and the five skills. Yeah, I have to come back to that. Myself has not forgotten. So our question was, if you operate from this idea of always being connected, is it possible to create a distinction between working with ourselves, with the five skandhas, and how we deal with other people?

[78:31]

Is it possible to make a distinction between working with ourselves, noticing the five skandhas, and when we deal with other people and how... I mean, part of the question that was given to us was how we use the five skandhas in dealing with other people. No, practicing with other people, but dealing, okay. Dealing in English has a little negative quality. The five skandhas enhances and opens the experience of connectedness. And the feeling of connectedness normally enhances your relationship with others. There's no problem.

[79:36]

One of the things you're doing when you develop the five skandhas, you're freeing yourself, it's one of the steps along with the vijnanas, in freeing yourself from eye-dominated conceptuality. Because most of us do most of our perceiving through Eye. E-Y-E. Eye, like the eye. Yeah, like the eye. E-Y-E dominated conceptuality. And there's quite a close relationship to I, the pronoun, and E-Y-E, the sensor. We usually define ourselves as one who sees, not as one who hears. For example. Okay, what else?

[80:54]

In our group we realized that one can't explain what we talked about because one had the position or said they can work with the scandals and they have experiences and the others that said that they are confused here and in a way it hurts to work with it because it makes everything so complicated and so we realized that this group can't explain what the other cannot talk about the experiences of the others. You mean the what? Why do you say that in Deutsch? Some had experiences and talked about it, and the others said they have no and are confused and think they have other ways.

[82:03]

Okay, so Deutsch bitte. We have found that there are two different opinions. One is that they have experience with it and can work well with the scandals. The other is that they are confused and tormented by the fact that they have to deal with it. They're tortured by having to deal with it. You mean, in other words, the ones who had some feeling for or experience of the five skandhas couldn't communicate and vice versa were the ones who had no feeling for it. Is that right? Communicate, yes, but it's difficult to repeat what the ones say because it's an intellectual understanding And, well, the point is, and this is our question, one are touched by what the skandhas make with them and they can work with it, and the others aren't touched by it, and it's only intellectual and there's some understanding, but they are not touched, but they are touched by maybe...

[83:30]

communication with others like a mirror to see, or like mantras, like these sentences you say, nowhere to go and nothing to do. And our question is whether maybe it's the same which comes out. I hope so. We could communicate about this, and you said, yes, it's the same. But this is our question, and I cannot repeat, because so we have two speakers. Okay. Okay. Yeah. You look like a good team, though. You look like a good team. So, team... Yeah. Two persons in our group had difficulty with the five skandhas. Two found it was an enrichment of their practice and one could side with both parties.

[84:34]

One example I would like to give is how I took up the idea of working with neutrality this morning during Sazen. I heard the waterfalls. Outside I said it doesn't disturb me at all, but inside it disturbed me. And then I was angry because I was angry. And then to my mind came the waterfall is neutral.

[85:58]

And then I asked myself, what am I adding to this? This was the anger. This was like a feeling. Then I tried to follow the anger. I separated the anger from the waterfalling with the idea of neutrality. Then I saw that I could follow the anger differently and I saw it's in some muscle tension. It's situated in muscle tension. Eric was with his son outside and also this made me angry.

[87:00]

Her son too, I believe. Ich konnte das jedenfalls immer so ein Wechselspiel versuchen herzustellen. Und dann kam ich in eine Situation, wo Bilder aus meiner Geschichte, aus meiner Vergangenheit auftauchten, die die Ursachen für diesen Ernst waren. And then I came to a situation where images of my past arose and they explained the anger for me. In my left ear, the falling of the water was increasingly neutral. It became increasingly neutral. What about your right ear? What about your right ear? That was the anger.

[88:08]

Good. And, um... And the experience of another person in our group which also had the idea that working with the skandhas is helpful? This person could imagine that it would be helpful if you have problems at work, for example, to divide your experience in the different layers of the scandals.

[89:13]

Okay. Well, what you described is what I would call skandic practice. It's not exactly five skandas, but it's working with that territory that you developed through the five skandas. Now, in a certain way, I don't care whether you understand the skandhas or like them or not. It's a main, main, main subject within adept practice of Buddhism, so I should tell you something about it.

[90:24]

Okay, it's my obligation to tell you things. Not just to tell you things that are interesting. Or pertain necessarily to your practice at this moment. Yeah. But in some people it may be it's working with phrases, like already connected or no place to go, are easier and make more sense. But working with a phrase like that produces a certain level of mind that's different from consciousness. A level of mind that's different than consciousness. And then already you're into the kind of... you're already participating in the functioning of the mind that is described in the five skandhas.

[91:47]

So maybe it's not necessary to understand them. I know in my own practice it was a very big step when I got an insight into the five skandhas. But I practiced quite happily for a long time without understanding them. But I'm definitely trying to make the practice of the five skandhas understandable to you and moderately interesting. Okay. So what else? In our group, besides others, we found it still difficult to know what our layers are.

[92:59]

What is form? What is feeling? What is perception? Especially in one by-finding set, we had one example. There's a hand, and we sat outside, there was a wind, What is the form? Is the form my hand? Or is the form the wind? What is the form? Okay. Okay. And just going on, for me it's especially difficult to say, if I would say I feel the wind, is that perception?

[94:01]

Or is that already impulse? Is that already association? Okay. Okay. We had the example with the hand in the wind. What is the form? Is it the hand form or is it the wind form? Or are both forms, or is both form, wind and hand? And just to say to him, what is it now? And for me it is particularly difficult I think the practice of the five skandhas, the initial practice of the five skandhas and the development of the practice is entirely only possible through meditation practice. Once it affects how you function, then it's part of your mindfulness practice and ordinary thinking and acting.

[95:08]

Now, the word skandhas means heap.

[95:10]

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