Now, with the kind of detail I went into about mind and consciousness and so forth, old hat or new cap? Is it useful, this kind of distinction? Sometimes I wonder. That's what I ask myself sometimes. So I'm going to make some more distinctions. So I'm looking for permission. So I'm making a distinction here between mind and consciousness. And And I've already mentioned that you can feel the activity of consciousness, like I spoke to Andreas.

[01:38]

Yeah. So again, you need to have the feeling that you're in the midst of doing it. So here you're in the midst of consciousness. And consciousness here is while a feeling of mind arising on each perception is, as I have said before, more like the feeling of a partner. Now, one thing I would like to speak about, but there's no time, is I've talked about consciousness as seeing it and knowing it as a construct and experiencing it.

[03:09]

One of the things I would like to talk about, and maybe I'm running out of time, but what I've already talked about is the consciousness in the sense that you see it, that it is a construct, and the third thing is that you also learn it. And once you experience it as a construct, it becomes possible to deconstruct it or to participate in its construction. The five skandhas coming here because they are a way, and it's really such a basic teaching, It's the first teaching in the Heart Sutra which we chant every morning.

[04:20]

Because the ability to see consciousness as a construct is so essential for evolving practice. Yeah. Now, if you can deconstruct it, you can reconstruct it. And the reconstruction is another stage of practice. And how you establish particular continuums of awareness or continuums of consciousness. Now, as I said, I'd like to speak about that, but I'll have to... This is not to encourage any of you to stay because you have other things to do, but I'm going to have to speak about that in the next seminar.

[05:37]

But let's stick with noticing, experiencing visible consciousness now. In the first step is this conceptual awareness that it's invisible, but it can be. But those distinctions have to become physicalized. Yeah, physicalized. So I'm walking up here. Or I'm sitting here now. And I'm in a kind of, what could I call, I'm in the midst of consciousness. We can even say I'm in the midst of a presentness.

[06:53]

We feel we're present. We all feel we're present. And presentness is somewhat different from consciousness. Because I can take a nap or go to the bathroom and have very little feeling of presentness. You can wake up after a travel in a strange hotel room and say, you know, it's Tuesday, what city is it? Or in Zazen, you can be so focused on the... on the internality or interiority of experience, that you don't know where you are.

[08:14]

I don't sometimes know which Zendo I'm in, because there's quite a few I sit in. I'm surprised. Oh, yes, this is Crestone. So then you can wonder, where is this location which is the same in Crestone and Johanneshof, but is, yeah, something like that. So presentness is sort of a refinement of or a subtext of consciousness. But you can use the distinction between consciousness and presentness

[09:15]

to notice the construction of consciousness. So once I discover that I'm in Crestone or Johanneshof, then I can feel myself establishing the presentness. dann kann es spüren, wie ich das Präsentsein herstelle. Which is part of putting things together. Das ist Teil dessen, die Dinge zusammenzufügen. Now, this is not such an unconscious knowledge. It's not necessarily a yogic experience. Das ist nicht unbedingt eine yogische Erfahrung. Where most people who have this experience anyway wouldn't recognize it or call it yogic. It's just you're discovering you're in Duluth instead of Denver.

[10:26]

But if you recognize that what you're doing is not just discovering you're in Denver, you're discovering you're you're also discovering the process by which you put the world together. And the more you notice that, the more you have a feeling of creating your work. because consciousness is a construct and it is always under construction.

[11:28]

So if mind is a partner, consciousness is a contractor or an architect. If you feel the process of consciousness being constructed, then you can feel more like, hey, I'm a participant. What is the agentive quality that allows me to experience participation. Okay. Now, if I notice the agentive or agency-like dimension, Now, if I get up and walk out the door here,

[12:44]

A robot could do that. It could tell, not going to bump into this column and not going to bump into that column. Is that an experience of self? It's an experience of not bumping into the columns. But we tend to conflate that circumstantial behavior with self-behavior. Now, we can decide to cut down the column. We would have to have a pretty sophisticated robot to do that.

[13:56]

So there is more something like self. Okay, but you can begin to see, feel the difference between circumstantial, circumstance-determined agency and self-determined agents. This makes it more and more clear that you don't have a self in the usual sense. And in the process of noticing consciousness construct appearance and presentness, you can also notice how self is constructed from consciousness. And a reference to past and future is constructed within consciousness.

[15:22]

So you begin to feel in possession of your own life. You can feel yourself constructing, reminding, remembering, giving members to the past in a way that bothers you. Well, let's say it bothers you. It could make you happy. And compulsive thinking can also give you this similar kind of insight. So say something hugging you. You keep reminding that you went bankrupt. And you remember the guy who betrayed you and made you go bankrupt.

[16:24]

And you're not too happy with thinking about him. And you want to practice the Brahma Viharas and empathetic joy, but it's hard. Yeah, and his success. Yeah. But this is like a boat coming up to your dock or an insect coming and bugging you. And you don't have a big enough fly swatter. Oh! But if what you're experiencing is that the insect is in the air or the boat against the dock is in the water, and the air or the water is consciousness,

[17:42]

You can start making the air so thick this damn insect can't fly. And the boat coming toward you suddenly there's this current that just pushes the boat way out to sea. Okay, so those are aspects, and you can know when you're not only seeing consciousness, you're participating in it, and participating in it in a way that relates to how you mentally, emotionally suffer. It doesn't mean you dissociate or don't feel things. You feel things.

[19:14]

In fact, you're freer to feel things more completely because you know it's not going to fundamentally bother you. Now, probably the... one of the most fruitful benefits of becoming a participant in the construction of consciousness. As you begin to be able to be present at zero point time, I call it, the exquisite immediacy of engaged phenomenality. ist, dass ihr anfangen könnt, in dem, was ich Nullpunktzeit nenne, präsent zu sein und teilzuhaben an der exquisiten Haftigkeit, der Phänomenhaftigkeit, auf die ihr euch aktiv einlassen.

[20:35]

Um... I'm in one world, she's in another. Because when you begin to experience consciousness constructing your sensorial world, The senses supply you with the ingredients, but consciousness does the cooking. And you can begin to think, hmm, I'd rather have a Chinese cook, maybe. And the food in Britain is getting better, but the mixed grill is something a little too heavy for me.

[21:38]

When I was in South Africa and staying in bed and breakfast equipment in South Africa, I kept getting a mixed grill when I was a kid traveling on ships. I still remember. Grill. A mixed griddle would be probably good too. There might be pancakes and waffles. So when you begin to have this experience of every scene is unfolding in consciousness and you're putting it together, Wenn ihr dieses Gefühl haben könnt, dass jede Szene bedingt sich im Bewusstsein zu entfalten und ihr setzt sie zusammen.

[22:43]

It's not a process, as I said earlier, of slowing down the process. Es ist nicht ein Prozess, wie ich vorher schon mal gesagt habe, kein Prozess, in dem ihr den Prozess verlangsamt. Because developing the... The articulation of the five skandhas is in a way you slow down how consciousness is constructed. Here you're not looking at how consciousness is constructed biologically, which is more what skandhas are. You're experiencing how the sensorial field is constructed in the media sphere. And that becomes possible when you've developed attentional articulation of bodily mind activity.

[23:55]

And this will be possible if you develop an attentive articulation of body-mind activity. Now you see why for me this has nothing to do with religion or beliefs or something like that. This is simply a study of how we function and exist. Now, let me take it one more step. The more you get used to being present as the present is presenting itself. you're more open to what we can call, and this koan says, the imaginary, the imagery field of the alaya vijnana.

[25:33]

Now the concept of the eight vijnanas and the Eighth Vijnana, in particular the Alaya Vijnana, was developed through experience over a few centuries by the Yogacara school. And my own experience and feeling and observation is that it will continue to develop in the context of the West. Und meine eigene Beobachtung und mein Gefühl ist, dass sich das im Kontext des Westens nochmal weiterentwickeln wird. It's six degrees of separation raised exponentially to many degrees of connection.

[26:38]

Das sind diese sechs Grade der Trennung, die exponentiell erhöht werden in viele, viele Grade der Verbundenheit. And so to be in the midst of the now, as the now is becoming here. Yeah, the idea of here and now is a useful way to focus attention. But to describe it another way, to feel the here, to feel the now becoming here. Or to feel... how the here is simultaneously not even now, but timeless, is to open yourself to the entirety of your lived experience through the zero-point time focus.

[28:10]

Das bedeutet, dich für die Gesamtheit deiner Erfahrung zu öffnen, indem du dich durch diese Nullpunktzeit fokussierst. Ja, ja. Yeah, I said it. I'm not sure it's clear. It doesn't make any difference. No one understands. Well, there's a glimmer of understanding, but what we need is more of a glimmer of physicalized experience of it. You know, I'm experimenting with writing now. Not right this minute. And I'm wondering, along with Barsas, how many, when somebody hears somebody speaking, what percentage of the words do they actually hear?

[29:29]

Not all of them. Isn't that his name? The French sociophilosopher. Oh, yeah. Okay. Roll with Barthes. Barthes. Yeah. But it's spelled B-A-R-T-H-E-S. I don't know how to pronounce anything. Dick Baker, I know how to pronounce that. Simple. Two Ks. So, together with the French sociologist, I ask myself, how many words of the said, when you talk to someone, are actually heard? And they are by far not all. So while I'm speaking, I have to have a sense of what percentage of the words I'm speaking are being heard. And then if I can have a sense of that, I can start changing, emphasizing certain words that are more cathected than other words.

[30:33]

That have more effect on something. affected me, had more energy, and they were grabbing me, like catharsis. So now when I'm writing, I think about, now every word is available, but how do you slow down reading enough that everything is available? Slow down writing enough so that everything is available. And I only enjoy reading things which require me to read every word or I lose contact with the text. Now it says in this poem

[31:36]

Going back to it, I want to say a couple of things about it. Weaving the one song, he says, one song is the final compiler of this piece. Ten Dong was the first compiler. One Song is the second compiler of this text, which is now called the Book of Serenity. So it's a very complex, cooperative text. created over two dynasties, the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty.

[33:11]

couldn't have been written by one man, one person. So it's actually meant to be read and studied cooperatively. So Wansong says, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring, is like insects living on wood and making, randomly making patterns. Das ist so wie Insekten, die im Holz leben und willkürlich Muster durchs Holz fressen.

[34:18]

Okay. But when the cart is made behind closed doors, aber wenn der Wagen hinter verschlossenen Türen gemacht wird, when you take it out, it fits the rust, the grooves in the road. Like dirt roads, which get... Try being in Japan once, in northwestern Japan, on National Highway something like 17. It was in the late 60s. Japan really hadn't built much of a highway system yet. I was on this national highway, so-called national highway on the map, but my four wheels wouldn't touch because I was so high on this rut.

[35:27]

I mean, the middle... And I had to get out of the car and walk the car off the center rut and drive along the side ruts. So this is an interesting statement. Because I really haven't thought about how to speak about this fully or even partially yet, but I'm working on it.

[36:29]

The big problem for us is we do not know how to experience or even really guess at the non-duality of phenomenality in which we are only a part of it. And the... Emphasis in Buddhist practice of non-dual, non-duality, really is rooted in the experience that you and the phenomenal world are, yeah, the same stuff.

[37:31]

It doesn't help us much to say it's the same stuff. That's one busy ant. He's got a load of flies on his back. He's carrying a dead fly somewhere. Now, see, I never could have created that. It's more than a fly. It's like one of the yellow flies. Bugs, like, it's not a wasp. This is one serious little busy ant. But I wonder, he's going in circles. Well, he's probably drunk on ant juice. Or, I mean, fly syrup. Okay. I mean, this is staggering complexity. So maybe if we could shift from thinking of this as material and stuff to activity, we share the same activity or similar activity

[38:52]

But the activity is different also. Now, just a quick way, one of the good things about Christianity is man is created separate from man or woman is created separate from God and can make mistakes like choosing Eve just teasing you Or choosing an apple. But man and sort of woman is created in the image of God. But man... What do we say?

[40:26]

We say man. I don't like to say that, but I'm an aggressive feminist. I have three daughters, so I have to be. And two wives. Okay. So because we're created, even if we're created with dominion over nature, and we are the end product of nature, and we rule nature, animals and stuff like that, we're different. This is not Buddhism. But the fact that the individual is understood to have a choice and that my superficial, quick...

[41:26]

feeling is that it's that concept of the individual having a choice which has led to our kind of culture in America and Europe. And our concept of freedom. I don't think Syrian refugees are trying in large numbers to get into China. Because the ruling rubric, the ruling concept of East Asian Chinese culture is regulation. Weil das herrschende Konzept in der chinesischen ostasiatischen Kultur die Regulation ist.

[43:00]

And this is the third watershed I was speaking about. Und das ist diese dritte Wasserscheide, über die ich gesprochen habe. Because if we buy whole hog, is that an expression? If we buy whole cloths, It's a similar meaning. You accept the whole thing that you buy without examination. It's hard to buy part of a hog. Okay, if you buy the whole thing, we're ending up with this concept of heavenly regulation. Now, this may not be of such interest to you, but it's extremely interesting to me these days. Because we don't, in practicing Buddhism in the way we do, we don't want to exchange a creator god for a heavenly controller.

[44:15]

Because that's what it means when this koan says, The cart, although it's made behind closed doors, when it's brought out, it fits the ruts. This means that the concept of this heavenly super attendant or super intendant Das bedeutet, dass dieses Konzept von einem himmlischen Superintendent, einem himmlischen Direktor oder sowas, Das bedeutet, dass selbst wenn sich alles ständig im Wandel befindet, dass es dann trotzdem sich immer nur so verändert, dass am Ende doch Harmonie dabei rauskommt.

[45:22]

Just as for us Westerners it's very hard to get the tissue and glue of Christianity out of our thinking, Judeo-Christian thinking. Abrahamic, is that what you call it? Thinking. It is just as hard for the East Asian to get this thinking of ultimately everything has to be regulated in ways that it creates harmony. And the Chinese court system punishes people who are not harmonious. No. Hey, they're ganging up on people. They brought in the drone.

[46:40]

I hear they have little tiny drones you can make that can attack. OK. I translate interdependence as interindependence and interemergence. Okay, but the Chinese... of this period when the colon was written, and now, really wouldn't imagine something new appearing, but there's a renewing, but not a newing.

[47:44]

Aber die Chinesen, als dieser Koran geschrieben wurde, die hätten sich wirklich nicht vorgestellt, dass etwas Neues hervorgebracht wird, etwas Neues emergiert. Sie könnten sich vielleicht vorstellen, dass es eine Erneuerung gibt, aber nicht, dass etwas komplett Neues entsteht. So the government is seen as main job is regulation. So if you look carefully at many of the teachings of East Asian Buddhism, well, they fit very well all in all with our phenomenological approach. In the end, they assume there's nothing new. So I think this is one of the things we're going to have to sort out of the teachings. like I would not say if I was doing this, that the cart made behind closed doors fits the ruts.

[49:03]

It might not. And I think that's an aspect that we may have to filter out from the teachings. For example, if I were to write the Koran today, I would not say that the car, even if it is manufactured behind closed doors, that when it is brought out, it still somehow fits into the furrows, because it may not fit. This means we're not trying to fit ourselves into the Buddha pattern. What we're doing is more consonant with what Sukhirashi said. You will each have your own enlightenment. So the Zen practice as I conceive it and Sukhiroshi conceived it, Buddha is the starting point, not the end point. And the Zen practice, the way I understand it and how Suzuki Roshi understood it, is that the Buddha is the starting point, the starting point and not the end point.

[50:18]

In Chinese Buddhism, the Buddha is the end point. But it's a big difference, and it makes a big difference in how we're going to practice in the West. The freedom we have to discover practice, not to necessarily follow the practice. She has a friend from the University of Oldenburg who clearly had some kind of natural enlightenment. I've never met him, but I would say that he clearly had some kind of natural enlightenment. And you said everyone recognized something like that was going on. And he became sort of famous or something.

[51:41]

Yeah. So he met some Tibetans. And what did they say? Ah, you have to be a reincarnation of so-and-so in the past because that's where enlightenment occurred and you can only be enlightened if we control it and you're... So this college kid from, I guess he's a nice kid, I don't know, he looked like a nice guy, this college kid from Oldenburg, has an enlightenment experience of some sort, and the Tibetans decide he must be Tibetan. Because we're in charge of the enlightenment experience. This is a kind of control that doesn't have to be part of our Buddhist practice. Okay, we've had enough talking. You guys agreed, though.

[53:05]

We have seven minutes or so, six maybe, or five and a half. Yes, Susanne. But the bodhisattva vows are always true, aren't they? Which bodhisattva vow? For example. The ones that we chant. That's all I have. Okay. Well, I'd have to examine each one and think about the implications. For instance, we chant sometimes to save all sentient beings. This is clearly a Christian idea. And if I look carefully at the various things we translated to English and German, There's definitely some that I've over many years now planned to change because the wording implies

[54:21]

Things I'm not sure are good. Right. But for the most part, I think you can have confidence, or we can have confidence, that at least I make every effort possible to have these things that we do right. veridical, true to how things actually are. For example, one afternoon in a sunny day at Tassajara, two years she and I Really, 1966 or something. We translated, mostly he translated, I Englished the meal chants that we do.

[55:32]

And I left some things out with his agreement and reworded some things with his agreement. I still have some reservations about the natural order of mind. Well, with your agreement. Okay, what do you say in German? We now say, really different, nothing to do anymore with natural order of mind. We say... I'll agree to anything, I guess. No, go ahead. I'd have to think about it. It's not there in this. Oh. I can't think of it right now, it's out of context. Yeah, that's right, something like accepting things as they are, and that's the line that's now. Okay, instead of the natural order of mind? Okay. I mean, does mind have a natural order?

[56:59]

That's the question. Of course, accepting things as they are is a black box. In accord with everything as it is. Okay, well that's about as good as we get. That's good. That's better than the natural order of mind. Okay. Okay. It's such fun being with you. I feel like getting up and dancing or asking you each dance or something. So let's sit for a moment. Any position you have is fine.

[58:01]

Freeze.

[58:01]

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