Yes, at first I was dissatisfied, and I was physically very uncomfortable with my mind, and I realized that I had to change something in me, and I couldn't do it until the talk by Nekorashiv, until the Dhamma lecture, and somehow I also thought this morning, I'll take my okesa, and everything sitting is pointless, I'll go out, I'll go upstairs. and said, OK, Saroshi, I'm sorry. I was really in a very bad mood. But I knew it was just my mind, my body was sitting there, and I just didn't feel good. And during the Dhammaputraksha, Pekaroshi used the phrase that the rivers, the named rivers, flow into an ocean, and this ocean no longer has a name. At that moment, everything changed for me. and it was clear that I was actually waiting for something like that, because I actually know it, after two or three days you have to get something out of the noise so that something ends with me, and most of the time I know it's from the spirit, that's what I think, and the thinking is implemented in subjects and objects and in dualistic thoughts and so on.

[01:21]

So let's sit at least for a moment. I feel that all of you are quite present in this seminar.

[02:33]

And I know that there's some kind of depth in just being present. But I also think it's not entirely responsible for so many of you not to participate in the discussion here, to say nothing. It's important to me that some of you who are not speaking say something during our discussion. Just say something disappearing into non-duality without any idea of someone speaking. Like right now, I don't have an experience of someone breathing.

[03:38]

Something is breathing, not me. Something is speaking. If I'm speaking, it's usually pretty boring. If I let something speak, maybe it's, I hope, more interesting. I want you to have this experience, too. And let life fully live you.

[05:40]

This is also especially the practice of non-duality. I hope and I think you probably did get what I was saying this morning.

[07:17]

But I still think it could be clearer. Or more thoroughly understood. It takes time to understand these things. So I hope we can get closer to... an understanding of it this afternoon. And we still haven't answered the question of what we're going to do with the Johnny-come-latelys. Do you have some expression like that? Johnny-come-latelys? It means people who who are late to join the group. Joseph's come late. Anyway, there's several possibilities. One is I could try to go over what we've done again.

[08:21]

I'm incapable of doing it the same way. So it would be sort of a new viewpoint. And it might be good to look at it again, trying to talk about it from the point of view of of this new group of people and how they're composed. Yeah, or I could just give a kind of... outline of what we talked about and then go a next step. Or I could just pretend they didn't arrive and just continue. They might be drowning. So what do you think I should do? What did he say? Then we all might drown too. I would like to prefer the first suggestion you made it's like a new viewpoint and you're summing it up and what was the last one?

[10:04]

And it makes it more solid. Maybe we get some more depth that way. Okay. Anybody else vote for one of the three? Or a fourth, if you can think of a fourth opportunity. What would be the next step? She wants to know what she's choosing. She'll know what the next step would be. I didn't know what today was going to be yesterday. Because, you know, when I do a seminar like this, particularly when we have some time, I somehow... It's like practicing with you creates a palpable field.

[11:31]

And I can explore and test also, test my experience of the mysteries of practice. And... And I don't know what I'm saying. He doesn't know what I'm saying. You don't know what I'm saying. We're finding out. We've got your version, his version and my version. Yeah.

[12:34]

And so, you know, something happens in trying to share this with you. Something happens that I don't expect. And that's what's interesting for me. Otherwise I get really bored. That's why it's actually fairly boring to speak to new people. But if you have only a few experienced people, it makes a big difference. If I go to some place and say 50 people come and they're almost all new, it's quite hard for me to find what to say that might be useful. But if out of the 50 there's only five or six, say there's five or six people who've practiced a lot, we've practiced a lot together, I can find some, somehow it affects the whole group.

[13:54]

I can't explain why exactly, but that's my experience. And that's why I stopped going to cities which didn't have a practicing group at the core. Okay, so I really don't know what the next step... I mean, I can sort of try to guess, you know, if you want to. I don't know. I would vote for two to know what's the next step. You'd vote for knowing what's the next step. I'll have to leave the room for 20 minutes.

[15:03]

And enter a deep somatic concentration. Yeah. Okay, so... We'll leave your two suggestions out, I'm afraid, because I really don't know. Sorry. But there will be a next step. Yeah, there will be a next step. There will be something. He says there's something coming out that will be new anyway. Yeah, I hope. Okay, so it's... Anybody else? What I'm inclined to do is...

[16:08]

do some combination of a review, as you suggest, and yet trying to crystallize it or to distill it in a way that leaves some space for the next step. I don't know. Is that okay? If I do something like that? Okay. So what would you like us all to hear or for me to hear? Yeah. I would like to come back to what was said this morning in a very concentrated way and then was continued.

[17:24]

So what I understood is that the first step is mindfulness practice. So, we are talking about seeing, perception. So, As I know, perception itself is a process of reconstruction, the so-called reality, and at the same time, individual, personal, subjective interpretation. Yeah. So my first difficulty starts at this point with the question, how can I get out of this

[18:35]

way of perception. And that means how can I perceive without my ideas, without compare and all these things which are the broken inside. Even if I like to look outside and to do as I've never seen that, I think it's impossible to do it. I think so. This is the first thing. Well, that's enough, you know, but go ahead. Yes, so as I understood it, first of all, in the awareness practice it is about perceiving things as they are.

[19:37]

There I have my first difficulty with it, because after all that I know from general research and so on and so forth, perception is a in a mental process of reconstruction and interpretation of reality. And I ask myself, how can I, so to speak, somehow remove this programming that I have? And the next step would be the step towards emptiness. To find a path of mental intervention. Intervention. Intervention. I see a rose.

[20:49]

And then to say, there is no rose, there's nothing. To remind myself that whatever I see is a construct. So that way I have to make everything relative? Okay, can I try to respond? Before you come to the third part. And do you want to say that latter part in Deutsch? Maybe this will respond to some other people's question. He's asked basically, what is Buddhism?

[21:50]

So, all, just to make some definitions, all objects are representations of consciousness. Okay? That's what you said, basically. And there are karmic and samsaric. aspects of the representation.

[23:20]

Okay. Now, karmic means past causes. And samsaric in this case means present causes. In other words, Karma is what you've accumulated from the past. Samsara is the way you perceive. So sometimes we say sixfold objects. I don't know if this helps to write it down, but maybe you can keep it clear. A six-fold object. Okay. That's a six-fold object, because you heard it, and it was a function of my hands, and you thought about it, there was a conception involved.

[24:32]

And you saw my hands move, and of course you tasted it. And you didn't taste it. And you didn't smell it. Unless I cooked with garlic or something like that. So, but since we're in the habit of perceiving in six categories, the non-taste is also a category. Because you could say, I heard it, I felt it, I saw it, but I didn't taste it and I didn't smell it. I can say I heard it, I saw it, and I heard it, but I didn't smell it. And sometimes it's called six-fold consciousness.

[25:36]

Our consciousness tends to have these six layers. And what is interesting about I mean, in Koan 21, which I have in the Book of Serenity, I like teaching, practicing with that koan. Because we have the illusion that six-fold consciousness is complete. But of course, if we were all blind, we would never know what a thing looked like. We could feel it, but we wouldn't know what it looked like. So there's a big gap. between feeling something and seeing something.

[26:42]

So in Buddhism we assume there's a lot between these six folds. Because we don't have the apparatus to perceive it. Just like, as I point out, there's many handy phone calls in this room, we don't have the equipment. I hope in this room at least too. So to say a six-fold consciousness or six-fold objects is to say we have a limited perception of it. Okay. We can never separate an object from mentation. For us, there's no non-mental object. We can't take the mentation away. Okay. So all objects are representations of consciousness. All objects are representations of consciousness.

[28:04]

But the... karmic and samsaric dimensions tend to form around the subject-object distinction. So it's been discovered through practice and through thinking this through that if you free yourself from the subject-object distinction, you can free yourself from samsara and karmic aspects of self. If I were to draw it, it would look something like this. And this would be past causes.

[29:51]

And this would be future anticipations. And this would be samsara, this would be karmic And this would be samsara. And the present, for most people, the present is very small. I mean, not much happens in the present. In other words, it's not conditioned by the past and conditioned by the anticipated future, right? So this is quite limited also, not only because it's conditioned by the past.

[30:51]

Well, I might get high. Like filling your car, you know. And samsaric causes, again, is your undeveloped perceptions. So practicing with the vijnanas develops your perception. Practicing mindfulness develops your perceptions. So what you... What you actually do is you widen the present.

[31:56]

So you begin to have a present. Let's simply draw a wider present, which might look something like this. Okay, an amoeba. Doesn't have... Okay. Then the past is more something like this. In the future, then I will draw something like this. Because you don't actually know what the future is going to be. Why are you laughing? It's not so easy. It's not easy to explain to me.

[33:01]

You don't want to teach me like this. I'm sorry, you don't have to have this future. Okay, so then I would say that this is intention. And then, and so this is generated by mindfulness. So the practice of mindfulness begins to open this up. I've never drawn this before, so you have to... I'm trying to do it so it's clearer. Maybe it's clearer, I don't know. So here's samsara causes, here we begin to have dharmic causes. So you begin to substitute, here's our topic again, causation and realization, you begin to substitute samsaric and past causes, karmic causes, and you replace it by the present cause or karmic cause.

[34:25]

And you begin to have more stuff coming in to the present. Mindfulness. And the future is not so much determined by anticipation or desires, but your intention. So this is a kind of new present, new present, new present. Now, if you just know that

[35:57]

objects are representations of consciousness. It doesn't help. You have to practice that they are mere representations of consciousness. So the Yogacara texts say you have to abide in, spend time in, abide in the knowing that things are the mere representation of... So you've already understood, and anybody who thinks philosophically can understand that things are... constructed from consciousness. And many Western philosophers have pointed out versions of this. What has been lacking in Western philosophy?

[36:58]

is that there has been no idea of transformative practice. There has been no idea. Oh, I see. So in a way, these philosophical lineages Schopenhauer, Hegel, Heidegger, William James and so forth. have stopped because they don't know how to carry the next step because they don't know how to practice. So to know that everything is constructed from consciousness... Yeah, it's nice to know it, but then you go about your business. But if you practice like I did... I try to do all the time, but I do specifically sometimes like sitting at the oxen.

[38:25]

I had to get myself ready for the seminar. So if you abide in an awareness of, that everything is inseparable from mentation, it begins to transform you. And it begins to dissolve the subject-object distinction. And then you begin to have, you really enter the present much less influenced by the karmic So you do not free yourself from mental constructions, but you change the way consciousness is constructed.

[39:32]

So you can't change that it's construction, but you can change how it's constructed. And if you know this, it transforms your psychology too. And I think the more you knew this, the more psychotherapy would be productive. Because every present moment would loosen up the psychological and karmic formations. Okay. Yes, Andreas. If I have this more widened present consciousness, is it as if I can unfold it into the past?

[40:54]

And I can change them that way. Yes, the expression. We can call this conscious and unconscious. conscious, unconscious, and non-conscious. In other words, there's a great deal of stuff that hasn't been suppressed or repressed or anything. It's been outside your consciousness, but it's part of your experience. It hasn't been repressed. There are things going on in this room right now that are part of my experience. Perhaps I feel, but I don't have any, I'm not conscious of in the usual way.

[42:08]

Nor do I have any reason to suppress or repress it, because it's not threatening, I have no reason to repress it. But it's not conscious either. But it's part of my experience. As you can hypnotize someone sometimes and get them to describe an accident situation in incredible detail and they'd have no idea they remembered all the details. But this is much more subtle than details. Within the theory of the Alaya-Vijjana, most of our memory, which is not a memory of actual objects or events, but a memory of our consciousness of objects and events, And when you begin to transform the way memory functions, consciousness functions, you begin to transform memory and so forth.

[43:27]

And by far the largest Part of our experience is neither conscious nor unconscious, but non-conscious. And so it's understood that when you have this kind of present, it doesn't perceive most of your experience. Because what you really have is something you probably should draw this way. There's no real present. It's just past and present. And future kind of overlapping you, trying to do something you're supposed to do next and what you should have done. We could call this the should-present.

[44:28]

Or what I hear a lot in Germany is should-present. Gewissenpraktik. Is that the right word? Gewissenspraktik. Gewissensgegenwart. I heard the word Gewissen in Doxan more than any other German word. Ich habe das Wort Gewissen mehr als alles andere in Doxan gehört. I don't know exactly what it means, but it sounds... Ich weiß nicht genau, was es heißt. I don't want to make it more complicated but I internally have to translate all this because for me there is a difference between I categorize consciousness to all things in me and in nature that can recognize something different.

[45:46]

Do you still say that in English? No, I prefer it. Okay, then let me say that again. I make a distinction between consciousness, where I see and realize things, and self-reflective consciousness. The first part is being connected with plants and animals and my body. Self-reflective is? No, the first one is. The first one is, I see. Well, I've just, to keep this simple, just said consciousness, but I should say awareness and consciousness and so forth.

[46:47]

I should make more distinctions. So if we were to draw an arrow going this way, That would be the true nature. And if we draw an arrow this way, that would be what Dogen calls the true human body. Now, I don't know if you understand that. No. Okay, I said the true human body is when you have this sense of intimacy in the midst of one and many, because you can't really put together

[47:52]

Difference and sameness. There's all these distinctions. And there's also some kind of oneness or sameness. And they're not two categories, they're simultaneous. And so when you allow yourself to be in the midst of this order and disorder, if you try to control too much, it kills you. If you don't try to control it all, there's too much disorder, too much chaos.

[49:03]

So again, who can say how much disorder you allow? Creative people tend to have more disorder. A friend of mine tested airline pilots and poets. And he put them in sensory deprivation tanks. And the airline pilots, where no sensory information came in, went crazy. I mean, they just came out of there. There were no dials, there were no controls, etc. And the poets came out and said, can I go back?

[50:04]

And the poets came out and said, can I go back? And that's where they usually live. They can't make sense of anything. So each of us has some sort of Tolerance of order, disorder. And as you become more secure in yourself, you can have more disorder. But still, we can't You know, this is a craft of living. I can't tell you how much disorder or order you should have. I mean, one of the reasons sashin and monastic life is so ordered is to allow you disorder. Meals, everything is figured out for you, so you don't just think much, you can sort of... Okay, so the more you can find the

[51:15]

what I call intimacy, of the one and many, of the intimacy of dissolving the self-other distinction. You open a seam, as I said the other day, to the world. Or to the subtle body of the world. And in that sense, and to the extent that consciousness is non-local, I can't say that my body doesn't include Geralt. Or you. I'm functioning and trying to speak and share this practice with you by feeling a body that extends and includes all of us. And you can't say where those boundaries are.

[52:48]

And so you have, in American Indian culture, I believe it's called the long body. And there are many instances of of, particularly people who are close, of knowing something's happening at the same time. You know, of phoning somebody and they've just picked up the phone to phone you. Simple things like that happen. So it's mysterious, this world we live in. So... Dogen calls this, you open up the seam of intimacy to this world in which we are already connected. And the more you open that up and can begin to function through it, to allow that to function through you,

[54:06]

Dogen calls that the true human body. We can't say, you can't be sure, but there's some sense of this true human body. So repeat what? the entire universe is the true human body. And the appearance of the true human body liberates beings. It means the more you can allow this true human body to function it begins to precipitate the conditions of enlightenment in others.

[55:17]

They begin to taste their own true human body. Okay, so then we can look at what appears again. To complete what appears. And we do our best with what appears. We always have to start, as I said, with acceptance. You widen acceptance when you say, yeah. You widen acceptance when you say, uh... already connected. You widen acceptance when you practice mindfulness. You widen acceptance when you say welcome.

[56:32]

And then what is completion? Strictly speaking, completion means to dissolve the constituents. to dissolve the constituents, the ingredients. So that is also to free yourself from the subject-object distinction. And so that's the arrow going out is the true human body. And the arrow going in is your true nature. You begin to experience yourself free of the subject-object distinction. It takes a lot of words to say all this.

[57:59]

But it's fairly easy to practice once you get the idea. And the practice of it is transformative. What are some of the benefits, shall we? Let's talk about benefits. I think there might be a slight interest in benefits. But I present the benefits really to encourage you to practice. Because I couldn't list all the benefits. The Avatamsaka Sutra literally lists tens of thousands of benefits. Maybe we could do the first thousand this weekend. Okay, so one of the benefits is that you begin to see things, feel things as they are.

[59:13]

When you dissolve the subject-object distinction or are more free of it, Understand, you haven't stopped the past, you're still the same person, the past is still coming in. But how you construct yourself and construct the present moment that's inseparable from you, Changes. This is one of the meanings, deep meanings, of Buddhism. Everything's changing. This is really... beginning to affect how things change and how you change.

[60:15]

So again, there's no idea of unfolding here. It's an idea of developing, of inventing. We are actually right here inventing at least in the West, what it means to be human. Okay. And with a touch, dare I say, of the divine. So when you have the satisfaction, the sensation of things being as they are, that means things feel complete.

[61:27]

That means you feel complete. That means there's almost an instant draining out of you of anxiety and fear. Draining out of you, like you drain... Of anxiety and fear. Of tension and so forth. No, it's not completely gone because we go back and forth. You don't always stay in this place, but you go back and forth between your usual karmic self and this dharmic self. So a second or third consequence... And second and third consequence is that feeling this deep satisfaction. And this freedom.

[62:39]

And freedom from anxiety and tension. Freedom from so many oppressive past causes. You begin to heal the wounds of the past. Or you begin to not care about the wounds of the past. And third or fourth, depending on how we divide what I said, you begin to... form a new life within yourself. The life which you've primarily constructed which assume that we're separated, which assume a subject-object distinction. These are the building blocks. You begin to use different building blocks. You begin to use dharmas rather than karmas.

[64:01]

Or something like that. You begin to be open to the brightness and the light of mind itself. And you can also practice Changing the subject almost entirely. But I'm showing you another route. When you're sitting in zazen. And you've developed real stillness. you can take an inventory of contents of mind. When you're sitting, what's there? Well, there's certainly usually some thoughts. There's probably some images. And there's probably some perceptual information from the present.

[65:16]

Of bird chirping. which sounds like the chirps so blind people know how to walk across the street in Japan. So there's thoughts, images, percepts. Yeah, and there's moods, kind of atmosphere, the way you feel that day or the way the weather has made you feel. My room upstairs is almost night time because all the windows are covered with snow. So there's some mood.

[66:22]

But then there's... If you look more carefully, There's the light of the mind itself. There's the brightness of the mind itself. I don't know if brightness is the right word, but let's call it brightness. It's the space or room In which thoughts occur. It's kind of like when you first notice it, it's the background of the contents of mind. But it's one of the contents of mind. And sometimes it's not so bright. Sometimes it's like the dark water of a lake at evening. But it's still a kind of light or space for the mind to happen. When you notice that, because of your yogic practice, you're able to notice it, it can suddenly become the foreground of mind and not the background of mind.

[67:47]

It can become the field of mind in which everything appears. And in Zen we call that essence of mind. And when you're shift to feeling more located in the essence of mind than the contents within. the field of mind, we call that the realization of essence of mind. And that is also an enlightenment experience. It is a condition of enlightenment. But to realize essence of mind by this yogic way of observing is another route to the same

[69:01]

excavation of the present. Or opening up the garden of the present. Tearing up the pavement. removing the signposts to the future. And finding now the many karmic, dharmic seeds growing in your garden of the present. And feeling the suchness of mind. This is also the essence of mind. So there are many ways to this to practice.

[70:11]

You had something you wanted to bring up. And during my meeting with you, you gave me a suggestion towards my meditation, and my English wasn't good enough to understand it completely. So I don't remember. That was a different future. But I'd have to, unless you give me some, ask me something again, ask it to me again, I can't. And you know, part of the training of

[71:14]

Doksan is I cannot remember Doksan. That's the way it's supposed to be. I also talked about it earlier. I had thought about it and I couldn't remember it completely. Hey, we're both not knowing as near as... And I decided that I wanted to ask you something else. Yeah. How can I practice the koan mumon with my breath? Mu or mumon? I don't know if it makes sense to say mumon, but you want to.

[72:18]

To practice mu... is called the koan mumon khan, the gateless gate, which is the practice of mu. But it doesn't make any difference. You can say mu or... Monkey or watermelon. So, I mean, really, every time I looked at Andreas, I said watermelons. And I looked at Frank, I said watermelon. Or Jeanette, I said watermelon. Does it work almost as well as moo? Because none of you are watermelons. Watermumons. So was this a little clearer?

[73:29]

Was it helpful? You're supposed to say yes, you know. But if you say no, I learned something. I have one more question. Sure. It's an opening process. One possibility to see this is to call it an opening process. The question is, why don't we just do it? Is it making... Frightening to open it or is there not enough stability to do it? Or don't we have the possibilities to do it, the craft?

[74:36]

All the above. But first you have to have the intention. So the reason for me to do something like this is to give you permission. To try to make it have logical sense. And to show you what work, as we say in Zen, the sweating horses of the past. A huge amount of work. Work, I don't know. Effort, attention, practice, over... many generations by many people went into developing this. And though I've made this fairly simple to practice it and know it through my own experience has taken me decades. But once you have the seed of it, it begins to work in you almost as if you completely understand it.

[76:01]

So once you have decided that this makes sense, and you have, as I've said, the faith and patience to continue, despite the boredom and discouragement of practice often, Then things come up like, do you have the stability to be open enough? Do you have sufficient craft? Do you have sufficient courage? And so forth. And the reason we do zazen is because it's the shortcut to developing the stability which allows this kind of practice. And allows the development of a non-interfering observing consciousness.

[77:15]

So I think that's enough for this part of this practice week. What does it mean? That you think it's more than enough, Andreas? Yeah. I had another thought. I had the same question, Peter, and I had another thought. It might be quite boring if we don't compare anymore. We think so. It's not. We think so, but it's not. I mean, comparison takes so much energy. We need the distraction and satisfaction of comparisons because we're distracting ourselves from our incompleteness.

[78:52]

And we don't need much distraction when we feel complete. We don't need much distraction There's a pretty continuous flow of satisfaction. But it doesn't mean you don't read or... What? find out what's going on in the world and things like that, because that's interesting what kind of world we live in. Anything else that should follow up on either of the two of you? It might be interesting to know, because the word Ursache, which we use as cause, what does it mean in English?

[79:56]

What does the word cause mean in English? Because Ursache, in our language, it makes sense of what you say. What does it mean in English? If I've ever looked up the etymology, I don't remember. I'll look it up. Causa. It's Latin. Causa. My guess is it's such a basic word, it probably in Latin means cause, to make something happen. But I don't know for sure. I don't know for sure. So I really mostly answered your question, but sorry. How were your discussion groups? Okay? Well, thank you very much, because I never would have, except for your help, I never would have come up with all this.

[81:12]

You think it comes from me, I think it comes from you. Because I never said all this before. even though it's basic Yogacara teaching, requires a certain kind of consciousness and shared consciousness to bring it out. And I didn't really do justice to the fundamentals of Zen practice. But we've covered it all. I just haven't showed you we've covered it all. So maybe that's something I could speak about too in this coming up. second part of the summit week.

[82:24]

So would it be all right if we sat for a moment? And thank you for the great job of translating. He gets a break this weekend. Yeah, I think you've got the idea.

[85:12]

So now, please find a way to practice. Luckily, almost any practice you do is a practice of this teaching when you have the vision of this teaching. to open and complete the present. I still continue Doksans tomorrow morning.

[87:19]

And I apologize for not coming to Doksans. any of the meals. I like to usually at least come to some of them, especially in the morning. But I think because I had the flu in December and January. Not only it seems to have weakened me and made jet lag a little more persistent. So I was sleeping rather odd hours and also resting more than I usually do. But I try to do the main things, the lectures and seminar. I think so. It's the seminar.

[88:35]

It's hard to see what we're actually doing right now. It's like when you look for Afghanistan on the map. When you look for Afghanistan on the map, you look, and it's not here, and it's A-F-G. Okay. Thanks. Guruji, I don't know if Kira told you that we kind of talked about tonight? Yeah. And we kind of said maybe we do a zazen period and then we go for a walk.

[89:37]

Can we invite you and pick you up for the walk? Do you have a... Do you have a palanquin? What is that? Those things that... In Suzuki's temple there's one. Because they carried priests and ceremonies in there. But I think you'd have to put a hole in the roof for me. You're going to go for a walk in the snow? Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, you can let me know. I'll see if I can go. Sounds like a nice thing to do. Oy.

[90:42]

Oy, oy, oy. Oy, oy, oy. I don't have enough time to build one. You're going to take a slide. A slide? Or a lesson to walk.

[90:59]

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