And in each culture in a particular way. And in practice you're trying to clarify that shape and free yourself from that shape. And to find your identity moves into energy. And when it does, you have experiences of brightness, of radiance, things like that, which are ways in which your identity has shifted into energy. And it also means that you can take that and shift it within your body In very specific locations. And those locations which work best are called chakras.

[01:05]

So the basic, the vow to realize the absolute with each person you meet. is also understood that that vow, which is a phrase, a word, an intention, can be turned into energy, moved in your backbone, and can create a subtle body or an energy body. So energy, it's not a scientific term, but it's an essential term which we don't really have a word for. I gave you a little extra time after lunch because there was such a line at the bathroom back there. You know, Zen practice isn't much for guided meditation.

[02:18]

So I'm sorry to interfere with your meditation by saying things. But I'm using this time together, not so much to meditate together as we would in a sashin, but to practice together and give you a sense of some of the aspects of practice. So this is such a nice day. It was good to give you a sense of this way of being I call the body of the day.

[03:19]

And it really is helpful to start this kind of feeling practice when you first wake up. As I've said, I think quite often, when you first wake up, it's good not to open your eyes right away. And to collect, let your dispersed body collect. Someone asked me recently, they said they always have these dreams and their astral body and all sort of gets scattered all over the place. And this is a friend of mine. He said, and usually I visualize a vehicle of some kind, a wheelbarrow, a cart or a car that takes me back into my usual body.

[04:44]

He said, recently I visualize the cart and I get in it, but it breaks down just before I wake up. I had to say, well, I've never really worked with it that way, I said. But I said, I tried to think about what I do. And I sort of throw a little ropes out as if various parts of my dispersed body were out in some rough water. Or it might be calm water, but they floated away from the dock. I throw out these little ropes of breath.

[06:01]

And if you've ever pulled a boat in that's in stormy weather, you've got to pull it in within the rhythm of the waves. So what I do is have a sense of using breath to feel out the rhythm of all these different things that happen when you're asleep, and then pull them together. And then I keep my eyes closed until they all feel like they've come into the dark. And when it feels settled, then I open my eyes. And then I invite the body of the day to come in.

[07:20]

And at first, you take a little time, but after a while, it just becomes a habit. You feel the light in the room. The sounds from wherever. And you allow yourself to open up inside to the day. And then you let that feeling develop all day long and it sort of stays with the day. It's a way of, in a sense, I could say grounding yourself, but it's more like opening yourself up into each day. Okay, that was just a little aside. This morning I didn't realize it, but we sat from 9.30 to 10.00 about.

[08:41]

And then 10.00 and almost quarter to 12.00 I was talking and we had a little discussion. And I'm sorry, it was quite long. I apologize. I didn't really notice, but I wanted to give you the sense of how these three divisions work as a system to change your basis. And I think, what is your name? Nikki. Nikki? Nikki. Nikki asked a crucial question about it. It was, what is energy? So before I take us to the next step, I'd like to have any comments you have. And you know it costs twice as much to be in my seminars and not speak.

[10:02]

Oh, yeah. Well, you haven't quite mentioned it, but I would really know about the importance of the vow. It seems to be very important. The vow? Yeah. Yeah. What made you think of that? I know it doesn't really have to do something with this here. She says. Actually, it does. The energy. Yeah, the vow and energy. Yeah. And it came up at lunch today, too. By the way, I didn't find where all of you were eating because the directions were in German, so I wandered around for a bit. I looked plaintively at various windows and finally ate with the Turks.

[11:11]

In English, Turks means young, strong businessmen. But it was a Turkish restaurant. Okay, so I'll come back to the vow. Okay, because I have to say something about it. Can you say it loudly enough for them to hear? Richard said that you don't necessarily react to what is coming.

[12:19]

And is it so that something is coming from the outside towards you? I feel a reaction inside, but I don't necessarily bring it out. I already feel that something is going on, but I don't necessarily have to bring it out. Or is it that nothing happens inside of me, that something comes and nothing happens inside of me? My question is also a little bit not directly related to this, but I want to ask a question about equanimity. Does that mean I feel whatever comes up, but don't react on it on the outside, or doesn't anything come up in there? I can try to do it in English myself. Eric, can you hear in the back when he speaks German? Yes. And you can hear too? Yeah. Okay. You said yesterday it's about reacting or not reacting on something. And do you mean that something comes from the outer side to me and inside of me something happens? I feel joy or fear or anxious or whatever.

[13:25]

But not, I don't bring it out. It's just inside of me. Or do you mean there happens nothing inside? There comes something from the outer and nothing happens inside. The opposite. That's the opposite. It happens inside. But not to bring it out. To contain... I think I'm going to have to come back to those four immeasurables again, because they belong later on in what I'm talking. But this sense I just gave you of the body of the day, to be able to maintain a sense of continuity with this day. And not forcing it.

[14:28]

And not losing touch with it. And so it's responsive to the change in the day as you can feel the change in the sounds of the day. That kind of flow that you don't interfere with but let happen is what's meant by equanimity. So now if I have that flow, I don't like phrases like go as a flow, But if you have that kind of sense of fluidity in you or softness in you, that I try to give you a suggestion of by giving you this sense of the body of the day being present in you.

[15:31]

And this sense of the body of the day has to be as responsive as the still surface of a lake. If an insect flitters across it, water immediately moves. If a leaf falls on it. But the lake as itself is just quite still. So if you are able to stay with this smooth, this soft feeling of the body of the day, And then you hear the bell, the church bell. You don't have to react to it. It goes right through you. You don't have to care about it or not care about it.

[16:40]

You can have no reaction really except your totally reaction. And it happens in so much fullness that it becomes part of a larger picture. Does that make sense, what I'm saying? Anyway, that's equanimity. So the car is starting up now. I completely feel that as if the tires were inside me. Or the engine. But I don't react one way or the other. Because I've established a kind of continuity that absorbs everything.

[17:43]

And that's one way to describe that is equanimity. And it's sometimes called indifference. But that means indifference is a gate to it. Yeah. You're not French. I'd like to say something. Go ahead, yeah. Should I say it first in German? Sure, whatever. Yeah. There was a lot of traffic on the motorway and a serious accident where someone got stuck in the car.

[19:11]

I drove away from the seminar with what was discussed this morning. To be busy and not busy at the same time. Not to have so much to do at the same time. It was incredibly successful for me. I came to the hospital and my stepfather had a kind of deep sleep or coma. He woke up and it was incredibly beautiful. And we had a very deep contact and in a way that would not have been possible, I think, I had this feeling of being nourished. I think that's how this seminar came about. It was very nice to pass it on to him. Just that when I drove to Mannheim to see Max, they actually very much tried to practice this, that there's one who's not busy.

[20:28]

There was a lot of traffic and a very bad accident where somebody was locked in the car on the freeway. Trapped in the car. Trapped. and I really tried to practice this, what you taught this morning, and it really worked in the sense that I did all these things step by step and felt really nourished by and had a deep contact with Max in a way I haven't had for a while. So I'm very glad. Well, good. Yeah. It's nice to get a little confirmation. I would like to be interested to hear what you just described, to do this or to practice this, but more about this point where you fall out of this and fall in again.

[21:29]

The process, what happens when you fall in? I think the main culprit is usually representational thinking. Culprit? Culprit, the one who committed the crime or... Culpit. Der Hauptschuldige Anteil ist, wenn man zurückfällt in dieses representative Denken.

[22:31]

And the adhesive quality... The persuasive, adhesive quality to representational thinking. And particularly when you see all your life worked out in terms of success and failure in terms of representational thinking. Now, let me extend this example of the body of the day a little bit in relationship to what Ulrike brought up if you learn to keep if you find out develop the ability to keep um this sense of the body of the day, which I've just made that term up, present with you.

[24:00]

Now, let me use the image of water again. Now, imagine we're sitting here in a stream bed, and this room is a stream bed. Generally, your consciousness is on the surface of the water. Now, when you move your consciousness below the surface of the water, you're moving it into your body. And Buddha supposedly said, if you're going to identify with something, it's better to identify with your body than your mind. Really at least sense the physicalness of you and that as a location in which you exist. If you do that, it's a lot easier to work with your personality and realize the undivided world than if you identify with your mind.

[25:34]

So you moved your sense of location out away from the surface of the water down into the water. Now you're down here living in the water. And the air is quite good. And you can feel now, suddenly you feel there's a cold stream from here. And there's some kind of little still place here. In fact, the more still you are, you decide to sit southern at the bottom of the stream. You've begun to find out there's many currents actually.

[26:42]

It's not just one current. There's lots of currents moving together. And you see there's one current that isn't interrupted, that just runs straight through. In fact, maybe there's four or five such currents which move pretty much straight through and aren't disturbed by eddies in the street. So you find you create this sensation of the body of the day. And you put that sensation in one of these streams. And the more you do that, the more you create that stream. That stream begins to be more defined within the stream.

[27:42]

Okay. So Ulrika goes to visit her mother's partner named Max. And you told them a little bit about what happened to him? No, just his birth. He's had a major heart operation and four or so cancer operations. His heart operation was a success, but they had to give him blood thinner, so the blood thinners made everything else fall apart. Okay. Now I'm just using him as a vivid example. Mostly she can't see him. Because we're teaching together in various parts of Europe. Now, When she goes to see him, if she catches the feeling of him, and the deepest way to do that is to really feel willing to be in his place.

[29:20]

Of course, she also says, I'm glad this hasn't happened to me. If I'm ever in the hospital, I won't. has so many operations or something. Yeah, but at the same time she realizes this is, will be, may be my human condition. And she feels really willing to trade places with him. If you can have that kind of identification, Max's situation enters your body the way the body of the day enters. So even though now she's separated from him, she can perhaps almost feel like there's he's in his hospital bed in her.

[30:27]

Does that make sense? Yeah? Well, you actually can develop the ability to do that more and more. And in Buddhism, that's called developing interior space. And in that way, you're bringing the past into the present and you're bringing the future into the present. So in one sense we say living in the present means to stop thinking about yourself in the past and future. But it's also true that the past and future exist in the present. And living in the present means to also to know how the past and future exist in the present. And develop the capacity to do that.

[31:38]

Okay, there may be someone in your life, say, that you loved very much at one time. And you feel separated from them. But the way you know that person still lives in you. And if it's really the case, they actually mature in you. So suddenly you saw them five years from now. You wouldn't be surprised that they look 15 years older because they aged in you too.

[32:43]

They're not stuck as you knew them 10 years ago. Does that make sense? It actually happens. So you don't have to feel so much like this person is far away from you because in a sense they have an actual life in you. In fact, each of us have an actual life in each other. And how I take care of your life in me affects you. Now, Irina, is that right?

[33:51]

How do you pronounce it correctly? Irina? Irina. Irina. So, Irina, you said something to me in lunch about this is somebody, the noise at the window, could you... Yes, yes. Yes, I just asked Roshi if it was possible that he thought that the interior in the relaxing world and in the imaginary world, that in the evening, late in the evening, I thought it was a window, but it was a cat. I thought it was a window, but it was a cat. I thought it was a window, but it was a cat. I understood that there was a car standing there and that there was a couple of people in the car and also doors and stuff.

[34:54]

And the noises were very quiet. Not only one noise, I think it was the window, but also the silence of the room. So I heard it very close, but I could not identify it. And while I was walking through the room, I panicked. I asked the teacher if it was a relative time loss. He said it was two constructs. All right. Did you say what I said or just what you said? There were two constructs. First there was the construct in my own imagination, then there was the construct which I invented, the carving of the floods. Yeah, so what she first presented to me was the examination of that this sound first arose from what she thought somebody coming in the window. And then she discovered that it was somebody just doing things in their car outside the window. Now, I said, from the point of view of practice, what you'd notice, as she said, both are constructs.

[36:21]

Now, just because one is the actual sounds of the car and the other is the imaginary sounds of somebody climbing the window, doesn't mean they're not both constructs. So when you get in the habit of practicing this way, so you're lying in bed and you hear some noises, your first reaction isn't someone's coming in the window. Your first reaction is, I hear sounds like someone coming in the window. That's a very big, that's a big difference to have that as your first reaction. And that's actually what's happening.

[37:28]

You don't know whether someone's coming in the window. You're hearing sounds of someone coming in the window. So you examine their construct. And then you see that, oh yes, it's a car. But you also examine that construct. You don't turn it over and say, oh, now it belongs to the car and I'm safe. Just because it was actually the car, the sounds you heard still belong to you. That's your possession in a sense, not the car's. So the more you keep, so it's just out of habit, thinking that way, the more you start living in your own mind stream. And your mind stream comes first, and then you hear it stimulated by different things.

[38:44]

And you say, oh, that's, you know, that's a car, or that's my anxiety. And when you do that, you can deconstruct it more easily. You can return it to its unconstructed nature. So you're not hearing things at night that bother you. Your ears are just hearing things that belong to you. So you can't unconstruct the car out there that's disturbing your sleep. But you can unconstruct the sounds that disturb you. Do you understand? It's a very simple difference, but it makes a big difference. Now, the more you find yourself in the middle of a mind stream that's both unconstructed and constructed, then you can construct Max and put him in your mind stream.

[40:18]

This is basically what hypnotists do. A really good hypnotist can reach into your mind stream and say your arm is being burned and your arm will start to blister. Because the constructs, when they're in your body, are real. So you have a... Anyway, you get the picture, yes? um um So I'm interested in relationship to this thing to be able to be willing to be in Max's place the permeability

[41:38]

Because it's relatively easy for me to be willing to be in somebody else's place, but to come back out of this and be in my own place again, that's not so easy. Can you say a little bit more about it? Ah, okay. I don't think you can really be willing to be in someone else's place until you're completely willing to be in your own place. And to be willing to be in your own place means you're willing to die. Because you can't be in your own place fully unless you also are willing to die because that's what's going on.

[43:10]

So the phrase I used is, although you're willing to die, you also gladly remain in this world. And if you're willing to be in your own place, You don't lose energy or get dispersed if you take someone else's place. When you're subject to a lot of influences and energies from other people that disturb you, you're not really in your own place yet. Now this is not a simple matter, and it's basic to practice, to learn, not to leak. And learn how to seal yourself without armoring yourself. So maybe we can talk about that more at some point.

[44:20]

Maybe we can talk a little bit more about that at a certain point. I have a question about the parallelism, especially the parallelism of the past and the present. You talked about that in my past I can mature certain things. Does that mean I can actually let somebody in my past not die? Yes, somebody died. maybe ten years ago, and I don't like it now. Is it possible to have him in my personal presence, to have him alive? Yes, certainly.

[45:42]

Such a person can appear in your dreams and things very much alive. Could you mature someone as if they had stayed alive since they died young? I've never tried it. It's probably possible up to a point. But it really would be you maturing. Because you need two people to make something work. There has to be a certain reality to it. But certainly you can, I mean, for instance, if you really practice with a teacher, you can bring that teacher up almost at will. Bring up the feeling and presence of a person.

[46:48]

As if you decided to call him or her up and go over for a visit. but also such a teacher in your life continuum will have a life of his or her own and may come to visit you would you sort of rather if they hadn't and I mean, they have a life of their own. But that is still your own mind formation.

[47:52]

But your own mind formations have a life of their own. Your identity is only one of your mind formations that has a life of its own. Except the only problem with that one is it tries to say it's the only one. And is afraid of other mind formations. I mean, paranoia is an extreme example of that. Something else? Yes, I have another question about the energy. I know the situation, I get up in the morning, my work is not fun for me, I don't feel like civilizing, I don't feel like doing body exercises, but I know exactly the same work that is fun for me, I know the situation that is fun for the animals, I know the situation that is fun for the animals,

[49:05]

Well, sometimes I wake... another question about energy, you probably got that. Sometimes in the morning I wake up and I don't like work, I don't like to meditate, I don't like to do physical exercises. Sometimes I just like my work, like to meditate and like doing my exercises. Why can't I have the energy always to enjoy my day? Yeah, what's new? What's new? But it's a basic question, good question. That's a good question. The first answer is that we don't. We don't, so we accept that. And you asked about disease earlier. Disease or... Even mental illness or a crisis or just a small problem can be ways in which we turn ourselves.

[50:28]

And many, I know lots of cases of people who have very serious illnesses, AIDS, cancer, etc., who end up being very grateful for it. They may have less time to live, but they feel clearer and wiser. Okay, so why do you have to have a big crisis To feel clearer and wiser. Well, Buddhism is, you can say, a practice to give you the ability to break through to that through a deep intent. And that's where vow comes in.

[51:30]

Okay, now... I won't go in here for time. Okay, may I present something a little more to you on the board? And we could call this Generosity here. Also embeddedness. And how the heck do you spell it? Anyway, embeddedness. Make a little drawing. So, when you're practicing generosity, you're practicing being embedded in this life of each other.

[52:57]

So when Ulrike goes to see Max and she feels embedded in his situation as well as her own, it's a kind of generosity. So these practices are meant to make you feel more and more embedded in the situation you're in, the love you're in. Okay, now just put intent Engagement.

[54:04]

Fusion. Wachheit. So when you practice something like this, in which you, there's this cognition of these three. Ulrike reminded me when I say these three, it's not very good for the tapes. But I don't know whether I'm talking to the tape or you, but since some of you said you want tape though, right? But if you can visualize this strongly enough, you can bring it up in your memory when you're listening to the tapes.

[55:14]

So you first see this as a cognition. You keep it in view. You practice it. Now, another way to say the same thing is you develop an intent. And then you engage yourself in that intent. And this is a little like teaching a kid to keep a New Year's resolution, which is impossible. But Buddhism makes these things really simple step by step. And if you don't do it step by step and you immediately go into your representational thinking, it's gone.

[56:26]

So your whole world can be in this intent. What do you intend in your life? Mm-hmm. Have you taken responsibility for that? Have you looked back the way your intention, if you had one, is actually manifested in your life? And is it manifested in your speech, your conduct, your livelihood, and so forth? And the Eightfold Path begins with views and then intentions. It's the very first teaching of the Buddha. What are your views? And do you intend those views and can you intend them?

[57:28]

And can you carry that intention out in your conduct and speech? That's the lifetime right there. And you have to keep refining your intention to be something you can wholeheartedly intend. Okay, so you have intent. Then you engage that intent. And then you begin and you use memory to keep reminding yourself of the intent. And then finally, intent and engagement, memory all fuse. And the rest of your activity is activity and intent simultaneously. And then you develop from this and you encourage alertness.

[58:29]

Because if you're alert, in every situation, there's subtle ways to fill your impact. It's almost like a kind of grace. You want something and it manifests. But if your intent is deep enough and you're alert, opportunities are always present. Now, what we've been talking about is... David, who just came. There's more, by the way.

[59:47]

Wow. So my apologies to David and Eric Hino and Ruth Winter and a few other people, because I'm going to say something about the five skandhas. I'm sorry. But it occurred to me how to describe them. in a little different way than is necessary for the conversation we're having. So first, we have consciousness. Now, this is reified consciousness. Reified, loaded consciousness.

[61:01]

Now, this is what, when Buddhists use the term consciousness, technically, not just loosely in English language, which doesn't have too many words for these things, but technically they mean this. What? Now, self is a resident of reified consciousness. Now, the first thing you need to do if you're going to practice is to see that self is a construct. If you see it as you, as your identity, as the way you are, that you can practice in a way that gives you some benefit, but you can't really practice it. So one of the reasons we practice zazen is that it's one of the most direct ways to see that yourself is a construct.

[62:18]

Now, again, in order to practice, you have to be really capable of this recognition, my self is a construct. And if you make that recognition, then you say, could I reconstruct it? Or can I improve its construction? Does it need a rehab? Or what if I deconstructed it? Or is it possible to have a non-constructed self?

[63:36]

Buddhism says, yeah, it is, and we call it non-self. But it's a direct response to recognizing first itself as a construct. So non-self means a form, a unconstructed self which functions as a self. It doesn't mean no self. Yeah. Although you can have an experience of no self, you can't get through the day with it. Okay, so then when you say, all right, I have this self, Yeah, and you'd like to improve it and you'd find various ways to improve.

[64:47]

But if you see that no matter how much you improve it, you're still living in a rather closed-in space. And you recognize that if it's a construct, it may be possible to live outside the construct. And that literally means liberation, freedom, enlightenment. In fact, to fully see yourself as a construct, so fully you suddenly slip outside the bounds, is a satori experience. You may not be able to live outside the bounds, but you have this sudden freedom because you know it's possible. So Zen teaching as I'm presenting it is simultaneously creating the, hopefully, creating the movement within you that could lead to your seeing, to your breaking out of it.

[66:04]

And simultaneously to show you, teach you something about how to live outside it. Okay? All right. So when you see it's a construct, You ask yourself, what is it constructed from? If I'm going to live outside it, I have to find out what it's constructed from. Now, when you really see that it's possible to live outside the construct of self, or inside and outside at the same time, and you feel the freedom of that, you want to share that with others.

[67:33]

And when you really deeply want to share that with others, that's the bodhisattva vow. And when you really see that, when you really recognize that that's actually possible, this isn't just a fantasy of Buddhist scriptures, You actually see that it's the way in which you can most fulfill your deepest longings in relationship to others as well as in relationship to yourself. And you say, okay, I... It's near and yet it's far. It's a long shot, but it's present. I'll try it. And when you really decide to try it, that's your intent.

[68:35]

And that intent, when you really try to, and you bring everything of your life into that intent, it's very powerful. And that intent is what makes it possible. To be enlightened outside that intent is possible, but usually it's impossible. No one will have to deal with it when it happens. Okay. All right. So here you are with this little self guy. And he's pretty powerful, actually. And his power is not all negative. His power is also very positive. So how is he made, though, he or she made? Through consciousness. When you look at yourself in meditation practice or mindfulness practice, what you see is its reified consciousness.

[70:01]

Your sense of self moves in thought forms, intentions, memories and so on. These thoughts, intentions, memories are all by definition in Buddhism consciousness. Oh, you know, your consciousness may be pretty dull, but it's still consciousness. And even dull consciousness is sort of the light trying to escape. So you don't say, my consciousness is dull. You say, hmm, the light is trying to get out. All right. The light come back, like... Okay, so how is this consciousness manufactured?

[71:19]

So when you look at consciousness and you look at it carefully, first of all, there's millions of associations. And if you sit zazen and practice counting to one, You're trying to count to ten, but you only get to one. Many things come in. What are all those things? Associations. Associations, impulses, as usual. When you look more carefully at those associations and impulses, you see that they all are formed as perceptions. If they have a shape, if they have a shape, they're a perception.

[72:26]

They may be visual images, they may be words, they may be whatever. Those are perceptions. Now, I'm trying to show this to you as a system, trying to give you an entrance into it. So when you look at the perceptions and you look carefully at the perceptions and let the perceptions open up behind the perceptions, there's feeling. Okay. And if you look at the feeling, behind the feeling, there was some object of perception, there was something that happened that affected you.

[73:40]

So if I touch him like that, that's form. There was some actual contact with the physical world. And so whether it's the contact with his sitting or his breathing or his daughter bumping him, this is form. So the word form doesn't just mean this wall, it means our relationship to this wall, how this wall affects us. okay so you've gone here from the perception of the self as a construct and trying to see how it's manufactured and it's manufactured from consciousness and what you've discovered is that consciousness

[74:50]

is the first layer of consciousness. You look just below the surface, you find all these associations. And they're made from perceptions. Then the perceptions arise from feeling, and the feeling arises from form. So this is how self of consciousness arises with a sense of identity. So this is not pure consciousness. This is consciousness that creates the sense of I as someone's here. I have a sense that I'm speaking and I know that you're not speaking or I know Ulrike is speaking and I'm not speaking. That is a very simple level of reaffirming of self. Now, how that sense that it's me speaking arises is studied in this territory.

[76:14]

Okay. Now, how is consciousness itself put together, not through... How is consciousness put... How does consciousness itself arise? Independent of the sense of identity. Okay. In that sense, it arises from your eye consciousness. And ear. Nose.

[77:16]

Nose. Body. Mind. Now, these are the two things I said I wasn't going to show you. These are the five skandhas. These are the six vijnanas. And there's two more, which is intent or associations here, and the memory storehouse. There are two more. This is purpose and associations. And this is memory.

[78:18]

This is a depot for memory contents. You want to translate that? So, this is not personal. Of course, this and this are personal. So, When we today, as almost unavoidable when you practice, heard sounds change or paid attention to the bird or the sounds outside, you are in the ear field consciousness.

[79:28]

Now, when you practice these, self tends to disperse. When you practice, so we also have a story here. So story, your story, archetypes and so forth, lead to self. And that's very real and important. But self also arises in reified consciousness. And you can begin to separate out these so you experience each one separately.

[80:51]

And normally what most of us live in is this consciousness. And we don't see how it's constructed. So when you go back this way, you can begin to see how it's constructed. And you can begin to see how your story or your karma has arisen differently in these different areas. Because these have a horizontal identity as well as a vertical identity. Just as I said, anxiety has its own past, present and future as well as the cause of the anxiety. Feeling has its own past, present and future, independent of whether it's a perception or not.

[81:58]

Okay, and you exist in this feeling. You have an identity in this feeling that's different from your identity in this level. So if you begin to practice this, you begin to find already you have different identities just in these different territories. Your story here is different than your story here. Some feelings never become associations. Okay. Now, if you practice down here, normally we as a culture are almost totally in this ideal... Another very important distinction

[83:02]

is that you have the eye and you have the object of perception. And in Buddhism, you also have the field of perception. And this is more important than this or this. Normally you see something, and when it's gone, it's gone. But that seeing has created a field of perception. When we let the body of this warm summer day come into us, that body of the day was no longer limited to the voices and faces in the street fair. And no longer associated with the stream, the river.

[84:16]

A field had arisen from seeing the river. Once the river is gone, you know it, that field is still in you. Does that make sense? So in Buddhism you pay a great deal of attention to the field that arises, not just the sight of the object. And you want to begin to see this this way. You don't want to just see it this way. That thought is right. So our culture primarily arises in eye consciousness.

[85:24]

And that's how we educate people. So practice, this is Yogacara practice. And it's the main background practice of Zen Buddhism. So again, the first step is you see you live in a self. And you see that that self is a construct.

[86:26]

And simultaneously, you also see that you live in these three divisions I said, the imagined, the relative, and the absolute. And that recognition also arises from the full recognition of the self as a construct. And then you see that self is something that lives in consciousness. And then you try to see how consciousness is put together. So you follow thoughts and associations back to their source. And you begin to be able to slow down this process of which consciousness is formed.

[87:44]

And you also begin to see how it arises from the five senses and the body. And the mind. And you begin to open up particularly the channels of field consciousness which aren't developed in you. For instance, most of your conscious mind right now is put together from your eyes. And it's put together unconsciously a great deal by your body, by your proprioceptive channel. But the input of your nose is almost unnoticed. Aber der Input von eurer Nase ist fast unbemerkt.

[88:51]

We don't pay much attention to that. Wir schenken dem nicht viel Aufmerksamkeit. Or you don't pay much attention actually to the larger sense of the tongue as a field of awareness. Und wir wenden dem auch nicht viel Aufmerksamkeit zu dem größeren Gebiet unserer Zunge als ein Feld von Gewahrsein. I'll try to maybe try to make that clearer later. Ich werde versuchen, das später vielleicht klarer zu machen. But right now, let's just see if you can take your sense of the location of your consciousness out of your representational thinking and your eye consciousness. And see if you can move it into your nose. You'd rather not? Too bad. So first of all you just have a sensation of air in your nose.

[89:57]

And perhaps warm air. Now you're letting the other fields of consciousness be dormant and you're really emphasizing your nose. And the field of your nose is not just what you smell. But your nose has a great deal to do with the clarity of your consciousness.

[91:00]

And if you're breathing through one nostril, it activates one side of the brain. If you're breathing through the other nostril, it activates the opposite side. And you probably don't notice it, but actually all day long you switch back and forth between your left and right nostrils, assuming you don't have a cold. And if you notice it, you begin to see one is more analytical and one is more creative, the two different kinds of consciousness that are actually related to the nostrils. And this is something that's excluded knowledge. It's outside our purview, our education and so forth.

[92:06]

And if you pay attention to your nose-field consciousness, You may also start to feel your backbone and even the top of your head, your crown chakra. Because your nose field consciousness has a lot to do with your physical consciousness. Your proprioceptive balance. In that sense, the balance is related to a clarity of perception. Maybe paying attention to your nose, you feel your cheeks differently or your skin and bones differently.

[93:35]

And your pace of breath may have changed a bit. And in order to pay attention to your nose consciousness, you may have had to change your posture. And maybe you even had to change your attitude in order to draw attention to your nasal awareness at all.

[94:03]

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