Yes, first, when this text came over the electronic channel, I was happy there was coming feed. Feet? Food. Food. Feet, all right. Fodder. I started to read, and it was German. and thought, because it's German, I should understand it. But then I had to repeat most of the sentence to get something that's standing there. But even reading more than one or two, I thought the first time several, it could be several meanings, so I had to take it into relation to the other parts.

[01:10]

And when I was through, I thought it's a nice structure and there are points in it which can hold. like prajna or the attention is located in mana, it's not location. So I read it again and found it's an activity of manas. When I was here and read it again, then it became more clear. I thought it's... because there were relations to fragments of koans and fragments of token sentences in my head when I can read.

[02:21]

It's not very... Difficult, I think. Thus, when you practice just sitting and continuously give up all thoughts and views, the way becomes more and more intimate. I didn't find where to... The wording is correct. If you practice thusness, you become thusness. So this structure gives a good answer because it shows the perceiving process and what's coming out of the thinking process. And, for example, prajna sounds always good to me as something special, but I didn't really get it, what it is.

[03:31]

And this was the first time it makes complete sense in German. The skill to discern. And... The sentence, I read it in German, that leads us back to the, how do you call it, solipsistic experience, a kind of experience in which we, and now this is the point, in which we confuse the idea that we make of our experience with the reality of our experience. So that is, I think, the core. Wait, wait, wait, thank you. Say it to me, let me do it in short sections. That leads us back to the soliseptic experience. That means a type of an experience in which we make an image of our experience

[04:32]

And we swap it or confuse it with our true experience, with our experience. Maybe you should say much of this in Deutsch. He did? Oh, ob du dein gesprochenes auf Deutsch sagen kannst. Ja, ich habe mich also zunächst mal sehr gefreut, dass... the electronic channel was filled with content. Then I decided to read through it right away. I was happy that it was in German, because it is much easier for me to understand the English texts, and then I wondered again that I could not understand the sentences that I had read right away. and also the sentences could be more clear. And then I tried to find the meaning, the possible meaning, through the reference to the rest.

[05:54]

But all in all, I found it a very clear structure from the beginning and also individual points such as prajna or attention, so we jumped towards each other, so that the text was somehow quite valuable. But he then gained clarity through reading several times and also through our reading here, here in the Johannishof, he got a clarity that I actually didn't suspect before. There are also relationships to fragments from the Kuals, or dogmasets, I have read one before, in which it says that Okay, thank you.

[07:09]

Perhaps I have a question. The question is... I noticed that the term body is not mentioned in this text. I didn't find it, or overlook. And the question is why. Is a body in the normal sense, not like Darwin used, something like a concept? Is something which is put together by mind? Is the body something like a construct? You mean, Hande Witt does not mention the body in his exposition of the Abhidharma in this text?

[08:50]

Yeah. Well, you know, it's hard for me also to follow this text through a translation because... So I can't really comment on the text. I'll say something about that in a moment. But the body is present, of course, because the eye is an eye, is an organ. The sense organs are present, physically present. If his text ignores the fullness of the body's presence through the sense organs, I can't read it closely enough to tell that. Let's just say that eight vijnanas is a system.

[10:00]

It's all mind. It's all mind. All right. Now, we notice in different ways when there's a clap of thunder, we can notice that we hear the thunder and don't discriminate it, and then we notice it's thunder, and we can see that there's some differences. And then we discriminate and say, oh, it's thunder. All right. Now, Freud noticed that when people were in... Free associating, they remembered things, knew things they didn't know in consciousness.

[11:01]

They remembered new things? Freud, yeah, they knew things, K-N-E-W. So he tried to create some system. Well, where did these things come from? Where were they kept? And here's the ego and the id and so forth. He has the ego and the is and so on. And similarly these people have been yogis and also normal people and they have noticed And they notice it in a particular detail that comes through their meditation practice.

[12:06]

So they create a system, trying to analyze it. Now, different schools, this has all been developed in stages. Different schools have developed it differently. And sometimes the Tathagatagarbha is called the Cheetah. Another word for mine, C-I-T-T-A. And sometimes it's called the Tathagatagarbha. So you have a system that doesn't... You have a territory of experience that you can turn into a system only so clearly. All right.

[13:35]

So, in the end, a person describing it in a text, you can only really make sense of it if it's their experience. And now when someone writes something in a text, can you really understand that? And you can see it in D.T. Suzuki's exposition. He's clear. I don't exactly know what it means here. I don't have this experience. Yeah, now I can't read this text through Marie-Louise translating closely enough to understand how well Han David understands it. So he may understand it very well, I just can't tell. But let me say, most people who write about it don't, from my opinion, don't understand it very well.

[14:54]

Yeah, and I, to the extent that I understand it, is through my experience, which is also limited. But, so the point I'm making is that you really, if you're going to understand such a system, you have to really practice with it and find it in your own experience. It also tends to articulate our experience. Someone, have any of you read Murakami's novels? I've only read this one, Kafka on the Shore.

[15:57]

Someone recommended that I read it, so I read it. I rarely read contemporary novels, but I thought, okay, it's been about five years people recommending me, so finally I did it. Much of the background of his novel, even though commentators say it's particularly a break with the Japaneseness of Japanese literature, So it's a big part of what you see in it. And although the commentators say that it's about the break with traditional Japan, And he's well read in Western literature, schooled himself particularly in detective stories, sort of ordinary detective stories and stuff like that, English detective stories.

[17:02]

But the idea of a Freudian unconscious is not working in his novels, but the idea of an alive Vigiana is working in his novels. And there are many other ideas. If you've read the Tale of Genji, much of the background of how the people interrelate with a kind of overlapping body is implied in Murakami's work. In other words, Genji, the novel by Lady Murasaki... Lady Murasaki, isn't it? You always add Lady Murasaki. that novel assumes that there's the individual body, there's a wide shared body, and there's overlapping bodies that people have.

[18:18]

What's her name? Murasaki. And he has a similar idea to me. Okay. Okay. The other day, David, you were going to say something, and I didn't get back to you. Well, it's a long time ago. I know. Maybe something... But I think the point was there... that in our discussions it came out that there was a kind of difficulty to make distinctions between the four dharma marks and the five dharmas. The four marks and the… Yeah, the four marks and… The five dharmas.

[19:22]

The five dharmas. So some people had difficulty to find what is actually What is the different practice of those two lists? Okay. Yeah. Okay. More? I don't know. Oh, you have to say it in German anyway, too. Yeah. So, a few days ago, a group of us had the question, or I think it was the difficulty, the difference between the four characters and the five dharmas. What is the difference? Some people had the difficulty Okay, so did you want to say more? Yeah, I think one difficulty came out because we used the same word in those lists. And some points were clarified, I think, yesterday, why that birth means

[20:30]

Let's say more a kind of... Also, we use more substantives for the list of the four marks. And for the list of the five downwards, we use actually some kind of verbs, like appearing, naming, so it's more an activity. So that was, for me, kind of a distinction that I can make into this, but it is not. Okay, Deutschbüttel. The reason for the difficulty was that we used the same word as appearing or appearance. And I think we clarified that yesterday with the four marks that birth or birth works differently as a word. In the list of the four characters we also use nouns, and in the list of the five dharmas we actually use verbs or activities, such as appearing, naming and so on.

[21:34]

And that is an approach for me to see a difference in practice, that you look at the activity of the five dharmas. Okay. By the way, I just noticed I had this rucksack on. I forgot. Yeah, I just put it on and then I just looked, whoa, that's strange. Anyway, it was made for me by Rocio Hernandez Pozo Roshi, who made it for my birthday, sort of, I guess. She says it's red thunder. So I think I should wear it now and then. I think it goes with this wild Korean kanji for emptiness, for mu. Bernd? I have a follow-up question.

[22:41]

In our group, the term birth has also appeared, but there is a difference in appearance. And there is also the question, in the traditional texts, birth is very often referred to. In Chinese, the word birth is used, what does it mean traditionally? Traditionally mean to the Chinese to use that word. Why don't they say it first? Why do they speak of birth? Okay. Who volunteered or did anyone volunteer to do the five dharmas? Neil, okay. Five dharmas. But first... But you did it so well. Mikhail, where are you? Heidi, could you redo, add to yours, since your printing is so distinctive, add manifestation and birth to your list?

[23:49]

It's already added. Oh, you did it already. Oh, good. All right. So now, if you'll do the five dharmas. Not somebody else can do it, I don't know. I'm a bit smothered at the moment with the mask and the diamond. Can you give me a... No. No. You want to do it? I can play inspiration. Oh, well... What? You need to? Okay, you do it. Bitch! So the five dhammas, I use the plural. The first is appearance. Appearance.

[25:20]

Das zweite ist benennen. Das ist naming. Das dritte ist unterscheiden. Discriminate. Discriminate. So you all could do it. With see or with kate? See. See. I don't want to see that. Nation. Discriminate. Discriminate. Ah, okay. The fourth is wisdom. And the fifth is wholeness. Suchness, it's T-H?

[26:37]

Suchness, S-U. Ah, yes, okay, I know. Any S-S, and the first should be an S. Yes. Okay. Yeah. For me, only the first four marks are the same, the appearance, the appearance. And then in the list is already the change that I call the second. And with the four marks is the materialization or the... Yes. Yes. And for me, when I practice or practice with it, it's like we said, if I take something out of this field or I take something out of the whole, out of the Malaya Vishnu, it appears.

[28:05]

And then I go into naming, without evaluating it now. When it's grass, I say grass. When it's bird, it's bird. So only into the pure naming. Yes, and the next step for me would be to differentiate it and then come to the conclusion that I can't do it for myself without my, how shall I say, without my experience to take it in, to be free from it, I then differentiate the... or that the separation for me from subject and object, so that I as subject the object, which actually does not exist, but in that moment I do as if it exists, then practically distinguish and it becomes clear to me what has appeared there.

[29:14]

And when I can let go of these three stages and enter into meditation at a certain point, these three no longer play a role for me. then something comes up that has to do with wisdom for me. A different understanding than my normal understanding in the normal reality. And I would then describe that as wisdom. I'll give you an example. No, let me say that usually this is translated right knowledge, not wisdom. Right knowledge is more a precise kind of way of looking at things. Wisdom may be too big a word, but it's also wisdom. About the right, is that meant like completeness or complete?

[30:53]

It means correct. It means, yeah, the correct way to cut off discrimination. So it contrasts with... usual discrimination and then more correct discrimination. There are two forms of discrimination. correct, the distinction. Yes, it cuts off or stops discrimination, which has to do with assuming things are permanent and so on. That's why I have the feeling that I don't come into it through thinking, but rather that I Okay.

[32:02]

Sure. Can you say that the third step is a conceptual activity and the fourth one is then non-conceptual, or you see that this is, I don't know, made out of concepts and you can step back and look at this concept? That would be fine. Fourth step. Yeah. Deutsch bitte. The question was, can this be expressed in such a way that the third step, so to speak, is a conceptual action, or that this discrimination, this distinction in the third step, so to speak, still happens from the concepts, and that then in the fourth step, so to speak, it no longer happens from the concepts, or rather,

[33:14]

If that works for you, that's great. In other words, on the one hand, it's useful to look at what's the difference between this list and the other list. But it's also, you don't want to take this as too real. It's just a way to help you. It's a tool. Okay, now Bernd, I said the other day that the difference between birth and appearance is that appearance emphasizes impermanence, transitoriness, momentariness, etc., And noticing the whole process, the relationship between appearance and naming. Okay. You disappeared.

[34:42]

Well, it's okay. No, it's all right. And birth emphasizes in this list, as I said, initial cause mind. That's rather different in how you... That happens in practice. Now, does that respond to what you said or not? Yes, it responds to what you said or not. It goes in the direction how we answer to those answers we noticed, the necessities of birth aspect, and look for this original state that often has to do with emotional states. In contrast to the example of the flying natation, that's an appearance, a manifestation and then a disappearance.

[36:00]

You don't have to question for an original state. The original state is a kind of dangerous idea. Because you're out of Buddhism and out of science as well, as soon as you say there's something prior. Emptiness is not prior to form. Okay. Now, these are... You kind of have to... I'm not saying you do, but in general, you kind of have to train your mind to start thinking differently, because otherwise you... It's very difficult not to put things in some sort of sequence as if you were seeing them from the outside.

[37:04]

As if you were seeing them from the outside. I saw several of you have your hands up, but let me try to say something. He has to follow me around like a dog on a leash. Okay. The feeling of the four marks is this is how the world exists.

[38:07]

And this is how we can enter into how the world exists. So this is in a way a kind of detached... statement about the world. So, from that point of view, this appearance is the activity of appearing in our senses. First, let me say, there are various lists. There's lists of six dharmas as well as five dharmas. And I have decided to use the four marks and the five dharmas in a particular way, which has to do with the way I'm teaching, and you can't really track it back to its source, what it says in Chinese or Japanese or something like that.

[39:17]

To some extent, of course, I didn't make this up. But I'm using it in a particular way, in a particular context of teaching. Now, the four marks of a dharma, you could say this and it's okay to say this because that's our experience. But this is really talking about not our experience, but the fact that they appear, that they begin, they have a beginning point. Now, the idea of the unborn that you brought up... Who's the man, the Japanese teacher who ever said... Banke made this term famous.

[40:29]

It doesn't relate to any particular Chinese term. I would be pretty sure. It was a way that he developed to teach, a very simple way, somewhat criticized because of its simplicity, but also appreciated because of its simplicity. A simple what did he create? A simple teaching. It parallels. It fits into a general way of teaching in Zen. Where where all of the teachings were somehow subsumed, absorbed into one gesture or one word or one mind or something like that.

[41:49]

So whenever Gute said something to Gute, Gute raised one finger. Now, when everybody said anything to Banke, he said, the unborn. But raising one finger to what everyone says, it's not exactly the same as saying the unborn. But it's the same approach to teaching that is characteristic of Zen school and I don't know any other Buddhist school who does this. The unborn, in fact, refers more to the way the alaya vijnana can be understood.

[43:00]

It's not an unborn in relationship to this birth. Okay. Now, am I speaking about these distinctions philosophically? Not really. I'm speaking about them that when you actually enter into the practice, there's some difference. Now, yesterday in the Tay Show, what I really spoke about was this. And I spoke about this in a way it also relates to the eight visionaries. Am I supposed to see that? That's Sophia's work. Oh, how great.

[44:05]

Now, when I spoke yesterday about the hourglass, I conflated mano and manas. I put them together. That was my mistake. But without excusing myself, they are actually conflated in some description. Do you mean really mano and manas? Yes. Mano vijjana and manas vijjana. But sometimes there's a word Mano, Manas, Mano, Manas, Alaya, Vishnana and they're all treated as one thing. Because it just shows you can separate these things out and they come together. But I wasn't doing it for that reason. I just wasn't thinking clearly.

[45:18]

The way I usually speak about it, manas, not mano. Manas is at the smallest point. Okay. Now... But here, disappearance clearly comes in because this is in the end a first-person experience. I don't think animals have any way to experience the four marks. I mean, they may in effect do that, but they're not conscious of experiencing the four marks and the resultant states of mind and so forth. So this is a first-person human experience. Even though we're looking at the world as if each moment was a completely new moment.

[46:27]

Yeah. If we say appearing, you suddenly bring in all the associative mind and kleshas and et cetera that come with appearance. But here it's just emphasizing things have some kind of absolutely independent momentary existence. So, to realize that you have to have this initial cause mind to really realize it. We're not trying to deal here with the resultant cause mind or discrimination or naming as the other list is. We're not trying to deal in this teaching with the resultant cause mind.

[47:40]

or naming or discrimination, that's not part of this process. I mean, in effect it is, but that's not where this is going. This here says, things have a beginning. And that beginning has an experiential dimension. And in fact, all animals too have the sense of the present in which they act. But as I said yesterday, in this scanning process, the very scanning process has dissolution in it. and in a way reality flickers. So the very actuality of things coming together is it's all momentary and temporary.

[48:50]

Yes, so dissolution is built into duration and manifestation. But it's not a mark unless it's completely gone. So this isn't talking about how this mark leads to the next, to the next. This is talking about this. And then you, in a way, wipe the slate clean. So you have, you know, here perhaps, in the terms of the Abhidharma, you have an initial application of mindfulness. Of mindfulness. Or initial application of attention. Who can translate this well? And then you have a sustained application of mindfulness.

[50:32]

And then you release that sustained application of mindfulness, which has disappeared. Does that make sense to you, Tom? Yes, it does. Because before you were concerned about this disappearance. Yeah, yeah. All right, we'll get out of here. Now, I don't know what order to go in. Yes? The problems I have with those categories are special when we talk about them in such a squeezed way. Squeezed? Yeah, there are four and five. there isn't, there's an overlapping anyway, and how do I get that? How can I sort that out when you say, formats say there's beginning and end.

[51:34]

Mm-hmm. to be very simple. But what happens in between, that's again the question of the five dhammas. How do I discriminate? How do I let wisdom in, a wisdom phrase? Or do I stay with naming and naming things in the sort of permanence? So that's somehow how, what happens between the beginning and the end. Is this right? Yeah, you can understand. That's right, yeah. But think of these as medicines, not as description. While you're doing our dance. The problem that I have, when it is so concentrated, these individual divisions, how do I keep it apart? And there are certainly also overlaps. And when my four marks are very simple, that one says, it has a... a beginning and an end, but then between the beginning and the end, something appears and at some point it disappears again, but then the Five Dhammas come in, because then I give the whole thing a direction in which I say, I name it,

[52:54]

Okay. I have a question. Just a moment. And can I add one thing? Yeah, go ahead, sure. And that what happens in between, and to stay with your image of this sand glass with a very tight... Kind of the hourglass. The hourglass, yeah. Is that what's in between, like naming and discriminating all white knowledge?

[53:57]

Is that what makes it tight or... That's right, yeah. That's right. So then I have the three systems somehow... Oh, yeah. Sure. Do I? No, I don't. Do I? Well, Yes, and what I was just about to ask is, yesterday or just now it was also described as this kind of light janas, that you run it through a glass, so from a large funnel it goes to a very narrow neck and then it goes back into a large funnel. And I call that, for example, the feeling that it makes the neck narrow. and correct knowledge can make it wide. And wide knowledge or wisdom or discriminating, that's so different. What do I do with the information that runs through? Okay, think of these things as medicines. They're not descriptions of any kind of reality.

[55:01]

They help us notice our mind. And they help us refine our mind. And that, as I said the other day, then that refined mind is bigger than the teachings. It's like you have some sort of dirty ocean or something. And you can't do much about it. But you sort of kind of stir this area and clean it up a bit. You do something that will aerate the other part. Somehow, when you do that, the whole water starts getting clearer. And if you try to map these too much on each other, these different teachings, then they lose their usefulness.

[56:27]

So in general, when the Abhidharma system becomes too philosophical, it loses its power. And there was a brilliance in noticing the mind in this way and our mind-bodies. And then the process got more and more complex. Dann würde der Prozess immer komplexer. Everything that was A could also be a non-A. Alles das A sein konnte, konnte auch nicht A sein. And everything that was A and non-A could also be a non-A, etc. And then that could be multiplied by 18. So you have dyads, that means two together, and triads, and you get a whole system which begins to lose any meaning at all.

[57:31]

This is the process of discrimination turns it into something else. It's just human activity. Okay. So you use this one? Sometimes you use the other one? Sometimes you... I think using the other is the three minds of daily consciousness is another one that you can use in relationship to V2. Okay, someone else will have their hand up. I would like to try to become clear about the 4th and 5th dharma.

[58:38]

In the other list. Even if I come to wisdom and so on, Even if I act in wisdom and suchness. Then I understand it is still a dualistic way of perceiving the world. Why? As long as I still see or view the world with knowledge, with knowing, there is still a world and I. Okay.

[59:41]

By the way, you remind me that, as far as I can tell, in what you said about Handewitt's text and what Luisa's read me, when he says that the vijnanas are a dualistic way of receiving, I think he's wrong. You remind me of what you and Marie-Louise said. He said that the Vishnianas are still called the Mano Vishnianas. Vijnana is still a dualistic way of perceiving. Isn't it great we can get excited about the vijnanas? All the vijnanas, he says, is a dualistic way of perceiving. And he decides the discerns between vijnana and jnana. which is also sometimes prajna.

[61:12]

And he describes the jnana as the non-dualistic one. Okay, I can't look at it carefully enough, but I would just say that vijnana is the seeing the senses, through the understanding of vijnanas, to see our sense functioning, through the understanding of the sense realm as vijnanas, is the very beginning of the source of non-dualistic knowing. Because you know the organ of perception, the object of perception, and then you know the field that unites them, and then when you shift your attention to the field, that's non-dualism.

[62:21]

And then, when you begin to know that, you can move attention more to the object, move attention more to the, like, hearing, hearing, to the field of hearing, to the internal experience, or more into the kind of field that's generated. And then these can also be understood as three different kinds of minds within the same sense, and calling forth or not calling forth memory in different ways. Now, let me say, you can... You can have an experience in zazen.

[63:25]

I'm just trying to take... to work with sort of what I... For me, a classic example. You can have an experience in zazen of samadhi. You recognize that a period of zazen or most of a period of zazen has passed and you had no sense of time, there was no thoughts, there was nothing. You can define samadhi as the mind concentrated on itself. Then you say, geez, what's that samadhi? And then the samadhi is gone.

[64:39]

That's the beginner's experience of samadhi. So you could call that samadhi a kind of non-dualistic being. The mature practitioner can hold that samadhi and with one corner of his or her mind observe the samadhi and study it. And not lose that samadhi. That is mature non-dualism. But you're still an observer. Not talking about some absolute state. Then you're acting through this samadhi even if part of you is observing it. you act through the samadhi.

[65:51]

Yeah, but you can also know that you are or observe it. In other words, we could say in another way, the Nirmanakaya Buddha is one who acts through a non-dualistic mind, but also knows what he or she is doing. The Nirmanakaya Buddha is one of the three bodies of Buddha that acts through Samadhi and knows what he does. He acts through that Samadhi knows what he does. Can you say that again? He just said it. The poor guy who acts out of dualism doesn't know what he's doing. No, that would be an idiot savant.

[67:05]

And he knows what he is doing. The idiot savant? No, no. Yes, the Nirmanakaya Buddha knows what he's doing, but he's acting through a non-dualistic mind. So this is not... It's, again, how you're functioning, not whether there's an observer or not. Okay. Just a moment. So let me look at this with you while I'm writing at this point. Okay. Now there's appearance. May I have a question? Yes, sure. Because I guess it's for appearance.

[68:08]

Can you explain this initial cost might? I did the other day. You did? Yeah. Following a thought back to its source or a mood or feeling back to its source. That's an initial cause mind. The mind where something originated. That's all. That's all. When anger first started, you weren't angry before, but now angry started. Or you didn't have a headache before, but you don't notice your headache after your head starts to feel. You feel a little click, and you know that's going to lead to a headache. And you turn the click the other way. Now you say it's similar to birth. Yes, because that's a beginning. It's not appearance. It's emphasizing... This is all in English, I'm sorry. Now the five marks, the four marks...

[69:10]

is emphasizing, as I'm teaching it, the four marks, is emphasizing discovering and maturing a state of mind which is in the actual present, not the... We have to either swap or make five minutes break or you have to teach, like, one word of it. One word of it. Well, let me say that what we're doing here is an essential process in developing an internal, your own vocabulary for talking about, thinking about these things. Do you want to take a break and let Neil translate? Okay. Or Caroline, do you want to try it? Please. It runs in the McLean's. Four. Have to get up when your legs weren't ready.

[70:41]

Will your mother be translating soon too? I'm just kidding. Okay. So I'm teaching the four dharmas to mean that in your practice you developed an initial causal mind. Okay. In the four marks, I mean. Initial cause, not caused. Initial cause, mind. I think sometimes it was understood as caused. Caused. An initial cause, not caused.

[72:02]

An initial cause, mind. Okay. Okay. Because from that state of mind, you can most fully enter manifestation and duration. You can have the feeling of what really meant by a dharma. The four marks of a dharma. Now, these are called five dharmas because you want to turn each one of these into a dharma. Now, if I'm practicing with this, you know, I'm wandering around in a world of appearance.

[73:18]

Things are appearing. And appearance is complex, not just a single initial cause mind. And I'm in a process of constantly naming. If I walk across this room, I head for the door if I want to go out. In effect, I'm naming it a door because I know I'm not going to walk smack into the wall. So I'm functioning in these appearances with an implicit naming going on all the time. I'm functioning in these appearances with an implicit process of naming going on all the time. That may not necessarily lead to discrimination.

[74:23]

Now, to practice with this distinction, you have to do something usually like in Zazen, take the sweater off the airplane. The sweater? Take the concept off the airplane. It's a sweating airplane, I know, because... Hot day. Okay. Because the word in Dignaga and Dharmakirti's teaching for concept is enclosure. Dharmakirti? Kirti? K-I-R-T-I.

[75:32]

A concept encloses a particular idea and gives it a shape. So if I see an airplane, I mean, if I hear an airplane, I think, oh, that's an airplane that's putting a sweater on it or putting an enclosure on it. Yeah, so then you can have the experience of actually, because the naming occurs so fast, you can actually reverse the process and And take off the sweater, pull off the name. Okay. Now, if you do that enough, and if you're in Zazen, when you notice appearances in Zazen, things come up, You notice whether you name them or whether you don't.

[76:53]

Whether you start thinking about them or whether you don't. And do you get carried off in the thinking if you name it or discriminate or do you not? What happens? You get skillful at that. It's a basic yogic skill. What are you doing in zazen? This is the kind of thing you should be doing. Because you're accepting what appears and investigating. Zazen is to just accept what appears and investigate what appears. And you get sort of good at it after a while. So I can walk around among you as if you might be a bunch of dogs or aliens. Yeah. I mean, I told you my experience of finding myself in a herd of deer. Yeah. Rhea.

[78:13]

Coming down, now you all know the story, right? More or less. Anyway, very briefly, coming down in the total darkness from the house and the log cabin in Cresto, I found myself in a large metabolic field with definitely not the ordinary forest. And I kind of like, what is this field? I couldn't see anything. Now you know what that... This is like before you identify thunder as thunder. I stopped and I thought, Must be that herd of deer. And then I realized that's what it was.

[79:19]

And as I say, if I'd been conscious, they would have run off. Because I was walking in a non-naming consciousness, they weren't afraid of me. Excuse me again? Because I was walking, let's say, in a non-naming consciousness, they weren't afraid of me. And they weren't afraid because they knew I didn't know who they were. One of them was actually named Bodhidharma. So I can also walk with you with this feeling of I'm in a metabolic field, but it's not necessarily people.

[80:25]

Yeah, maybe in sleepwalking one does things like this. Okay, so that's this territory. And then... When it leads to discrimination, this clearly enters consciousness. Now, an important aspect of this teaching is characteristic of Buddhism. It's characteristic of Buddhism is that discrimination here isn't bad, it's there to be used. Because we, in fact, have a habit of discriminating. And we do. If you're going to be alive, you're discriminating.

[81:27]

So when you notice discriminating, the mind of discriminating appeared, you switch out of it. You use the mind of discrimination to switch out of discrimination. So that's different than not discriminating. This is using discrimination to switch out of discrimination. Okay, so then that act leads you into suchness. Which is the simultaneity of the manifest and the unmanifest. Okay, so we start with appearance and the manifest here.

[82:29]

And then when we end with appearance, But this is starting with form and this is starting with form is emptiness. This ending with form is emptiness. Okay. Is that crystal clear? Yes. Yes. I have a question. Is a phenomenon something that just appears? Well, let me say, we're way over time right now, but since we had the afternoon off, we can just continue for... Oh!

[83:31]

Go ahead. Did you translate that? Since we have the afternoon off, you should translate. You're still thinking, sometimes I'm talking to you and not talking to everyone through you. Okay. Yes. Is a phenomenon something that just appears? What's the question? Is a phenomenon something that just appears? Could every phenomena be eternal? Yes, of course, absolutely. And phenomena, the word phenomena in English means that which appears. Yes. Yeah. It means appearance, basically. Phenomena means appearance. It means the world known through the senses. Are you translating this? Yeah. Are you translating this?

[84:36]

The word phenomenon, I guess in German too, in English means that which appears to the senses. And by the way, the Vijnana means literally something like to know separately together. So it's really about separating things into what you can separate them into and then seeing them also together. Let her translate this for you. He says here, if I don't misunderstand or remember correctly, he says the syllable V or something means to cut.

[86:00]

And this is for him the source of dualism. So this is the total opposite of your explanation earlier. That has tremendous, absolutely, for me too. I don't understand it that way. I understand exactly what Soschi says, what he says. For Bernd, it's the same what you said and what David, Han David meant. For him, it's no difference. Okay, good. As I said, I can't examine the text, so I don't know. All right. Yes. I have a question. Yesterday you spoke about the perception of... As a reference to the field of mind.

[87:04]

Yeah. Yeah. Is the field of mind still existent when I remove the fields of perception? Yes, as long as you're alive. Is this the basis of life in general? I would hesitate to use basis, because it suggests priority, a priorness. I would rather ask, say it, what's always present? Always present is mind, as long as you're alive. As a field of knowing, noticing, etc. And if we look at the five skandhas, which we haven't gotten to yet, Non-graspable feeling, which is the way I make use of the second skandha, non-graspable feeling accompanies all mental states and body states.

[88:31]

Perception and consciousness occur within that field of mind and non-graspable feeling. Is that okay with you? Or do you have a problem with that? I have to explore. Anyhow. Okay, by the way, Gerhard and Christoph have to leave today, right? You leave tomorrow, not today, okay. But we're going to have to feel a big hole in this doughnut. American donuts are different than German Berliners. Are they called Berliners, those sugar-filled things?

[89:52]

Outside Berlin, they're called... Oh, in Berlin, they're called hamburgers. Oh, pancakes. Okay. If someone has a pressing question, I'd like to say something for a minute and then we'll end. But I hope you all have pressing questions. Not because I want to go on forever, just because I hope that's the way it is. Yes. Once again to this... Sorry. The field of mind again. Feels like a continuity for me. Every appearing moment disappears.

[91:02]

But it feels still as a continuity. Yeah, I understand the problem. The problem is more intellectual, I think, than factual. In other words, it's a problem with what we call it. If we call it continuous, it sounds like it has some existence. It's more perhaps an arpeggio, is that the word? Arpeggio? Music, when you take a chord and you play the chord successively instead of all at once. Arpeggio. [...] So it's a kind of moment-by-moment phenomena that has the illusion of continuity, but as long as we're alive, this moment-by-moment appearing and disappearing is present.

[92:24]

That's what called being alive is. When that stops, you're dead. That's what being alive is called. Also clumsy words. Moment by moment appearance. But again, as I said, it's better to take this and now fold it all up together and crumple it. And then, what's happening in there? Okay. Evelyn? It's a lump into a stream of water and slowly, slowly, slowly it unfolds.

[93:30]

And I'm in the process now to become friends with terms. But it's rather difficult. I experienced in my life that I don't learn really in stress. When I'm in a stressful situation, even if I create my stressful situation, I cannot avoid it. So, when I came in this area of terms, I felt like in a swarm of mosquitoes. I have to defend myself. If I Each mosquito with a new term. Every mosquito. I cannot be infected by anything. So I had a problem.

[94:32]

From which mosquito I can let be? Which do I choose to let me bite? So it was a big problem. Which mosquito do I choose? But in the meantime, I already have been bitten. Yeah, bit, yeah. Stop scratching. So I have already some mosquito bites, but I don't know yet which mosquito it was. Oh. OK. I can't name it yet, which mosquito. There are some mosquito bites. Ah, thank you. Deutsch? Deutsch, bitte. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I begin to associate myself with the tones, with the expressions.

[95:38]

I have experienced in my life that I do not learn anything when I am stressed, when I cause stress, when I am stressed. And when I arrived, I had to use all these words and expressions, all these terminologies, as if I were in a masquerade. I don't defend myself against all these mosquitoes and I don't want to be threatened by these mosquitoes. But it became clear to me that I don't actually want to infect myself. That's why I'm here. And then the next big problem was, which of these mosquitoes should I be bitten by? We wanted to choose one, but at the same time it happened that I had already been bitten.

[96:39]

And so I already have some mosquito stings. I try not to scratch. But I don't really know exactly which mosquitoes have bitten me. Okay. I like your initial image of putting this in the stream. Because we do imagine... I could say that my experience is something like we start out with a mind and mine is particularly kind of all tangled up. So I put it in a stream of zazen, in the water of zazen.

[97:43]

And all the parts floated more separately and I could see them. And once I could see them, feel them, know them, I could feel the difference. Then in daily life, when you crumple them back up again, I could feel the different territories instead of just being mixed up in the territories. Okay, so in regard to the tea show yesterday, the question in Zen practice, the process of developing Zen pedagogy,

[98:45]

Okay, so we can analyze, I can analyze, we can analyze our experience in terms of this scanning process. And a scanning process which establishes an interpenetrating foreground and background. In other words, I see the fly going across. I can only see it if I establish a background. And if I look out my window at the cows out there, if I look out my window at the cows, bulls or whatever they are, Basically, I see the cows moving around and the background is the field, the dirt, the sky, etc. And I tend to make that a background and I notice the cows.

[99:57]

Because as Gregory Bateson and many others have pointed out, perception is the perception of difference. Perception is the perception of difference. Gregory Bateson and others. Okay. Okay. So the perception of difference creates an implicit background on which you perceive the difference. Otherwise there's no difference. So we separate out in order to perceive a foreground-background distinction. Now, Yuan Wu says, create a mind, generate a mind in which there's neither here nor there. This means a mind without foreground and background.

[101:33]

It's another way to speak about non-duality. Now, if you try to, again, this new non-duality, that new non-duality, and try to put them, oh, is there one? You can't do that. In this way I'm speaking now, there's what we can call non-duality. If we speak about something else, there's something we can call non-duality. So if, like, if Evelyn's mosquitoes... were like, as I mentioned once, the swarm of killer bees I was in once. I'm glad you only have problems with mosquitoes and not killer bees. Yeah, as I was in a swarm of killer bees once in Chile, There's no foreground and background.

[102:46]

It's just... I don't know what kind of overcomes me here. And you can't foreground and background. You just want to get the hell out of there. The mind cannot establish foreground and background. You can't see any bee. So in order to perceive, we have to establish foreground and background. But the point of my analysis of the present as duration is that we're creating both the foreground and the background.

[103:46]

We're not just creating the foreground in relationship to some ground of being or something like that. We don't just develop the foreground in relation to some background or some bee? Ground. What? Excuse me? Oh, being. Grounded being. Yeah, yeah. The bees again, right. To buzz or not to buzz? That's the question. To the background? Yeah. You're good at this. I like it. You know, you and me, we once were beekeepers. You were? You had a beehive, too. Really? I was once a beekeeper, too, yeah. Okay. Well, I'm almost done. So what happens when you really... accept this present as duration, is that foreground and background begin to merge.

[104:50]

And one of the things you can notice when people are fairly experienced meditators, What most people would put in the background and not notice, and only notice the foreground activity in a conversation or something, the meditator starts noticing everything in the field of awareness equally. And the foreground is something you create for the sake of the conversation or something, but the foreground and the background are really one territory.

[105:51]

Now, When foreground and background become one territory, that's when they relate most directly to the laya-vijjana. You can think of the laya-vijjana as where there's an incessant arriving of impressions, mental and sensorial impressions. Incessant means unending. Arriving or arising, Ruchi? Arriving. Arriving, as someone says, on the shore of being. Okay.

[106:56]

Of impressions. Okay. These impressions aren't good, bad, they're just impressions. There's no patterns in them yet. There's no clashes in them yet. They're just stuff. Now, what's the word I use for when, I can't remember now, where two things are beside each other but not necessarily related? Yeah, like in the film. What? Does anybody remember? Paratactic. Paratactic, yeah. It's paratactic. It's, you know, for Freud, the unconscious is full of all kinds of meanings and repression. This is just a paratactic field of things beside each other with no relationship. And at each particular moment, it's your environment, it's not inside you.

[107:58]

Your whole environment is a participant in this. Now, if you have a foreground-background relationship, and the foreground then is where your attention is, the foreground will draw out patterns from the Alaya-Vijjana that fit into your self-history or whatever it is. But if foreground and background are just one field, then they draw out more paratactic associations. Now, I could never say this if I hadn't studied the Alaya Vijnana. Nor would I have noticed it because I would have conformed my noticing to more our Western model or a Freudian model.

[109:11]

So it changes how you notice and how you experience. And if you don't have a conceptual grasp an internalized embodied grasp of the Abhidharma, I can't teach really effectively. Because basically you understand things I say in an isolated framework, which then quickly merges into your already embodied cultural framework. If you don't have what I just said, then whatever I teach, you understand as isolated, perhaps interesting, units. which aren't understood in the context from which they are developed or arised.

[110:24]

And they may even feel like insights, but they have a limited power because they only have a power within your own cultural embodied framework. Okay, so now let's take what I said yesterday in Teisho, though I know it wasn't very clear, but it's the best I could do yesterday. Let's take that as a teaching that arises from Abhidharmic thinking. How do you practice that? The Zen technique is to create a phrase which calls this understanding into presence. Now, this is characteristic of Zen and not characteristic of any other Buddhist school, anywhere near the same degree at least.

[111:42]

That's why many Western Buddhists think that Zen is just terribly simple or some kind of popular version of Buddhism. Because they only see these phrases and they don't see what those phrases evoke. And they don't see how those phrases were developed. So now the phrase I work with in relationship to yesterday's Abhidharmic description of duration is always appearing present. And I find the always present part kind of takes away the past and future.

[112:55]

And always appearing makes this foreground-background immediacy come to me on each mental and physical act. Now, always I use instead of continuously. Maybe because it has all ways in it. But really I use it because always... appearing consciousness works as a kind of unit. Always appearing present, I mean. AAP. Always appearing presence. Now, you That works from the connotations I have with English and the sound quality of it.

[114:07]

You may want a different phrase in German. The point is, create for yourself a phrase that makes you feel this momentary presence that you are creating. That on each noticeable moment, it's appearing anew. And it has neither foreground nor background. So sometimes I add, when I say this phrase to myself, feel this phrase to myself. I add no foreground, no background. So this is a classic, what I've just described is classic Zen pedagogy.

[115:10]

You have a teaching and then you reduce the teaching to some kind of statement. Reduce isn't the right word. You... You make a signal for the teaching that you can use in a way that calls it forth. It's not just that you're calling forth the teaching. You're calling forth the teaching's relationship to the world of an infinite number of experiences. So you're calling forth the world to either confirm or reject this teaching. And you're calling forth your experience to either know the world this way or to say, I can't know it this way.

[116:21]

Okay? Oh, that's the same in German and English. You know one of the main theories for where okay comes from. Well, there's lots of theories, but one is that there was a German guy in Chicago named Oscar something. I don't know what. Oscar Knopf. And he always... Yeah, Oscar Kaiser, is that it? And he always signed his things, oh, this is all right, he'd sign O-K. So it became... And now it's used in Germany. Oscar Kaiser... Oh, he did? Oh, yeah, because he... Nine of 16 emigrated. Nine of 16 Kaisers emigrated. So, since this bell's been here for no reason, I can't understand.

[117:25]

Let's sit for one moment. Another important understanding of the alaya-vijjana is not only the receiver of impressions and the source of impressions for our thinking and so forth,

[118:59]

but it's also where we can return our thinking to. And the big paratactic field of the alaya-vijjana calms the mind. And the teachings of sudden enlightenment in Zen. Or Dogen saying take the backward step. Or Hakuin saying you have to reverse consciousness. Or Hakuin saying you have to reverse consciousness. are all based on this, in a way, returning to the alaya vijnana. To face the world. know the world through the laya-vijnana rather than through mano or manas.

[120:40]

And this understanding and teaching comes from the development of the abhidharma. Thank you.

[121:02]

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