Now, would you like to continue the discussion that Andrea and Nicole began? Or would you like to proceed on another blind average? Or please continue with the theme of the seminar. Which is which? I don't know. Last, last. Continue with the theme of the seminar. Yes. then I think what I should speak about are a review together of the dynamic of the five skandhas.

[01:05]

Because although we've talked about them often, It's a little bit like a cardiologist speaking about the circulatory system. Every year you can say neat things about the circulatory system. Because the five-scan has become kind of circulatory system. Yeah, and we can't really speak about the consciousness as a construct without speaking about consciousness as constructed from the five skandhas.

[02:06]

Now, there's nobody laid down the five skandhas, like the Ten Commandments or something like that. But they are from very early Buddhism. They are the... have been developed as and discovered as the most useful distinctions that we can make in regard to consciousness. So I think it's important to notice that they are not entities again they are distinctions you make use of alright so they are the five are

[03:16]

And these are my translations of the terms within the Western paradigmatic thinking. D.T. Suzuki, who was one of the first persons to translate them, translated the second, the fourth rather, skanda as confections, which is a little bit like pastries. My conclusion is the best translation, the most useful translation, is associations. So we have consciousness and then associations.

[04:48]

And then we have perception. And then we have feeling. And feeling is usually distinguished as good, bad, and indifferent. But I think that's not a useful way to translate it for us. Because we make stronger distinctions between good and bad, like and dislike, than this yogic culture makes. So I think more usefully and more fundamentally, the second skanda is best translated as non-graspable feeling.

[05:53]

And... The first skanda is form. But it's again not form as an entity, it's form as an activity. So we can think of the first skanda as dharmas. Or as appearance. Yeah, which is about the same. All right. So we get these five. And just say something about non-graspable feeling again. The best way I can say something about that, because I've often described, people have said they have no idea what I mean by non-graspable feeling.

[06:59]

There's a feeling in this room right now. And it's a different feeling than was here just shortly before with Andrea and Nicole. So, can you tell me what the difference is? Well, you can say it's warm or it's cold or it's I don't know what, but it's really not something you can grasp, it's something only you can feel. But I would say most of the information in this situation right now is in that field of feeling as before the field of feeling you and Nicole created was full of possibilities and information. And I would say that most of the information in this room here now is in this area of ​​feeling, as well as before when Nicole and Andrea were sitting here.

[08:27]

Maybe this would be equivalent to the German word, Stimmung. You have to ask. Mood. Mood. Yeah, but it has the term, like an instrument, which is tuned. Yeah. Or Atmosphere. Atmosphere. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, in English, mood has emotional connotations, moody. Atmosphere may be all right. In the early times of practice, we often talked about the mood of the day.

[09:34]

We did. That was happening in Germany when I was looking. Some of you don't know Auriga, but she was the mother of the Dharma son. I mean, nothing would have happened without her because she spoke German. I didn't, so what the heck am I? I don't know what's going on. So she was in contact with everybody, could respond to their letters and phone calls. Now many of you speak English. In those days, not so many spoke English. When she was my most common and most often translator. Then she became a big-time executive in the educational world in Germany and abandoned me. That's not quite true, but it's something like that. Okay.

[10:45]

You're all right. I don't know how you said that. But it worked. It worked. Another expression I would like to add to feeling or a mood or what else did we have? Atmosphere is spürbewusstsein. Spürbewusstsein. Sense and consciousness. Self-sense. There is a specific term that is used in trauma therapy.

[11:49]

Okay. Well, for me, if a person has had a serious accident or might be dead, The most basic thing you want to know is if they have any feeling. Can they respond to touch or something like that? And I mean feeling in that very fundamental way, just alive. Do you stick a pin into somebody?

[12:50]

Do they go out? Okay. Anyway, you got the general idea. Okay, so there's these five. And they're separate. They can become separate domains of knowing. And they're also sequential. Und es gibt eine Abfolge in ihnen. They're considered, they're called, the word skanda means heaps or aggregates. They're piles of attributes. Also die skanda, das Wort skanda bedeutet auch Anhäufung. Also es handelt sich um Anhäufungen von Attributen.

[13:54]

And so they're separate, they're sequential, and they're accumulative. It makes sense that one follows the other in a certain order. And they not only are sequential, they actually accumulate. What do you mean by accumulate? The pile gets bigger and bigger. Yeah, except that actually the pile gets more and more compressed as it becomes consciousness. The piles are more spread out as you go from five to four to three to two to one. Now I think for us the easiest way and most craft-like way is to use the skandhas as a way to enter sasen.

[15:18]

Again, we have this incubation. Ulrike said to me, it ought to be fermentation, and I'm not sure, maturing maybe, but alcoholic, no. All right, but anyway, we can ferment as well as incubate. Also, wir können auch fermentieren und nicht nur gebrüten. Okay. Now, these words, again, please, we're just... If I use incubation, I use fermentation, or I use accumulation.

[16:20]

These are just words in English, which now are for you in German as well. which direct attention, but attention is way more complex than these words. Okay, so we have these five categories that go way back, and as I said the other day, they're not in Jainism, they're not in Hinduism, they're unique to Buddhism. And they're the first teaching presented in the Heart Sutra. And the Heart Sutra opens up and talks about different aspects of the five skandhas. Okay.

[17:21]

So, how are we going to practice the five skandhas? Now, as I emphasized, the practice is a craft. You're using the shuttle, you're using the breath as a shuttle or a vehicle to bring wisdom teachings into the body-mind phenomenality. So the breath is a vehicle which allows us to explore mind and body and phenomenality. So they are five to be known separately, to be known cumulatively, and to be known sequentially.

[18:27]

And there are five to be known thoroughly enough, fully enough, experienceably, experientially enough. that you can experience them from five to one and from one to five. In a way, you could say, once you know the five standards well, You unzip the five skandhas and it goes from consciousness to awareness. Or you can zip up the five skandhas into consciousness.

[19:40]

from awareness to consciousness. Because in a way, the five skandhas are a way to go from consciousness to awareness, or turn into constructive consciousness. So now, these distinctions and these, well, I said the dynamic of the five stanzas, To get to know them and make use of them in this way takes a little time. And as I said up here, breathing in, I observe everything is in, each thing is in permanent. So you're looking for ways to weave the teachings, wisdom views, into the fabric of your life.

[21:18]

To weave the teachings into the fabric, the details of your daily life. So this image of weaving, warp and woof or weft, warp and so forth, and the shuttle and so forth, So one of the first crafts of, you know, beginning civilization is weaving. So the word tantra means weaving. And the first koan in the Shoyaroku says, creation runs her loom. So weaving a warp and wept or something like that.

[22:35]

So this is clearly the emphasis is on seeing practice and living as a continuous process, which is something like weaving. Okay. So now, one of the things that's going on here, when you practice the five skandhas, is you're beginning to be able to make distinctions. to notice distinction. Now, if you just see the world as it's presented by the senses, as you think it's presented by the senses, you don't feel many distinctions.

[23:39]

And again, yogic practice assumes that all mental phenomena have a bodily component. And all human sentient phenomena has a mental component. Okay, now if you really kind of get that, Then you begin more and more to be able to, when you notice something, some mood, you begin to notice the physical location of that mood. And eventually the physical component of mental

[24:41]

of meditation or modes of mind are a little like dials. You can dial them. So the Zen teacher says, what are you doing sitting there? And the Zen teacher says, what do you do when you sit there? I'm dialing my way into emptiness, into zazen. No, I just mean that. But it is true. If you really know the boundary, for instance, between sleeping and waking, it's much more easier to create that feeling and go to sleep. So now we have these experiential distinctions of the five stanzas. Also wir haben diese erfahrungsmäßigen Unterscheidungen der fünf Skandals.

[25:58]

Somewhat arbitrary, perhaps. Die sind vielleicht irgendwo auch beliebig. But we can make use of the distinction. Aber wir können die Unterscheidungen benutzen. Okay, so when do you do that then? Usually, unless you really just crawl out of bed onto your cushions, you're conscious before you start sitting down. Let's say that sasen begins with consciousness. And then as you sit, And then, when you sit... I remember Suzuki Roshi said to me once, what is your experience, how long does it take before you enter Zazen Mind? Yeah, and this was 1961 or 2, and I thought... And he's asking me that.

[27:04]

I assumed he was always blissfully in Sassenbein. Well, I wasn't that innocent, but sort of. Okay, so I said, well, yeah, I don't know, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. He said, for me it's about 20 minutes, between 10 and 20 minutes before I enter satsang. So this is somewhat conceptually parallel to how long does it take you before lying down adjusting the covers or whatever, before you sleep actually takes over your body and mind. For most people it takes 10 or 20 minutes. But if you develop skills in this way, you can go to sleep in 30 seconds.

[28:19]

But it's also natural to let a process happen in which the way the mind is held together by the glue of consciousness. It's released, and the constituents of consciousness kind of float in space. No, when I'm driving, I have to drive this a little too often the distance between Crestone and Denver.

[29:24]

And since when I was 19, returning late at night, I somehow fell asleep in the car and went off the road and then ended up in the middle of the highway with trucks coming. Since then, I will not let myself fall asleep driving. I woke up going off the road. So now, I pull over and I sleep for five minutes, 20 minutes or something. And I've discovered that the most effective is you let the glue of consciousness release, all its constituents float, and then we come back together and you feel rested.

[30:32]

Okay, or another thing is I noticed that if I take a short nap, the... metabolism is kind of going in different directions, and it can all come together in a similar way, and as soon as it is in one way, then I'm rested. Now, I'm mentioning that because while these experiences to various degrees, had to exist before I started practicing. My ability to notice these constituents and participate with them definitely was enhanced by practice.

[31:39]

And enhanced by, very specifically, getting so you can play the keyboard of the five skandhas. Okay, so you're doing satsang and you sit down We sit down and you're in consciousness. Oh dear, I'm supposed to be up at the schloss. Oh well. They invited me to tea. This is more important. So, you're in sasen. In consciousness. And you release the glue of consciousness.

[32:52]

And you find yourself in an associative field. Now you find yourself also in Freudian unconsciousness. A field of things which don't fit in or are not allowed to fit into consciousness. And that field is actually larger than just unconsciousness. It's all kinds of things that have no reason for them to be in consciousness. As you get more experienced at releasing consciousness, the field of association gets more and more articulated. And that articulation also, you not only notice the separate associations, but you notice they actually create a field.

[34:22]

You know, I was reading something by a physicist the other day. He said quanta or particles don't actually directly influence each other, affect each other. The field of each affects each other. And I intend to explore that more to know what that means from the point of view of the physicist, but something like that is the case in our own experience. It's interesting that at different times of zazen, the field of association is different. It's not always the same ingredients. And this attentional skill, as you begin to notice the distinction between fields of knowing,

[35:24]

you begin to see that the fields are triggered. And that was an early important discovery of mine, to notice when a mood changes, when the trigger happens, well before you become conscious of the change. So you begin to be able to notice the trigger before you experience the trigger, before it has an effect. And the trigger is often circumstances, just the circumstances of the world.

[36:45]

And then the trigger becomes something that you can see the results of. in the contents of the field of associations. And now you can begin to go back and forth between consciousness and the field of associations. And the field of association most fully appears when you have a non-conceptual mode of modality of mind. Okay, then you get so you can release the field of associations.

[37:47]

And the third skanda is perception, but actually developed it's percept only. You can feel the senses presenting you with individual perceptions, individual percepts. And this is a kind of cleansing process. Because if you're used to establishing yourself in a percept-only field, where you hear everything, for instance, you feel a thought formation very clearly, or you hear something very clearly,

[39:17]

And I've often said, what you recognize then is you're not, excuse me, you're going through the routine again, you're not hearing the bird, you're hearing your hearing of the bird. Was ich oft gesagt habe, ist, dass du dann nicht den Vogel hörst, sondern du hörst das Hörendes. Du hörst dein eigenes Hören des Vogels. You're hearing the way you're hearing functions. Du hörst die Art, wie dein eigenes Hören funktioniert. And we know that bird song is heard by birds because they have very different kind of ears than we do, much more complex. They hear something different than we hear. Und wir wissen, dass die Vögel den Vogelgesang, weil sie ganz andere Ohren haben, auf andere Weise hören als wir. So the birds know they're singing for some other cute bird, but they also know they're singing for you.

[40:30]

Well, I don't know. I'm just kidding. Also die Vögel, die wissen, dass sie für irgendeinen anderen süßen Vogel singen, aber sie wissen auch, dass sie für dich singen. But if you begin to then, in a sense, purify and can feel each percept as the perception of your own ability, your own sensorium, With no baggage of associations, you've left those in the fourth skanda. In a way, it ends up kind of cleansing consciousness. So if you do this every sasana period, you eventually begin to hear each of the senses really happening individually and being put together.

[41:32]

You're hearing each sense organ, you're hearing or experiencing each sense organ, and the ayatana or the field that arises from each sense organ is experienced, we could say the muscle is there, something again, is experienced with more clarity, and that clarity is brought into consciousness. Das wird mit größerer Klarheit durch diesen Muskel erfahren und erreicht auch das Bewusstsein. And you also discovered the bliss of being in close to how things actually exist.

[42:35]

Und du erfährst auch diese Glückseligkeit, dort zu verweilen, einfach so, wie die Dinge wirklich sind. Because when you recognize you're Hearing your own hearing and not the bird. The bird is just triggering your hearing. For some reason, this is an example of being close to how we actually exist. And that's accompanied by bliss. It almost always is. It's great. And then, since you know, you're only knowing your own hearing, The extraordinary mystery of what the bird is doing becomes apparent.

[43:40]

You recognize that your senses are only giving you part of the pie. There are six parts of the pie that the senses give you. And this is a pie of infinite pieces. And I think that's a good place to stop. Your sweetheart is waiting for you. The kitchen is waiting for all of you. Tea at the Schloss is waiting for me. In New York it's polite to be half an hour late, but I don't know if that's true in Austria. If you come on time in New York, it ain't good.

[44:42]

But I'm not a New Yorker. So we still have the first and second skandhas to look at. So we have something to look forward to. Thank you very much. Thanks for casting. Whenever I speak about the Dharma, I'm supposed to wear some version of Buddhist robe to indicate that this ain't me talking, this is the lineage talking.

[46:04]

The Buddha may say, hey, you're getting out of line. But I'm trying to stay in line.

[46:12]

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