is we're in a womb. And every particular is the embryo. And everything is changing in that way. There's a tremendous fertility to that. Fertility. And that fertility is way-seeking mind. That fertility is a sense of the path. You feel the fertility of each moment is the path. I'm sorry, in a way, I'm saying so much. Because I'd like to have some discussion with you.

[01:13]

But I think we have four days. And we have one more day. And it's quite a different feeling, isn't it, than when we start Friday evening. So we can have some feeling of the five fundamentals of Zen practice. So we have some practice tools to bring to this discussion. And so I can try to approach this morning Original mind. Not as a static concept. That is the activity of the mind. And the activity of Buddha. Where there's no external Buddha. No external sort of Somewhere out there in space.

[02:25]

Ideal human being. Let's hope there's one. I look at you and assume you might be such. And one of Suzuki Roshi's simple teachings was you are always showing what kind of Buddha you are. So I looked at Leonard and I said, ah, he's showing me what kind of Buddha he is. Not too bad. Not too bad. It's another way of naming, and a way of naming that brings us into the activity of a Buddha.

[03:28]

If it's possible that it's a true human being, it's not a thing, it's an activity. It's not an entity, it's a way of functioning. And as a wisdom teaching, it has absolutely no meaning unless it's also your activity. And to practice Zen means to know it's your activity. It does? Oh, it just bit me. And maybe I don't want to share fundamental time with him. Notice I called it him, not her.

[04:33]

I can still be politically correct. Okay, we can't do too much between now and 12.30. So let me give you a sense of configuration. When you say the mind as it is, you put a configuration in your consciousness of the mind as it is.

[05:35]

The mind as it is is not the mind as it is. It's a way of naming the mind as it is. So you've added something. Maybe wisdom salt. Emptiness salt. So when you say the mind as it is, you've added something. So I'm calling that a configuration. Okay. When I notice my senses, the noticing is a configuration. I decided to use the word configuration for some reason.

[06:40]

It's not a word I've used before particularly, but anyway I'm using it. Okay. Okay, when I notice my senses, the noticing is a configuration. So when I bring my Sukhya, she says, bring each sense to an object. So I hold this bell. And you know my practice is to always hold it with a sense of completeness. I do it so that each movement feels complete to me. May not to you, but it does to me. So I bring a sense of completeness. Sorry.

[07:52]

And I wasn't just protecting you. I take the karma on myself. Okay. So you're freed from the biting fly and freed from the karma. And the biting fly is freed from his, no, I don't know. Okay. Freed from the bonds of attachment to me. Okay, so I have a feeling of completeness as I put this down. And I bring my eyes to it. with a feeling of completeness.

[09:10]

And this is what Dogen calls the exertion of each moment. It's the exertion of each moment which enters us into fundamental time. Now I can't I don't like the word exertion. But I can't find the right word in English for what he means. Related to the effort of the Eightfold Path. Assiduousness. Or awareness. Anyway, you get the picture. We'll find a word. We can make one up. So we bring our eyes to this fully.

[10:15]

And you bring your ears to it. It's not being wrong, but my ears are ready. And I initially brought my hand to its coldness. And now the bell brings the warmness of my hand to my hand. And even, as I said, you can smell this bell. It's a good bell, but you can smell it like cheap silverware in a diner. Mm. A gashtag, yeah. So... Okay, so that's to bring your senses to it.

[11:25]

And that's vijnana practice. The six vijnanas and the five senses plus mind. And the word vijnana means something, you know, in its roots. Something like to know together separately. Okay. You have six senses. Counting mind in Buddhism. And you bring all six to the object. Okay, that's creating a configuration. I'm not just looking at the object. The practitioner looks at the object with all six senses.

[12:28]

So the name of this object is a sixfold object. Oh, yeah. It's an object. It's a bell. But all objects are sixfold objects. So now we can practice sameness, not difference. We can bring ourselves to the difference, the difference, the difference. And that's a temporal practice. Or we can bring ourselves to the sameness, which is always a six-fold object. Okay, what's the point of giving it this wisdom name of a six-fold object? What's a six-fold object? It's an object that can be known only through the six channels of the visionaries, of the six senses.

[13:33]

Maybe some of the handy phone calls, one of them just arrived a few minutes ago. Vielleicht ist einer von diesen Handy-Anrufen und einer... Vielleicht sind die Handy-Anrufe und einer davon ist gerade angekommen. How many handy phone calls do we imagine in this room? Wie viele von diesen Handy-Anrufen können wir uns denn überhaupt vorstellen, passen hier in dieses Zimmer? One thousand? Ein tausend? One fifth of the population of Austria? Ein fünftel der Bevölkerung von Österreich? A twentieth of the population of Germany? A hundredth of the population of America. I might have a few American phone calls here somewhere. They're not part of the six-fold object. To call it the six-fold object is to open it to the mystery of what's between the senses.

[14:50]

Everything all at once is enfolded in this object. So that's an infinitely enfolded object. Das ist ein unendlich eingefaltetes Objekt. Which is another name for way of saying emptiness. Was ein anderer Begriff dafür ist, also ein anderer Begriff dafür ist, Leerheit. So I create the configuration of the six senses. Also schaffe ich die Konfiguration der sechs Sinne. And what appears, I feel... folded into the six senses, which gives me a complete picture of the world.

[15:52]

But when I feel the particularity of the six senses, Like handy phone calls. Or who knows what. The mystery of the activity of interpenetration. So I've now brought a configuration of the jnanas into my mindfulness and by dividing my mindfulness into six streams we could say I then notice the wholeness of in-betweenness.

[16:57]

So the practice of bringing a wisdom configuration into my mindfulness. The teaching of the Vijnanas is in the Heart Sutra. It opens me to the wholeness and the mystery of all-at-once-ness. To know separately, together. And the activity of separating and seeing it come together is simultaneously the activity of opening to wholeness and all at once.

[18:03]

And you can feel the taste of it in your body. Und ihr könnt den Geschmack dafür in eurem eigenen Körper schmecken. Und ihr könnt die Zufriedenheit davon oder darüber in eurem Körper und eurem Geist spüren. Weil ihr euch dabei selber viel ganzer fühlt. Alles ist so wie es ist. Und ihr könnt euch ganz entspannt fühlen. More ease through feeling more complete. Feeling everything is centered. It's not this place and that place, your place. It's here place and here place and here place. The thusness of everything all at once. So I put this foot out in order to go up there to do something.

[19:20]

And I never got there. Because my foot stepped down into the true human body. And a whole lot of stuff rushed up my foot into my... As I realized through this action, I couldn't say what I wanted to there until I said what I said there, here, there. Oh, no, we went three minutes over dinner, lunch. So let's go another minute or so and sit. And thank you for translating. Thank you so much.

[23:17]

It wasn't my foot, it was your true human body. It gave me these things to say. So we come back at 3.30? Is that okay? All right, thank you very much. Thanks for trying. Okay.

[25:21]

So I'd like you to feel how you are parts. Ich möchte, dass ihr spürt, dass ihr Teile seid. How you're always constructing yourself, actually. And each moment. And somehow we get to this point by aiming at the original mind. And having to look at what is mind in Buddhism. So I can aim some words at these things. Mind is the activity of mind.

[26:40]

Mind is the activity of the jnanas, the senses and sense fields. And so mind, it's hard to separate mind from phenomena. Because mind includes the activity of perceiving. And just as, first of all, you notice it's difficult to separate mind and body. Although it's a mistake to think that mind and body are one, mind and body are a relationship. Because we can experience our body separately from our mind. And we can work with our body to get to know our mind.

[27:58]

But that very activity of knowing the mind through the body weaves mind and body together. and cultivates the relationship of mind and body. Until mind and body are a simultaneous activity, not just a conception of such, But you feel your body and your mind. And you feel your mind and your body. And I know that's different for each one of us. Although it's quite similar to bring the feeling into your right hand, as I said, and feel your left hand.

[29:16]

That's similar for all of us. But the degree to which that healing of mind is in our body, in our hara, In our voice as we speak. I mean, my voice now, it's made by my body. My throat and everything. Yeah, but it's also made by my mind. So speech, like going to sleep at night, you can study going to sleep and waking up. And you can study that, observe that relationship.

[30:21]

You can also study and observe the relationship of mind and body in voice. And singers have to do some version of that, of course. And some singers are great. They can sing the same old line from a song. And you can feel their... You can feel their... emotion or understanding in the line. But we can also just notice it ourselves. Just being more aware of mind and the

[31:21]

the shifting boundary, as Eric put it, of mind and body. So this is to notice the parts are always moving. making a center. I almost said making a whole, but it didn't feel whole to say so. So each moment's mind makes a center. I'm not trying to self-organizing center.

[32:33]

We don't feel the mind, each moment's mind. We don't feel each moment's mind as part of a large system. We tend to feel it as centering as us. And that centering goes from moment to moment. And we feel a kind of centering from mind to mind, moment's mind to moment's mind. And if you don't keep noticing the center dissolves and reforms itself in each moment's mind. It does what?

[33:37]

It's extremely elusive, isn't it? If you don't feel that each moment's mind's center is centering and dissolving, then you begin to feel that this center, center, center is a continuity of self. I like that middle point, middle point. Yes. And there is also visibility. Visibility in my mind, I can do something with my mind. I can make it brighter, or I can focus on this kind of mind, or I can do this.

[34:42]

There is also some kind of shifting boundary between activity concerning my mind and just letting it arise as the mind of the present moment. Everything arises as the mind of the present moment. Okay, Deutsch, bitte. But the question for me is, there is also an activity that I experience with my spirit. Can I make my spirit brighter? Yeah, thank you. So each... Each moment's mind arises as the present moment, something like that you said.

[36:08]

So you're speaking as someone who practices. And if we practice, we begin to notice more easily the way what Christina is saying. And all I was saying is that tends to have a feeling of a center. Even if it's made from parts. So what I'm trying to get out here, in case you're concerned, is another way to experience about the illusion of self. self as a continuity, rather than self as a way of function.

[37:21]

So let's go back to the six vijnanas as I spoke with you. When your mindfulness, your practice of mindfulness, is brought into or you notice these six sense fields, hineingebracht wird, oder ihr bemerkt diese sechs Sinnesfelder, dann zeigen diese sechs Sinnesfelder nicht nur auf den Geist, sie zeigen auch auf ein Konstruieren hin. Denn man kann spüren, wie man selbst dieses Objekt konstruiert. So when your mindfulness, when you, as Sukhiroshi said, bring your senses to the object, you then also notice that you're constructing the object by bringing your senses to it.

[39:32]

not the whole of the object, but the object that your senses can know. Just as when we hear a bird again, all the bird may be singing for us, obwohl der Vogel vielleicht für uns singt, so hören wir es dennoch nur so, wie unser Ohr das hören kann. And I believe it's been studied that it's clear other birds hear that bird differently than we do. Their hearing is different than ours. So they hear the bird differently than we do. So we could say they hear the bird in their... they hear the sound of the bird in their vijnanas.

[40:45]

We hear it in our vijnanas. So the process of practicing is to really know that we're only hearing the bird as we can hear it. I wish they still had cameras where smoke appeared. So in other words, when you look at an object, It points at mind. That's something in practice you remind yourself of.

[41:50]

But knowing how it's constructed by the vijnanas, you also notice the process of construction. beobachtet man oder bemerkt man auch den Prozess des Konstruierens. So, mindfulness is to slow down your perceptual process. Also, achtsamkeit ist das Verlangsamen des Wahrnehmungsprozesses. To notice how you apprehend an object. Und zu bemerken, wie man ein Objekt versteht. By establishing it in your sense field. Indem man es in sein Sinnesfeld erkennt. consciously or non-consciously. Now, practice is to sometimes do it consciously.

[42:51]

Which means to conceptually notice that the bird is being heard through your own ears. Das bedeutet, dass man auch konzeptuell weiß, dass man den Vogel durch seine eigenen Ohren hört. But it also means to notice yourself noticing the bird. Das bedeutet aber auch, dass man sich selber bemerkt, wenn man den Vogel bemerkt, also sein Singen. And noticing that the sound of the bird appears to you. And that appearance is a construction. And as soon as the appearance is there, it gathers associations. And gathering associations, then it begins to be named. And naming it makes it part of consciousness. Because naming is one of the roots of consciousness.

[43:57]

When you say that you're just waking up, And someone comes in the room. It might be someone you don't know very well. A relative or perhaps a hotel maid or who knows. as you're waking up. You don't know who it is. And you say, oh, no, you don't have to clean the room, you say to the hotel maid. Didn't you see me in bed? So when you're doing that, you're naming, and as soon as you're naming, you tend to be in consciousness. So as soon as you notice that that's a person or you recognize who the person is, that naming generates consciousness and you tend to wake up.

[45:13]

So you have a little process here we've looked at. We're trying to name the process. There's the sixth sense field. And then there's the appearance of the object. And the appearance of the object attracts associations. And the associations produce a conception or name. Or whole complex associations, a symbolic process larger than name. And that all generates consciousness. So what I just said to you is the center of the Heart Sutra. Okay. And I just spoke again in another way about the skandhas.

[46:38]

Two or three people have said to me, maybe you should speak about the skandhas again. But this is the last time I'll do it. I expect now on the skandhas to float in your mindfulness. And every perception will confirm or deny the truth of the skandhas. And next time I'm back here, I can ask any one of you to present the five skandhas to the group. And without hesitation, it will flow forth. Oh, sure. Okay, yeah.

[47:55]

Well, first of all, just in general, Again, aiming words at a cloud. At the cloud. Yeah. Cloud keeps changing. Oh, it looked like an elephant a moment ago. So we're trying to look at it when it happens to look like the five skandhas. Now, if you just said feeling, it doesn't make sense.

[49:22]

You're leaving out form. You're leaving out the world. So we have to say form. And there's various ways to approach the five skandhas where the distinction between form and feeling is more or less more understandable. Now, again, I'm just trying to give you a feeling how you are parts. The Chinese word for body is a part of a whole. or a share of a whole. So by noticing yourself in parts, you can notice that you're both a part and part of a whole and making a whole. So that may make you understand the idea of non-self better.

[50:45]

Not no-self, but non-self. Not no self, but non-self. Where is the feeling difference of the two? Okay. Well, I don't know, I can't think of anything right now, but if you said there's no book, well, then there's the possibility of a book here, but there's no book here.

[51:45]

I can't just say, but I can say that's a non-book. Yeah, that's a little different. Okay. Okay, so I want to just keep looking into this in various ways. Okay, so we have the object points to mind. But through practicing the vijnanas, you notice that the object is an act of construction. bemerkt wir, dass das Objekt eine Akt der Konstruktion ist. Wir konstruieren es in unseren Sinnesfeldern. Also zeigt das Objekt auch auf das Konstruieren. Und dann zeigt es auch auf die Möglichkeit der Freiheit von Konstruktion.

[52:47]

So it points also to non-origination. Okay, so what's the difference between non-origination and no-origination? It's not easy in English either. Okay, so I hear the bird sound. No origination of the bird sign means maybe I've got my ears plugged up. aus dem Ursprung herauskommendes Vogelgesangs bedeutet, ich habe die Ohren vielleicht verstopft. But non-origination would mean, maybe I don't let the feeling of appearance appear.

[54:05]

Aber dieses nicht aus dem Ursprung herauskommen lassen bedeutet, dass ich das nicht gestatte, dass es da herauskommt. So I can reverse the process of originating. Also kann ich den Prozess dieses... I can reverse the process of origination. Because again, since you notice that knowing is a process of construction. Then the possibility arises of deconstructing. Or not constructing at all. Now, when you die, let's hope it's 100 years, at least hence, If you want to die in a good old Buddhist way, when you feel it getting close, there's no need to rush the process.

[55:20]

You begin to deconstruct the constituents. In other words, you have a sense of consciousness. And you know consciousness is made from the sense field. From creating appearance and association. So you begin to withdraw the process of association. You begin to reverse the construction process. Instead of letting things appear, you keep letting them not appear. And more and more in this way, You see the light of mind itself and not the things bubbling up in the field of mind.

[56:43]

All right, maybe I could draw something. Okay, let's say that you have the six, I don't know what we call it, six. Six sense fields.

[58:04]

They come together and they create... First of all, they together make what you call the vijnanas. As I said, vijnana is an interesting word, and then it means to know separately together. As soon as you know, that you're all appearing in my mind. We're already seeing things in parts. I'm not seeing the illusion of a unity. I'm seeing that you're all there and it takes my mind to know it.

[59:16]

That's already seen with us. Then if I see that arises through my senses, which create an appearance, that I'm beginning to feel that appearance in its parts. Look for that appearance. Okay. And that appearance then attracts associations. And the associations produce conception. And the associations do what? Produce conception.

[60:17]

Let's say naming, that's simple enough. And naming leads to consciousness. Okay. We can also just say these things are the five skandhas. So, if I look at you, I can let the form of you appear. As soon as I let the form of you appear, there's a kind of dualism. And that dualism is, we could say, prior to feeling. In other words, there's form and the activity of noticing is a kind of dualism.

[61:20]

So there is form and the activity of the remark is dualism. So we have the form. And that brings us into, because we're alive, a sense of feeling, non-graspable feeling. And then we have, as I said, a perception about it. And then we have the way Skandhas look at association. But also all kinds of views, impulses. Konse translates it as confections, like candy. Things brought together, made, confection. He was a very gloomy guy.

[62:38]

Funny that he used the word confection. What's gloomy? Gloomy? Gloomy. Kind of a curmudgeon. Don't make it worse. Oh, maybe. Difficult kind of grumpy. Gloom is like dark. So there's the five standards. And another way I usually say that like if you It, uh... Iris is walking out there. You're not seeing her, but I'm seeing her walk along the edge of the moat.

[63:39]

Also gut. Eine andere Art, wie ich das sage, ist zum Beispiel, die Iris läuft da draußen an dem Kante des Befestigungsgraben. You don't see her. Und ihr seht sie nicht, aber ich kann sie sehen. But you hear something. You hear the steps on the grass. Aber ihr hört etwas. Ihr hört ihre Schritte auf dem Gras. Might be a deer. Es kann auch ein Hirsch sein. Your deer are so little in Europe. They're hardly bigger than the grass they stand in front of. Mark me this big clumsy deer. OK. So you don't know what it is. But the basic conditions are there's form here. Grass, steps, walking, cuttings. Poor Iris, she doesn't know what the subject of our discussion is.

[64:51]

And so your ears notice it. At first there's a kind of feeling. And it begins to take some shape. And you think, is that a deer? Or is it a flower? A walking flower. Ah, it's a walking flower, I can tell. A walking flower with her butt. And then you... Ah, it's iris, I know. And she's a deer, it's true. So that's a perception and a pun. And that's a... You say, noticing... So as soon as you notice it's iris... Then you have association.

[65:54]

You say, oh boy, it was nice at lunchtime to hold that baby. And I held it two or three times a day and my arms were still vibrating. And that makes me think how fun it was to have kids when I was young. For all those associations, forming conceptions, is the basis of consciousness. It would be different if I were asleep. Okay. So the skylines are just a way to notice How we construct the present. Now, when we do this, in consciousness, we generally then have the chance to develop the sense of self.

[67:05]

And we begin through also the sensation not only of centering, but the ability of mind to have an observer. and each mind is a slightly different observer, but as we can create the illusion of a continuous center, we create the illusion of a continuous witnessing, So schaffen wir auch die Illusion eines beständigen Beobachters. As if witnessing was always the same. Als ob dieses Beobachten immer dasselbe wäre. Then you again get the idea of a permanent self. It's a subtle sense of permanence. It is a subtle sense of permanence.

[68:19]

If you think this is a movie shown on a screen and the screen or the witness is permanent then you have a subtle sense of permanence and self. So you may think, oh, the movie is in terminal. But the screen is permanent. Or the witnessing mind is the one who does everything. Oder dieser beobachtende Geist ist eigentlich der, der alles tut. Also aus buddhistischer Sicht ist das ketzerisch. Das tut mir leid. Also es ist nicht so schlecht. Manchmal ist es eine angenehme Art, so zu leben.

[69:20]

Also in der buddhistischen Konzeption Let's not even think about the projector and the screen. You have some strange situation. Where you have a camera. A camera that keeps reforming each moment. But anyway, let's give the camera a temporary permanence. But as soon as you pull the lens cap off, it starts filming and making film as it films. There's no film in the camera. As soon as it starts looking, it makes a film. And as soon as it stops filming, the film dissolves. And then all the pieces of the previous film kind of spin up into the air and stick to the next film.

[70:41]

That's associations. So the film keeps dividing up into little pieces and then spinning around and sticking to the next one but that dissolves and they stick to the next one and that's it. This is so darn confusing. What do you know? You create a kind of general sense of self impermanence. Also, weil das ja so schrecklich verwirrend ist, schaffen wir uns ein Gefühl von Permanenz. Um einfach in der Lage zu sein, zu funktionieren. Damit wir zur Arbeit rechtzeitig erscheinen. Damit wir produktiv sein können. Und um unser Gewissen zu festigen und zu stärken. But that also leaves us feeling disconnected and separated and so on.

[71:45]

It's possible to see derivative time as a construction. I know that we have to have lunch at our dinner now at a certain time. We constructed that. Christiana even told me we could choose the time. I know it's a construction. There are certain households where it's not a construction. If dinner's at six, you better be there not second after six. Or there's a bad feeling for two days. But anyway, we know here with Christiane's wide spirit, it's a construction. They've even told the people they're making dinner that it's a construction. And she told him the roche is also a construction.

[72:56]

And he may, we might not eat till 8 o'clock, but be patient. Okay. So, you know, with this kind of feeling, you can function in the world. Get to work on time. Make Dan at the airport. But because we all got together to act in that shared town. Let's remember that it's a shared construction. And not get ourselves into a fit about your time. How nice when you arrive at work and you know it's your time. And you've made the decision to share this construction.

[74:04]

Okay. Now at the moment of the appearance of each moment, of looking at you, I can make a kind of decision to not give form to the appearance. Once you really feel it as a construction, you can refrain from construction.

[75:09]

And that constant refraining from construction, it's not that the world stops. it's that you feel the process of constructing happening because that's what it means to be alive. But you can make a decision to allow the construction to occur And you can do it with vitality and 100%. In practice, we don't try to do things right or wrong. I mean, for the sake of the shared world, we do. but more fundamentally we try to do things a hundred percent this is again Dogen's exertion so if you're going to be here in this moment do it with vitality vitality maybe we could say it's the readiness to act

[76:30]

And vitality, we can say, is the willingness to act. Whatever appears, I let it appear with the readiness to act in it. But also the freedom not to act in it. What a different world you find yourself in. This is what the Heart Sutra is about. Now, if when appearance, the process of appearance appears, I mean, You see, English particularly is bad because it's all nouns.

[77:43]

Now, German is a problem because there's less German words than English words. But you're not as impoverished as the French. Which have a considerably smaller vocabulary. But they seem to manage well with love and happiness and... Marie happens to sort of be French. But German has more verbs than English. So maybe that's good, but since I don't speak German, I don't know really what difference that makes. Vielleicht ist das gut, aber nachdem ich Deutsch nicht spreche, weiß ich nicht, was das für einen Unterschied macht.

[78:45]

But I do know that nouns cause a problem. You say tree instead of tree. It'd be great if all nouns were verbs. In Chinese, I think... I understand that each word simultaneously can be noun or verb. It functions as a noun or verb according to the context. So if I say appearance, it sounds like a noun. There's no appearance. There's only an appearing. But not even an appearing.

[79:48]

We can call it a not yet appearing. What does Dogen say? He doesn't say it's time. He says it's the not yet come time. Here's the Zen master famous for simplicity and, you know, etc. But he's talking about the not yet come time. He read too much philosophy. Somebody slipped him a book of Heidegger in the 13th century. And he started hyphenating words. Being in the place of not actually being, one word. Also, der hat begann, die Wörter mit Bindestrichen zusammenzusetzen, being in the world.

[80:53]

No, I don't know. That's okay. Being in the... No, I just made it up, so forgive me. Don't you see the big hyphen between us? Seht ihr nicht diesen großen Bindestrich zwischen uns? And the hyphen between each of us? Und die Bindestriche oder den Bindestrich zwischen uns allen? Yeah. But Dogen just tried to speak about his actual experience. And it didn't fit into words. And as soon as he said the present, it was dead. As soon as he said the present is time, it's dead. So it's Is it the future? No, no.

[81:54]

It's the not yet come time that appears as the present. Which then you make appear. As time and space. As here and there. That's essentially a dualistic action. That dualistic act sets your karma in motion. And karma, dualism, excuse me, karma is attracted to dualism the way flies are to horseshit. In Buddhism karma is intention. It's made in consciousness. If something happens that you didn't intend it at all, we can call it samsara, but we can't call it karma.

[83:17]

It's karma when it was an intention of yours and that attention accumulates. So karma is conditioned. So you can be free from karma. Or you can be present in the functioning of karma. As we have to take for... As we have to... As we have to... I hate to use the word real, take for real the possibility of a Buddha. And then through that, making that real for yourself, or actual, you

[84:18]

recognize the Buddha is an activity. It's also a function. It's an act of realizing. So in a similar way, there's the Four Noble Truths. There's suffering. There's suffering. That's a decision to notice, to really feel the world is suffering. They used to call Reagan the Teflon president. Do you have Teflon in German? Those frying pans that nothing, you know. Yeah, nothing sticks to it. Except an ordinary spatula scratches it.

[85:38]

So do you want a Teflon Buddha? That would be somebody who doesn't suffer. He wouldn't know anything. You want a person who suffers if they're going to be a Buddha. So that's the first truth, there is suffering. And the Buddha is one who knows that. And the second noble truth is the law of cause and effect. And because there's a cause, there's a freedom from causes. And so there's a freedom from suffering. And then there's the path. Now, just as Buddhism doesn't make sense without the real possibility of a Buddha, so Buddhism also doesn't make sense if there isn't a real possibility of a freedom from suffering.

[86:55]

So you have to bring that into your own consciousness. We live in a world in which Buddhists can be present. We live in a world where there's suffering. And we live in a world where there's freedom from suffering. Such a deep satisfaction we can call it freedom from suffering. Even in the midst of what other people call suffering. Which is usually impermanence. Yeah, Samsara, sorry, I'm sorry, these tiny points are taking quite a while to establish.

[88:07]

But I guess I'm close enough to done. Well done, cooked. No, that's okay. So at the moment, everything is in the process of appearing. Let's call it the not yet appearance. So the not yet appearance, we can be refrained from letting it appear.

[89:07]

I don't know how to say it, but let me say it that way. And each moment we can refrain from letting it appear. It's a kind of coming and going. It starts to appear and then you let it disappear. And the process of letting it appear and letting it disappear generates a certain state of mind. It's not the mind of appearance. Not the mind of waking. Nor of dreaming or non-dreaming deep sleep. It's the mind of refraining from appearance. Okay. That's Buddha activity. And it creates the condition for enlightenment. And the condition for the maturing of enlightenment.

[90:09]

But we also let things appear. Everything is appearing. But I've been doing this long enough. I can just let you appear and have some perception of you. And no association. You might as well be Martians. I don't know. There's something out there. I can see you vibrate. You look great. But I'm not giving you any names. No. Leonard is nearly dissolved. But then he appears as a Buddha and then he appears as a Dutchman. Or he just appears as a feeling in my... I don't want to be schmaltzy.

[91:31]

I've known Leonard a pretty long time. And it is always a pleasure to see you. As well as Marie. It's nice of you to invite them to come. But I could be schmaltzy about each one of you. Or I can not even, barely have a perception. Or just a feeling of this space. Or the brightness of form. Everything has a tremendous, now emphasizing not feeling, but emphasizing form. It's a brilliant preciseness. And all this karma stuff, where is it? The suffering. Just brightness of this appearance.

[92:59]

And even then you can begin to feel what we call essence of mind. In which objects appear. Seeing the field of mind itself. But And we can call that essence of mind. So now these terms that Buddhism uses, Zen uses, like essence of mind, are beginning to make sense. It makes sense as a process of allowing appearance, allowing construction. Refraining from construction. So you might have the vijnanas, and appearance, and associations, and conceptions, and consciousness. Listen, plus, plus, plus, plus.

[94:16]

We can put the skandhas in there if you want. Or we can take minus conceptions, minus consciousness. Or consciousness minus, I don't know what's that, conceptions minus consciousness. Then you can have associations minus conceptions. Then you can have perceptions minus associations. Then you can have appearance, no, form minus appearance. Then you can just have the field of mind or emptiness. Which is

[95:04]

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