It's always my special pleasure to come back here in February and see all of you, each of you. Though I can't actually see all of you because the snow is so bright that you just... But you're beautiful shapes anyway. Yeah. So the prologue day, that's today, is more, I would say, the thinking part of the seminar.

[01:03]

Because I want to... And today I'd like to speak to... our experience of practice. And in particular in relationship to our topic of meditation and mindfulness. Yeah, now... As you know, I've been doing this a pretty long time. But I've never stopped to sort of really think out what's the difference between meditation and mindfulness.

[02:11]

Yeah, I mean, I experience, I know... I in a way know the differences but I never tried to talk about the differences particularly except implicitly. Except implicitly. And I didn't want to before the seminar because I'd like to do it with you. Now, if we make a simple distinction, that's... rather artificial, but maybe not misleading?

[03:13]

Is it mindfulness is more a lay person's practice? Meditation is more a monk's practice. Of course, this is not true, but maybe we should still look at it. I would say that even if you're technically a layperson, if you're If practice is primarily meditation, it's more monk-like practice. For one thing, it forces you to design your life around meditation more than mindfulness forces you to design your life around mindfulness. Weil es euch mehr dazu bringt, euer Leben um die Meditation zu gestalten, als... Excuse me, the last part.

[04:34]

More than mindfulness requires you to redesign your life. Mehr als die Achtsamkeit von euch verlangt, euer Leben neu zu organisieren. And if you wanted to say, hey, let's... Let's make a monastery. And you said, what should the schedule be? You'd say, well, let's see. We ought to meditate at least five or six times a day. And then the rest of the schedule would simply fall into place. And the rest of the timeline would fall on my lap. Yes. Because the rest of the schedule would have to be designed to support how the heck can you do five or six periods of meditation a day and get anything else done.

[05:40]

Well, in fact, you don't get much else done. That's one of the problems with trying to keep a place like Creston going. Everybody's meditating, nobody's doing any work. We need a staff. To support us. A cleaning lady. But we have to be our own staff, so that means we can't sleep. Anyway, it's something like that. And then you need to design the rest of the schedule so it supports meditation and supports the mind of meditation.

[06:50]

Now we have maybe an interesting question. What is the difference between the mind of meditation, when you're not meditating, that the schedule supports? What's the difference between this mind of meditation and mindfulness? Is this just a hair-splitting distinction? Do you have that expression in German? Well, maybe it is hair splitting. But maybe not.

[07:52]

And at this point, looking at it that way, it certainly sounds like hair splitting. Okay. Now, if a Monk is mostly doing mindfulness practice. He's more like a lay person. He or she. So I suppose we have to ask ourselves, what's the difference between mindfulness and meditation? And how do they support each other? And how do they depend on each other? And what if you just did mindfulness practice? and never did meditation, would it be the same?

[09:03]

I don't think it would be the same. I think you'd need actually a somewhat different teaching if your practice was primarily mindfulness, than if your practice was primarily meditation. And if you look back at... to the extent that one can, the history of Zen Buddhism, say, in Japan. There have been a number of really great teachers for laypersons. But they often moved lay people to practice, but they often didn't have disciples.

[10:11]

And the ones that had disciples that continued lineages often weren't so well known to lay people. Und die Leute, die Schüler hatten und Lehren fortgesetzt hatten, they... They weren't so well known to lay people. Und die waren den Laien-Praktizierenden nicht so bekannt. Now, again, I'm going to try to create kind of problems here. You want to or you don't? No, am I trying to create... I'm asking a question. Ja, okay. Kreiere ich hier Probleme? Ja. Yeah. And making you worry, am I really a monk or a lay person? No, I'm getting your... And then you get anxious. No, I'm really trying to look at what are the opportunities of practice. And if your life... requires you to emphasize one more than the other?

[11:26]

How can you compensate for the differences? And what kind of teaching should you, practices should you emphasize? I would say, for example, working with phrases, which is very characteristic of Zen practice. Probably is especially useful if your main practice is mindfulness. No, we've been having a conversation here. I mean, while I'm speaking, I think we're having a conversation together.

[12:28]

But I'd like to make it more of an inner conversation from your side. So let me ask, why are you here? Or what keeps you practicing or what makes you interested in practice? Or what, yeah, what practice has... given you a feeling for practice. What success have you had in practice? What phrase has stuck with you? Maybe you're here just because you like somebody who comes to seminars, too.

[13:41]

That's a very common reason and perfectly good. Yeah, but it's nice to find a reason to practice, too. Okay. Now, what I mean by a phrase or a practice that keeps you, that is a touchstone, touchstone in your Do you have that word, touchstone? No. Something that you... A basis. Sounds good. Thanks. Like, as I often say, a particular line in a poem that you experience often will open up the other poems of a poet.

[14:52]

So most of us have some or various entries that into practice and entries that keep us practicing. So I'm suggesting or asking that you notice if there's such a... Yeah, if this makes sense to you, if there's such a phrase or practice, you know, et cetera. In your life. And then if there is... Is it related to meditation more or related to mindfulness more?

[16:15]

Okay. Now I'm speaking about our own experience because Always, if you're a practitioner. It's got to be rooted in your experience. And even I would like you to look at your experience independent of Buddhism. What is your experience that makes you feel alive? What is your experience that makes... You feel satisfied with being alive.

[17:29]

It's okay to be alive. It's not so bad. I guess I can go on. Or what brings your consciousness to a a focus or a place where the next step is inevitable? So what... Now this is a question I want to come back to because the process of Consciousness resolution, I don't know if I have a word for it, is really significant in living and in practice.

[18:32]

Of consciousness resolution, I don't really have a word for it, is significant, is... really important in our living and our practice. And whatever your experience is in this sense of aliveness or ease, etc., In what sense does this relate to practice, mindfulness or meditation? And in what sense is this enhanced or supported by meditation or mindfulness practice? Of course, just to notice.

[19:35]

what makes us at ease or what makes us feel alive. Just to be able to notice this and really recognize it, recognizing, is already the practice of mindfulness. And, yeah. Okay, so that's one of the reasons I'm speaking about experience. But I also would like to put experience, in the context of the history of Buddhism. Buddhism clearly has changed through the centuries.

[20:57]

I'm not saying it's fundamentally changed, but it's changed in every... If it hasn't changed fundamentally, it's changed in virtually every other way. Ich möchte nicht sagen, dass es sich grundlegend geändert hat, aber wenn es sich nicht grundlegend geändert hat, dann hat sich Buddhismus doch auf sehr viele andere Arten verändert. Wenn ihr Wissenschaftler, Gelehrte lest, die über diese Veränderungen sprechen, der Unterschied zwischen japanischen Tendai und chinesischen Tendai, And the difference between Theravada and Mahayana. Now, scholars almost always implicitly treat practice as a matter of belief. Gelehrte fast immer betrachten Praxis als im Sinne eines Glaubens.

[22:15]

Belief and understanding. Glauben und verstehen. And then they look for social, cultural, philosophical changes. Und dann schauen sie sich soziale, kulturelle und philosophische Veränderungen an. They look for conceptual correspondences. Und dann schauen sie nach konzeptuellen that explain why Buddhism in one period is different from another. But if you look at Buddhism that way, it's only a belief for a philosophy or an understanding. And each period, historical period, understands it differently.

[23:15]

But do they experience it differently? Rarely does a scholar ask if it's experienced differently. Of course, how do you have access to whether it is experienced differently? And the method of a scholar usually is not rooted in experience anyway. It's rooted in a kind of investigation of thinking. But it often makes their interpretations way off base. Way off base. Because that's a baseball term, I guess. Not on its foundation.

[24:25]

Hello. And if you study these things, it makes their explanations actually quite misleading. So let's imagine that if the teaching and understanding is different, a particular way, it's going to influence your experience. And I have to be careful about how I speak about Buddhism because I don't want to influence your experience As much as possible I want to create territory for your experience but not proscribe your experience.

[26:18]

soweit wie möglich möchte ich ein Territorium für deine Erfahrung kreieren, aber nicht die Erfahrung beschreiben oder verschreiben. Und wie ihr wisst, eine charakteristische Art der Zen-Meditation ist, dass wir keine geleitete We don't want to make the shoe fit. Do you have that expression in German? Of course it's a funny pun in Japanese because shoe means school. School of Buddhism. So we don't want to make the shoe fit. Thanks. But certainly what's taught and what practices you do change Influence your experience.

[27:29]

So let's imagine it from the other point of view. Let's imagine that in a particular historical period, what and how you experience things changes. is different than 100 or 200 years earlier. And then let's imagine the teacher. The teacher is stuck in the past. You know, I mean, I think of Sukhiroshi. The way he was brought up, I mean, the way he was brought up, he was really brought up in samurai Japan.

[28:39]

Yeah. I mean, the life he led was like, you know, it wasn't modern. Yeah. So let's imagine he's teaching in Japan and then in America. And I'm just making this up, you know. So let's imagine he's trying to teach. And he says, hey, this doesn't work for Japanese businessmen who used to come to his temple. And he comes to America and he says, hey, these teachings don't work. So he begins adjusting the teachings so that they start to work. Because he knows in a fundamental sense what he wants to happen. But he has to change the teachings to get there.

[29:50]

So if we imagine that's the case for Suzuki Roshi, which is easy to imagine and accurate, then probably it's always happened that teachers are adjusting the teaching to the consciousness, the territory of experience of the practitioners. So what the scholar ought to look at, as well as how there's various philosophical influences in the changing of Buddhism, What are the changes in consciousness that might be the cause of the changes in the teaching?

[31:01]

I remember when I was in college, a kind of radical idea that I had, which was somehow mine or I was ready for it. This radical idea I had was mine or I was ready for it. But it also came somehow in some kind of science class type class, science review class I had. But consciousness Hasn't always been the same. Maybe what was consciousness in classical Greek times was different than now.

[32:28]

In those days, which was just a few minutes ago for me, but a long time ago for others. People assumed and Freudians assumed that the self had always been the same. If Freud had been known by the Greeks, Freud's work, they would have been much better off. Some idea like that, that consciousness, self, etc., it's always the same in all ages and all people. It just dawned on me at one point that this is just simply not true. And that this was a big experience for me. But then it's... Now, if I ever get my book done, it's called Original Mind.

[33:43]

The Practice and Craft of Zen in the West. Now, the title assumes that there's some original mind... That is maybe true for Greeks and Chinese and Indians and so forth. Is that true? Do you think it's true? If you... If you think it's true, then practice makes sense in a certain way. If you think it's not true, then practice may work, but it's conceptually rather different.

[34:47]

But let's say that we know consciousness is a construct. I say that all the time. But it's also the first thing in the menu of the Heart Sutra. The menu of the Heart Sutra, if we take it as a kind of menu for practice. It starts out right in the beginning with the five skandhas. Yeah, listed in the English form, feeling, perceptions, impulses, consciousness. Okay.

[36:03]

If it's a construct, If it's a construct, then it's made from constituents, ingredients. What if you emphasize some ingredients more than others? A brick house, a stone house, and a wood house are different. So maybe if it's a construct, In each historical period it's constructed differently. So maybe that's a good place to stop. But I will continue.

[37:04]

But I'd like you again to bring to mind and hold in mind, what experience or phrase or practice has been important at the center of your continuing to practice? Was für eine Erfahrung, was für eine Praxis war wichtig für euch, If anything pops to mind, it would be nice if you told us, told me. And I just might randomly ask you.

[38:07]

Do you play... Do teenagers play spin the bottle in Germany? Spin the bottle. Spin the bottle and then you kiss the person it points at? So I'll see if we have an old milk bottle here and I'll spin it. I promise not to kiss you, though. Unless you ask. No. Okay, thank you very much.

[38:44]

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