identity that owns our teeth and then brushes them. And that's all a kind of God. It's the kind of deity present. Okay, something else? Yes? Why is there beauty in this kind of out of balance? Because the other kind of beauty is boring. Why is there beauty in this kind of out of balance? Why is there beauty in this kind of out of balance? Is it beyond beauty? Would you like to give the lecture? No, I mean, what else could I say?

[01:04]

Yes, it's beauty, but it's something more than beauty. But I don't think you can say that that harmony and symmetricality is not beauty. It's a matter of what you appreciate. And it's like a joke. A joke is a release of tension. You tell a story and The story has a release of tension and it's funny.

[02:06]

And beauty has a quality for us because it's a kind of release of tension and a contrast to other things. So I think different cultures create different circumstances in which beauty appears. You know, I saw an exhibition of Chinese, German, and English chinaware? Dishes. In English we say China. You don't say China? From China. And isn't there a kind of dish called Meissenware? We don't like it. Anyway, there was this exhibition and they had the original Chinese dish that was copied by the German and the English.

[03:31]

And you had these marvelous patterns in the Chinese and Japanese dishes which reached across the dish and around it and sometimes right off the dish. It was a little bit like if you had a window and a wall. And you looked through the window and you saw the plants outside the window. And they went across the space. But as they went across, they sort of said, hello, window, and they went on. But in both the German and the English examples, the design fit into the rim and fit into the middle. And we tend to make, and in both the German and English, they made a distinct rim of the dish and a middle part of the dish in design for both.

[04:37]

And our culture, and you can really see it in Muslim Islamic art, likes a highly dynamic design within a framework. More in that direction is what we see as beauty. And the Asian cultures see beauty more in Do you know why, I guess in German, an English garden means a garden which is just let to grow? Because English gardens broke from the European tradition of gardens. which are very mathematical like Versailles and are based on irrigation systems like in Egypt. But the characteristic English garden broke with that tradition because of Jesuit reports from China and Japan about gardens based on asymmetricality.

[06:27]

So England and Holland, but England particularly, picked up this idea of asymmetricality and left their gardens kind of grow So English gardens aren't what in German you mean by English garden but that's where the idea comes from I think. So what's interesting is to begin to appreciate both kinds of beauty not to think one's better than the other. But the sense of a background maybe I can come back to. Isn't it that I can only experience perfection if I experienced imperfection before or the other way around?

[07:48]

And all of it again and again makes a kind of harmonious picture. Makes a picture? I wouldn't call it harmonious. Self-creation. Yeah. Well, I'll come back to that. How did she start out her question? She started out whether it needs imperfection for perfection. Oh, yes. the Japanese tea ceremony that's expressed is that you pay as much attention to the less beautiful bowls as the beautiful bowls.

[08:57]

Yes, pay the same amount of time to both With the sense that you won't know what a beautiful bowl is until you know what the less beautiful bowl is And in the way we eat in a monastery with the eating bowls, if you make a mistake, like you knock your chopstick onto the floor, most people's reaction is... Come on in.

[09:58]

But the dropping of the chopstick or the mistake becomes part of the ceremony. And so when you drop it, somebody has to come all the way across who is watching the room. And they pick it up. And in Japan, everyone stops eating. But the way I do it is only the person who's dropped something stops eating. But still someone comes over and gets the chopstick or the bowl or whatever it is. Then they have to take it to the altar and offer it at the altar. And then they return it to you. And you feel like you've been punished.

[11:05]

But the sense of it really isn't punishment. The sense of it is that it's given the same attention as everything else in the thing. It's not like a mistake, it's just something that happens, so it's treated equally with everything else you do. So I used to say that if you start dialing a number and it's a mistake, just keep dialing. And pay for the call. And say, hello there, I'm practicing Zen. I didn't mean to wake you up. I didn't mean to wake you up. I didn't mean to wake you up. I think it's a very beautiful way to deal with mistakes, especially since we Europeans tend to punish us for mistakes, and it's a very loving way of dealing with it.

[12:38]

Friendlier, yeah. Yeah, I was in... Zurich, I think. And someone brought up and said, You know, when I'm sitting, I feel this pleasure coming up while I'm sitting. And I should suppress it, shouldn't I? And I said, could we be in Switzerland? Something else? Yeah. She wants to hear something about having a goal and no intention, having no intention. Yeah, do both. I just told her. It's possible.

[13:52]

You know, as Keith Richards was asked what he thought of Mick Jagger, he said, oh, he's a lovely bunch of guys. So Gumby gets stuck in being one kind of person. Sometimes you're a person who has a goal. It's not just the same person sometimes has a goal and sometimes doesn't have a goal. It's more powerful to think of it, sometimes there is a person who has a goal And sometimes there is a person who has no goal. And those two have some, inform each other. And you just say, oh, now I have a goal. You say, oh, now I have a goal. Isn't that interesting? And then, oh, now I don't have a goal.

[15:17]

What a relief. With that feeling. It's okay. Search for identity by practicing sound. The search for Zen has, in his opinion, in a society that doesn't support it, has a lot to do with loneliness. Is that what you said? Yes. Oh, thank you. Well, it is very difficult to practice In general, it's difficult to practice on your own.

[16:22]

It's almost impossible to practice on your own in our society. Because nothing that you do during the day supports this way of looking at things. So, on the one hand, you don't get much support. On the other hand, if you don't... If you... The not getting any support. It's hard for me to say it in English. I don't know how you say it in German. The not getting any support. can push you into becoming... There's a certain aggressiveness or alienation in your practice that's extra baggage.

[17:25]

Um... The extra baggage that you carry as an additional burden. That's what they tell me at the airport all the time. They say, what is it? Bells, rumpus? And the little x-ray machines, they look and they say, what's that? So I think it helps to do something like Sashin, which I'm doing next week. It helps get your momentum and your inertia in practice going.

[18:26]

It helps keep the practice in motion. And it helps, if you can, to sit with your friends. Somebody else is sitting two or three times a week or every morning, something like that. But I think to practice with the sense of alienation, better than feeling alienated, pretend that everyone you see is a secret Buddha. And they just don't know it.

[19:29]

And start out with the clerks in Beate's store, for instance. You should have seen, I went in at lunchtime, you should have seen one of the clerks' face. I mean, really, because I walked into it. I walked into it. And then as I left, I gave her a hug. And she said, not a ghost, not a spirit, a body. I gave her a second hug. But anyway, you go into, you practice with the clerks in town. So you go into a store and you're buying a toothbrush, you know. And while you're buying it, under your breath you're saying, Hello Buddha, thanks for the toothbrush.

[20:33]

And they'll understand there's some joke somewhere. And they'll smile at you. And then you won't feel so alienated. And then you don't feel so alienated. Or something else. Yes. Is it possible that somebody reminds his earlier lifetimes? Remembers? This is the first life. The first life, that you can remember your past life. Yeah, well, do you remember yours? Do you remember yours?

[21:35]

Do you know if this is a dream or not? How can you know that it's real and not just a fake dream or something? Yeah, that's the problem. So I wouldn't worry about it. What you experience is what you experience. And if you experience it, it's this life. There's no reason to say, oh, this... It's just this life. Don't be so serious. But you don't look too serious. But you know the... the person who asked me about enlightenment earlier, and grace, the written descriptions by Protestants of conversion experiences are virtually identical to the written descriptions of Satori experiences.

[22:49]

So this so-called enlightenment or satori experience is just a physiological, psychological capacity of human beings. But the way that experience is understood as a Protestant and as a Buddhist is quite different. First of all, the Protestants think it's come from outside them and given to them. And they think it's an accident that arose or it's an act of God giving them grace. And I believe Bhagavan quotes a famous statement about enlightenment, that enlightenment is an accident. But what's happening?

[24:22]

He said enlightenment isn't happening. He's also said it's an accident. Anyway, the traditional story is enlightenment is an accident. But practice makes you accident-prone. So if you have the experience that certain technologies really of practice made you accident-prone, accident-prone doesn't mean you're likely to have an accident. So if you see that practice made this experience more likely, you're less likely to think it was given to you by God or something. Because you participated in the enlightenment happened through you.

[25:25]

Okay. Yes. I'm still not very satisfied with the answer that you gave this morning about finding a teacher. I mean, I understood what you are, got the feeling for what you want to say about finding your own teacher in yourself, but I have to learn somewhere, like today, talking with you or listening to you, but really how to, just technically, how to work. I mean, how many hours should I... Not should, but... What should I do? What should I do? How long? It's very technical, I know, but I guess everybody wants to know. At least I do. Can you say that in German? Ja. Ich habe zwar verstanden, was er heute Morgen gesagt hat, über den inneren Lehrer, den wir alle finden sollen, den wir uns selbst schaffen können, aber meine Frage jetzt ganz technisch jetzt,

[26:32]

Well, I'm telling you a lot of things. And in Berlin, I just finished a seminar in Berlin and near the end somebody said, well you've told us all these wonderful things but what do I do daily? What is my practice? So I think before the seminar ends tomorrow Somebody will ask you, well, what happened at the seminar? What did he say? And you say, well, he talked about liquid space. What? Did he think you were a fish? Did he think you were a fish?

[27:34]

But what I would hope is that what I'm teaching you will come up when you need it. during the year. In other words, actually it's not a bad practice to imagine this room as an aquarium. And we're all in this connecting space. And the seaweed, we're all seaweed, you know. And... The teaching I'm putting out there is sometimes a kind of strange shaped fish that actually most of you don't see. But it's swimming around. And someone says it's golden. And someone else says it's lead. Like that.

[28:58]

And then I hope that later, you know, like maybe two or three months from now, you're practicing or you're thinking about something and you pick up a piece of paper from the floor with a different feeling than you usually have because you suddenly realize there's no place to throw anything away. And the moment you do that, this strange fish swims through the room. And what you just did catches it. And it was swimming around all the time. Makes me think of the joke about the guardian angel. Can I tell it again? Can I tell it again? Last year I told it a few times and she got mad at me. It's hard to please. Anyway, it was told to me last year, Brother David Steindl-Rast, who's a good friend of mine, who's a Benedictine monk.

[30:25]

His father told him this story just before his father died. So for Brother David, it's always had a kind of quality of being a funny story, and his father told him the last thing he said to him. It makes Brother David think about his own decision to be a monk and so forth. Anyway, the story is that this guy is walking along the street And he steps out into traffic. And a little voice says, watch out. So he steps back quickly. And a little red Porsche goes by. So he looks around and doesn't know who said that. So he goes on and later in the day again he steps out on the street.

[31:41]

And again a voice says, you better watch out. Because he gets out of the way and a bus comes by. So he says... Who said that? And the little boy said, it's me, your guardian angel. He says, my guardian angel, where are you? He says, I'm sitting on your left shoulder. He says, you are? And the guardian angel says, I've been here all your life taking care of you. Really? You've been here all my life taking care of me? Yes, this is the first time you've noticed me, says the guardian angel. He says, and you've been here all this time. Can you get onto my hand? Yes, so are you on my hand? Where were you when I got married?

[32:49]

Some of this teaching is... Some of his teaching is like guardian angels which I hope will be there when you need it. And before the end of the seminar I'll try to give you some precise sense of what you can do to practice and from this group of people you might even join more with each other and decide to practice once a week together or something.

[33:54]

And there's various ways to relate to a teacher. But mainly, if you have the feeling of the teacher with you, you don't have to practice with the teacher too much. But you should see, if possible, him or her, you know, a few times a year if possible, or, you know, as much as possible, but it doesn't have to be all the time. And if you can, it's good at some time to spend some continuous time with the teacher, months or several months or something like that. Okay, one more and then we'll stop. Which were your motivations to become a Zen teacher? What were my motivations? many, many, many motivations or circumstances that make one practice.

[35:37]

I suppose that the most specific thing for me was I had a very nice sister. It was about four years younger than me. It was quite a beautiful, intelligent, young woman. And she had suffered a lot and was depressed a lot. And I was the one person she kept turning to and asking for help. And when she was with me, she felt clear and good. But when she was away, she would get depressed. And there are various points of realization of this situation that I can't describe all of them.

[36:49]

But basically, I realized that she needed help. And I realized I wasn't capable of helping her. So I... became a very deep-seated desire of mine to become a person who can be helpful. And I knew that I could probably never help my sister, but I might help other people instead. So that was kind of one motivation that pushed me over the edge into practicing. And also from the time I was very young I felt that the joy of being alive must be enough. And then there's a kind of suppressed history of a Buddha that's part of us.

[38:07]

Is that when I started to practice, I realized that there were many moments of practice that I'd never realized the importance of. So I'd ignored them as part of my history. Do you know the kind of painting or drawing you can do where you connect the dots like children's drawings? So my parents and my culture told me to connect certain dots from my experience. And school and family and so forth. And I began to draw particular connect these dots, and I began to draw Dick Baker.

[39:17]

And then... That was the dots connected in German. And then... But when practicing, I began to find there were these other dots that I'd ignored. When you connected them, they drew a Buddha rather than just Dick Baker. Or kind of, you know, a half-ass Buddha, at least. Halfway Buddha. So that kind of history... presses on us. And these moments are called actually momentary samadhi. In other words, you have little moments of samadhi, like seeing the moon appear and disappear in the dark clouds. You see a little bit of the moon but then it goes behind the clouds.

[40:31]

And mostly you just notice the clouds. But the moon is pressing on you like an inner request. So sometimes when you start practicing It's this inner request that you haven't been able to acknowledge, pushing you. And this is more basic than some motivation, like what happened to my sister or something. It's at the level of how we perceive. And these little moments not being acknowledged press so that you will, you know, see more of the moon. So it was that sense of the moon somewhere under the clouds of my life.

[41:37]

There's a wonderful chanting story which is Hello Moon, which the whole book is called Hello Moon. So maybe you could practice with that. Like when you see the clerks in the stores, you say, Hello Buddha, Hello Moon. It's like, as I always say, teach your children not just to count their fingers. One, two, three, four, five. Teach your children to count the spaces too. One, two, three, four, five. And sometimes this is the history of you as a person. And this sort of excluded experience is your history as a Buddha.

[42:47]

So it's a kind of pulse of closed hand and open hand. And no fingers and fingers. And fingers and spaces. And actually there's a technical term for this called Kaji. And Kaji means coming and going. The experience of coming and going. And G means not scattered. And ji bedeutet nicht zerstreut zu sein. Not scattered. Nicht zerstreut zu sein. Or absorbed. Oder vertieft absorbiert zu sein. So you enter into this experience of coming and going, but you're not scattered. Also ihr geht in diese Erfahrung des Kommens und Gehens hinein, aber werdet nicht auseinander geblasen.

[43:57]

I've talked much too much, I'm sorry. But you helped. Okay. It's almost four o'clock. So I'd like us to take a break. Give a cultural definition to this sense of personality that exists outside of consciousness. And he tried to create a way in which we could relate to it. Now, this is a useful distinction, as I just described. Buddhism has decided to divide things up differently or to emphasize a different kind of division.

[45:16]

I think these distinctions of Freud are useful and can be retained in Buddhist practice. And Jung tried to widen this definition so that there was a sense of identity that covered all people. In Buddhism, again, the division is different. And Buddhism tries to create definitions that are disappearing definitions and definitions that empower each other. Now I don't know if I can really give you the feeling for what I'm talking about.

[46:21]

I mean, I have the feeling, but I don't know if I can find ways to share it with you. This is only the second time I've tried to talk about it in this particular way. And I find if I can find other ways to talk about something than I usually do, it initially at least makes me understand it better. But initially it may be confusing to you. Until I get better at finding out how to prescribe it. But you make divisions. I'm a certain person. And I'm different from the world.

[47:28]

And I'm going to live and die a certain way. And my perceptions have such and such a meaning. And my thoughts about the world, my thoughts are real or my emotions are less real or something like that. Those are distinctions we make. Okay. So now, Avalokiteshvara is practicing deeply prajnaparamita. Now this means that it's a kind of concentration in which object and field begin to merge.

[48:33]

And subject and object begin to merge. And mind and body begin to merge. Okay, so to begin to make mind and body begin to merge, You sit in zazen posture, as we've been doing. And you bring the attention of your mind to your breathing. And you bring the attention of your mind to your body. and the attention of the mind to the body. I think that's understandable. No? Yes? Yes. Yeah, you bring your attention to your breathing and your attention to your body.

[49:37]

And when you bring your attention to your body, your body begins to have a kind of consciousness of its own. Now, I told, I guess I went from Heidelberg to Berlin, to Paris today. I know you, but I don't know what city I'm in. When I was in the bathtub in Paris, there's one of these water heaters like you have in Europe. which heats water instantly. And this was very... and it made the faucet extremely hot.

[50:44]

I mean, I've never seen such a hot faucet. So my mind, since I'd never known such a hot, a faucet to be so hot, my mind thought it wasn't hot. So it told my arm, oh, it's not hot. So my arm hit it and went, whoa. But my mind was still saying, it can't be that hot, that pain. It can't be that hot. That pain must have come from somewhere else. So I immediately touched it again. I mean, I was really burned.

[51:46]

And later I told my friends about it. You know, that faucet whose apartment it is, that faucet is really hot. I felt kind of stupid burning my arm, you know. And they said, we know. And really, they had burns on their hands. So I'm in the bathtub and I'm... Realized I have to cool this faucet down. So I ran cold water through the faucet and then checked it with my hand and it was cold. It was cool. But I'm sitting in the tub and my arm is saying, you're not going to fool me again. You told me twice it wasn't hot.

[52:50]

So it was interesting, even though my mind knew it was cool, and my hand had even checked it out, as soon as my arm got near it, All by itself, independent of me. And similar kinds of experiences, I was looking in my notes and I couldn't read my handwriting. So I was thinking to myself, well, I can't read that handwriting. But at the same time I thought, well, yes, but I should remember such and such. So I wrote that down. And then I looked at the handwriting and that's what the handwriting said that I couldn't read.

[54:05]

Do you get my point? But your body actually has a kind of thinking process of its own. that's independent of your thinking-thinking process, that my mind knew that that faucet in the thoughts knew that the faucet was cold, but I could not bring my arm close to it because my arm knew that it was hot. So when you practice, your body begins to be concentrated and has a kind of intelligence or awareness that empowers the concentration of the mind.

[55:07]

So you bring your attention to your body, your mind brings its attention to the body, and then the body brings its attention to the mind. And then you begin in meditation process to pay attention to your thoughts. And pay attention to the arising of your thoughts and disappearing of your thoughts. And you practice following your thoughts to their source. till you can be more and more present at the moment of the arising of the thought.

[56:29]

So the more you do this kind of practice, bringing the attention of your body to your mind, and the attention of your mind to your body. and the attention of your body and your mind to your breath, and then the attention of your breath to your body, and then you can actually bring the attention of your breath into your thoughts and into your thinking, and this is really something you can do at the office you can take a moment and stop maybe look out the window take a moment and look at the sky and bring your attention into your breath And just stand there for a moment, feeling that in your spine and in the middle of your body.

[57:52]

And then to bring that attention into your thoughts. That attention arising from your breath. Do you get the feeling of this or understand? This is not so unusual. It's just paying attention to it and giving it importance is unusual. As I pointed out a few times, the old meaning of common sense in English was not common sense. It's not sense that's common to you, you and you and me that we all know.

[58:53]

It's the sense that is common to all the senses. And we tend to lose the feeling of that as sense common to all the senses So Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is a person who is adept in all these skills I've been describing. And at any point can enter this deep samadhi. And because he's so adept at it it's said that he's coursing in it. Maybe the sense of kayaking in a fast stream.

[59:58]

Where this, on the one hand, this calm mind looks very calm. On the other hand, it's very active. So he's coursing in this deep samadhi, of which you begin to find your... there's a technique or craft of how to come closer and closer to this. And this gradually arising samadhi is called sweet, beautiful mind. Because as you feel this Samadhi like the moon pressing into your mind.

[61:15]

Pressing into your thoughts and emotions. You have this sweet, beautiful feeling. You become very grateful for tiny things. I mean, in the morning you're grateful just when the water comes out of the faucet. As long as it's not too hot. You have this kind of gratitude that just arises. And this gratitude and joyfulness that arises for no reason is found to arise when you have this gradually arising samadhi.

[62:18]

More and more you can feel the moon, this full moon present in your life. And the boundaries are disappearing between body and mind and thought and so forth between subject and object. So the boundaries between you and the phenomenal world are disappearing. So you have the fingers And you have the space between the fingers. And you have the disappearance. And you have... Sometimes things appear and they appear in various ways and they disappear. And that feeling of the appearance and disappearance of things

[63:21]

Und dieses Gefühl vom Entstehen und Verschwinden der Dinge. Is this word Ka. Das ist dieses Wort Ka. And Ji is, as I said earlier, to be not scattered. It's absorbed. It appears and disappears, but is not scattered. Und Ji ist nicht zerstreut zu werden. Es erscheint und verschwindet wieder, aber es wird nicht zerstreut. Now, in that state of mind, the Avalokiteshvara was saved from all suffering and saw all beings So it means, the sense is, if you can perceive through this state of mind, which this state of mind in which divisions which we make distinctions and then the distinctions disappear.

[64:33]

We make distinctions like body, mind, breath, concentration. And then we use those divisions for all the divisions to disappear. And when those divisions disappear, you have a different kind of mind in the way it perceives. And that state of mind can perceive all beings very compassionately. Because in that state of mind you realize that There but for a gene, go I. There but for a gene or a DNA, go I. There but for a molecule, go I. So this sense is, if you think of we divide material up into molecules and atoms,

[65:56]

At the level of molecules, this molecule can combine with this molecule and various things can... a mixing can occur. In other words, this and this can join if we change change them so that their molecules can join. And at the level of atoms we don't have to change because the atoms can move back and forth. So the sense is, in Buddhism, how to define yourself so that you know yourself at the level at which atoms go back and forth. So samadhi is that kind of understanding. So samadhi is this... Because Avalokiteshvara is deep in samadhi, he could see all beings in their emptiness.

[67:17]

And he could see all beings were five skandhas. Okay, and the five skandhas are another way of making these divisions. Okay, so down here, so, O Shariputra, in the next paragraph, so, Shariputra is being told, O Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness. Shariputra wird gesagt, form unterscheidet sich nicht von leere. Now, do you see that that is a statement about the samadhi I just described? that the boundaries between subject and object, mind and body are disappearing in the samadhi, so form is not different from emptiness. It's like, again, if you look at it from the point of view of molecules, this is separate from you.

[68:28]

If I look at it from the point of view of atoms, it's not different from you. It's that kind of thinking. And so he says form does not differ from emptiness and emptiness does not differ from form. So now, these are actually different practices and different samadhis, but I won't try to explain. But the last line says, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness. And this is the five skandhas mentioned up in the first paragraph.

[69:30]

The five skandhas are form, feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness. And these are called five heaps. One story is that the Buddha took five grains of sand or five piles of wheat or something and used the five heaps as an example. Another way to understand it is that In each of these modes of... In each of these divisions, you accumulate experience.

[70:33]

You accumulate a heap of experience. So in a simple sense, I see this and this is form. And everything I perceive, I can say, oh, it's form. And then I have a feeling about it. I see it. So the second thing is a feeling. And the third is a perception. Oh, it's a stick. And the fourth is impulses or something that, or conception of it or something, I want to do something with it. So there's form. a feeling about it. I perceive it.

[71:35]

And then I have a conception and I like it or I don't like it or something. And all that together is consciousness. Now in those five divisions there's no self. There's no idea of soul or of God or... It means that if you take on the craft of the five skandhas and you begin to divide your own experience up into these five categories, you'll loosen the adhesive hold of self on your identity. So instead of dividing your experience up into consciousness and unconsciousness and ego and id and so forth and superego somebody who controls the whole show

[72:49]

You keep noticing your experience in terms of, oh, now I have a perception. And you begin to be able to distinguish between a feeling about it and a perception about it. And then you begin to be able to see that When you want to do something with it, like you like or dislike it, or you have a history with it, comes in. And if you're practicing Buddhism, this is very basic. If you really want to be free outside your personality and outside your culture, this kind of basic analysis and practice of the analysis is essential. So what you've done here is, this is also can be understood as insight meditation or vipassana.

[74:37]

Because you're not just practicing concentration, you're practicing an analysis You're analyzing your own experience into form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness. And out of that division of the five skandhas, the insight arises, no self. You don't need ever the idea of self to explain anything in the realm of your experience. You can also use self as an idea, but it's just something that you form on different occasions as a practical way of living. So to practice Buddhism traditionally you take on the analysis and experience

[75:50]

You take on locating your experience in the five skandhas, dividing your experience up into the five skandhas. You take that on for one year or two years, until it just became a habit. Now there's some advantages to this other than locating no self. And the five skandhas begins to function as a kind of substitute self. And it also changes your way in which Experience comes to you. You'll get upset in a different way. I mean, if you get a terrible letter, say, you say, oh, foreign. Foreign. Foreign. Foreign. And you say, well, I have a feeling about this shit.

[77:39]

And then you think, what am I going to do with this feeling? And you can feel the feeling moving around, causing this feeling and that feeling. And then you can sense your consciousness contracting. But if you're in that stream of the five skandhas, the way you can respond to it, the way you respond to it is different. It's sort of like a little bloop passes along the chain. The letter goes up, you can put it back in the letter. It's like a little bloop So it says... Being in this state of samadhi and perceiving things in terms of five skandhas, freed Avalokiteshvara from suffering.

[78:50]

And then he told Shariputra this, and everyone, so Shariputra and everyone can also be free from suffering. Another important division of this kind is body, speech and mind. And these are considered... Three mysteries. And I won't try to describe them now. So let me read you this out loud.

[79:57]

The Maha Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra. the great perfection of wisdom, the great heart, the great heart wisdom perfection that goes beyond wisdom and that you or anyone can sew into your life a suture for the wound of living and suffering a suture for the wound of living and suffering So Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the prajnaparamita, this practicing deeply the wisdom that's gone beyond wisdom samadhi,

[81:18]

perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty. Doesn't mean they don't have... Being, it means they don't have own being or separate being. And what you'll discover if you practice this five skandhas is that you have a self in your perceptions that's different from the self in your feelings. In other words, this is form, and then you have a feeling about it. And that feeling accumulates experience in the duration of your lifetime. And that experience that's accumulated in the feeling has its own personality.

[82:34]

Like my arm had its own personality in not wanting to hit the hot water. So there's a person you are in feelings that's not there in perceptions. or that's different than in perceptions. Now there's an intuitive understanding of this by artists. And I know at least a lot of the painters I know in the United States And some of the best-known painters, these are not amateurs, paint by turning on the radio. So the radio tunes out a certain area of their mind, or they get a little drunk, or stoned, because they're trying to allow the person they are in feeling, not in thoughts, to paint.

[83:55]

because they don't want their thinking to paint. But the greatest painters, I mean a painter like Matisse, can paint different levels of a painting Because as I understand it, he can let his thinking paint a painting. Then he can let his feeling paint the painting. Then he can let form paint the painting. And most of us can't do that. The same picture. The same picture, yeah. At the same time. Though sometimes it might be a different time, but it's the same time, basically. So in form, and then we have feeling, then there's a history of perceptions. and your perceptions incorporate experience and your perceptions fall more into the realm of language so your perceptions in your case would be more German

[85:37]

And culturally German. And my perceptions will be more culturally American. But probably at the... who I am at the feeling accumulation of experience, we're more similar. Feelings are also acculturated, but they're less acculturated than perceptions. So, So a dynamic of Buddhist psychology, if there's no psychology in Buddhism because there's no psyche in Buddhism. So we could, to be technically correct, say a Buddhist psy-ology. Psy-ology. Psy-ology, I guess. Psy is the Psy of science. SCI is the SCI of science and of consciousness, which means to separate.

[86:55]

So there is a teaching about how you divide up your experience and how you join up your experience. So it's a process of dividing and joining. So... And then there's the whole realm of gathering or putting it together or impulses. Then preferences. And this isn't just happening in your mind. Because looking around at you, you all have European faces. Although there are many people in America who have virtually the same genes as you do, they have American faces.

[88:02]

And I almost always can spot a European walking down the street in Santa Fe. Not only are their faces a different shape, usually their bottoms are a different shape. And I used to notice in Japan I'd walk right up to completely genetically Japanese people. And not even without any thought start speaking English to them. And they always turned out to be American or Canadian born Japanese. I could see in the muscles of their face, I could see America or Canada. So this The way in which we store experience is throughout our body and occurs at these various levels.

[89:14]

So the teaching of exploring this is the four applications of mindfulness. And I keep pointing this out, but I will point it out again. It's the application of mindfulness to form. The application of mindfulness to feelings. The application of mindfulness to thought. and the application of mindfulness to consciousness. But it really means not to be mindful of feelings, say, but to know feelings through feelings. So you're not knowing feelings through the transposition of thought.

[90:23]

you're knowing feelings directly through feelings. So instead of maybe saying mindfulness of feelings, we should say feelingfulness of feelings. As rain rains, instead of it rains, We have feelings knowing feelings, not thought knowing feelings. This is not easy to do. It's possible to do. And the gate to it The gate to this dharma wisdom, this is called a dharma gate, is this samadhi. Okay, so abhlokiteshvara, avasatra.

[91:40]

Maybe you don't have to say it in German. Okay. Because you haven't...

[91:44]

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