Magician's stick. I just remembered the third reason why you sit 30 or 40 minutes. And that's because we don't want to get too attached to the good state of mind of satsang. If you think, oh, this is so good, I want to continue it. If a little zazen is good, more zazen is better. It's like saying, if one cookie is good, 30 is better. It's not true. And to the extent that you come to some good state of mind in Zazen,

[01:05]

It's a mistake, actually, to think that's dependent on zazen. So when the bell rings, when the clucker clinks, when the clucker clinks, you just get up and find out how that good state of mind or whatever that state of mind is can be continued in walking meditation. or going to lunch, and also at the same time you accept whatever state of mind appears in walking meditation.

[02:21]

Deeper than what state of mind you're in is a state of mind that doesn't compare. If you're going to bring Zazen into daily life, this attitude is necessary. Okay, so I'll see you at three o'clock. And you're not going to have a disco here during lunch, are you? So I can leave everything here? Again, please sit comfortably.

[03:22]

What happened to my blackboard? My whiteboard? Can you, uh, we have... Oh, my God. What'd he say? He agreed. It's a very basic communication. Now, the next step, what can we do about it? I would like it. I would like it. Can we call this a workshop next time?

[04:45]

It's OK. We're used to working in emptiness. Hi. Okie dokie. I just had lunch with Sogyal Rinpoche. And that was fun. The last time I had lunch with him at least was... in another Chinese restaurant on the moon. Where it seemed like the moon because it was in Lanzarote on an island which was volcanic ash.

[05:49]

And somehow, There are always Chinese restaurants when you need them. Anyway, I like his attitude toward Buddhism and toward practice and the teachings very much. And we agreed discussing it much. That teaching the views or attitudes that embody teaching is the most fundamental. And it's the most important thing to do in the West. And that also relates to this worldview.

[07:13]

And that was Suzuki Roshi, my teacher's feeling, too, that the basic teachings are your views and attitudes in your life. A number of people have asked if we might, as some of us, all of us, or whatever, have a dinner together tonight after the seminar.

[08:18]

And last year and the year before, actually, we did that, and we ate at Garbano or Garbanzo. Garbano? Gargano restaurant. Gargano. Up the street here somewhere. It's a pretty nice restaurant with good food and a good atmosphere. I mean that. Sure, many of you have other things you have to do. But if you'd like to have dinner there, I will have dinner there, and anyone who wants to join us can.

[09:19]

But we will need to reserve a few tables and pick a time, maybe 6.30. Can we end at 6? We end at 6, maybe 6.30 or 6. I guess not everybody has to be there at the same time. Yeah. So, unless some people have to go home first or something. But in any case, I won't ask you right now, but maybe in half an hour I'll ask you roughly how many people think you'd like to come, because we need to make a reservation for 10 people or 20 people. And I promise not to talk about Buddhism. At least not directly. Okay. Now, since so many people have asked, I think I should say something about the five skandhas.

[10:42]

But I'm not going to explain them in any detail. Because the important thing is actually just getting a feeling for it and keeping them in view. So I'm also not going to worry too much about the nuances of translation. And the first is form. And the second is the... Spirit is useful perception. And the corp is impulse or association. It is the light raft of the five skandhas. The fifth is consciousness.

[12:00]

Okay, just so you're familiar with the English words at least. Okay, now they're usually listed in that order. Form, feelings, and form is more like signal. Feelings includes dream and imaginal consciousness. perception is really cognitive consciousness comparative and discriminating consciousness and associations or impulses is more precisely the whole mode of comparative and associative consciousness. And consciousness is there in that list.

[14:00]

Now this again is a map on a cloud. This is just a map. You can make your own map. But this is a very sophisticated and useful map that has been the background of Asian civilization for some thousands of years. It's permeated the way of seeing things. It's not just Buddhism anymore. No. There's a reason for it being in this order. But for most of us, it's in this order.

[15:18]

Because most of us start out with consciousness. Or you start out with a particular thought or feeling, you see. Now, when you practice, one of the basic practices is following a thought, feeling, anything identifiable, to its source. I'm so grateful he could translate. Yeah, and she's taught me a lot about the pious kindness, too, because she kept saying some months ago, it doesn't make sense to me.

[16:19]

I like it when people tell me if something doesn't make sense. Okay. I didn't use the word basically. Yeah. I feel like I'm underwater and every now and then a recognizable German fish comes by. Looks like an English word. Okay. So in your practice normally you are noticing something, like a thought. And you notice the thought, when you notice the thought you see that it actually is in a web of associations.

[17:26]

And leads to other associations. And then you see that it actually is your whole state of mind, your consciousness. Is that more or less clear? Yes? Yes? No? More or less? Okay. So when you sit down to practice, you're usually sitting down somewhere in here. And in your normal day, you're up in here somewhere. And what you do is you begin to be able to follow a thought to a source or any recognizable mental entity.

[18:28]

As you see, it goes different directions. But after a while, you get so you can really see the microclimate of a thought. Do you know what I mean by microclimate? Like if you're a gardener again, even one little corner of the garden has a different climate than another corner of the garden. And we tend to live in generalization. How are you today? I'm fine. I'm pretending to be fine. Yeah. But underneath that fine, we're not just telling our friend we're fine.

[19:38]

We're also telling ourselves we're fine. Or that we're depressed or something. But within depression even, there are microclimates. When you first noticed you were depressed, for instance. And all those little microclimates are different. And if you live within generalization, you really don't have much contact with yourself. So you want to start living within microclimates more. Or feeling the microclimates. I think, for instance, when you first wake up in the morning, as I often say, don't open your eyes right away.

[20:49]

Because as soon as you open your eyes, you're into the computer screen. So you don't open your eyes and you let the feeling of your dispersed dream body gather. Then at a certain moment you'll feel gathered. Like we could notice that little pause of silence in the room. You notice that little pause of silence in yourself. So you feel actually a little pause when your dispersed body is gathered.

[21:55]

And then you open your eyes. That's taking care of yourself. For the alarm to ring and you will have one. That's not taking care of yourself. So, In English, we have the expression getting out of the room, waking up or getting up on the right side of the bed. Or we have more often the expression, how are you today? Oh, I got up on the wrong side of the bed. Is that expression German too? Something like that? Well, that means you didn't let your dispersed dream body gather.

[22:56]

So you let yourself gather. And you get so you feel that point and you open your eyes. At that moment, you've actually established a microclimate. which you can walk in the midst of the whole day. And you can get so you can begin to bring one thing after another of your day into that microclimate and expand it. And don't worry if you lose For a moment you just bring your mind back to your breath. You can reestablish a microclimate. Do you understand? Each of these are microclimates. So you begin to see what the words emotion, perception, and so forth designate.

[24:22]

They are also, your language is also a map on a cloud. And you first better examine the language map of German. And if you know English or French, you can begin to see certain subtleties in different territory, each language maps. There is no real specific difference between emotion, feeling or thought. And what we mean by those words or similar words or slightly different words is different in different language.

[25:32]

For instance, there are certain things she'd have a hard time translating into German. And there are certain words I know in Sanskrit or Japanese Buddhism that really it's very difficult to find any way to put them into Western language. But this is a kind of metamap. You understand, a metamap? A map that covers several languages and many human possibilities. And you see in this map, the word self does not occur. that everything you see in the world, have found in the world, locate in the world, can be found on this map without the idea of self.

[26:43]

So one of the basic practices in Zen, so that you're beginning to work on this side of the person, is keeping these five skandhas or five aggregates in view. So I would sort of memorize the list in whatever way you can, form, feeling, perception, impulses, consciousness. And keep that kind of like you're doing zazen in your, you know, uncorrected state of mind and so forth.

[27:50]

See, an uncorrected state of mind, let me just say, is a very different attitude than purifying your mind. And these two ideas separate their big difference between Buddhist school. But we say, actually, to see everything as empty is a form of purifying yourself. When you keep seeing everything is changing, you're a kind of bubble bath of emptiness. So the idea of purification is not absent in Zen Buddhism or Tantric Buddhism. But it's not as definitive an idea, or it's embedded in what we treat as a larger idea, an uncorrected state of mind.

[29:06]

So the basic view you have The subtlety of the view you have, the microclimate of the view you have, really affects how you practice. So I'm trying to teach you these microclimates. And if you can really catch that microclimate and feel this state of mind or my state of mind within this microclimate. Yet actually that microclimate becomes a kind of teacher. And you can return to that microclimate when you need teaching.

[30:07]

Now, that's not the same as having an inner teacher. For example, if you think we all have an inner teacher, and that inner teacher is teaching us all, if we can listen to it, the truth, That's a form of Christianity. Or some kind of teaching that assumes in a way that the world was created by a God. So there's some kind of one teaching, one truth. Which, from the point of view of Buddhism, may be a valid religious perspective. Because Buddhism wouldn't say, would say, it's not true.

[31:28]

Buddhism would say, probably not true. But Buddhism would say, but for Buddhism that's like saying German isn't true. Or English isn't true. They're just languages. And Buddhism is a language. And you should choose the language, the spiritual language you want. Because through the spiritual language you choose, you will come to a certain understanding. Because it's not like the language leads you to the understanding which is independent of language. Within the language itself is the understanding and dependence of language.

[32:50]

So what we're trying to do is turn your capacity to have an inner teacher into a Buddhist inner teacher. Because if we awaken your inner teacher, we awaken that inner teacher in a certain way. That inner teacher is going to get up on the right side of the bed or the wrong side of the bed. We're trying to teach the inner teacher to get up on the Buddhist side of the bed. Nothing wrong with getting up on the Christian side of the bed. That's up to you. Sounds like it's marriage between two religions and they both want, you get up on the Christian side, I'll get up on the Buddhist side.

[33:59]

I think you feel what I'm... So we're giving form to this inner teaching, inner teaching and inner teacher, making our access to this inner teacher more and more subtle, learning how to listen to this inner teacher. And learning how to listen also affects what you hear and so forth.

[35:11]

So as much as possible I'm trying to teach you how to listen. But I'm trying as little as possible to teach you, tell you what to hear. Now many religions try to teach you what to hear. Buddhism teaches you mostly how to listen. And the five skandhas are part of how to listen. Could you begin to be able to listen to yourself? but you kind of need a map to get out into the territory. So you're trying to get out in the territory through noticing these distinctions of form, feeling, perception. And you're beginning to try to notice the space between these things.

[36:23]

You're trying to put some space between these things. Okay. So although you start here usually consciousness is first and that's what you notice first while the source is of consciousness may be in a particular perception which leads to another perception another perception which led to this perception and so forth Eventually they all trace back to some thing that arose from the phenomenal world.

[37:24]

Even if you inherited this feeling which led to this perception from your great-grandmother, your gross motor or some gross motor got it from here. Yes. Okay. So you begin, now each of these things exists in a larger frame this way. Has a horizontal identity, right? Yeah, okay.

[38:31]

And each of them also has a vertical identity. If you trace a moment of consciousness back, it goes back through impulses, perceptions, and deforms. And if you trace a moment of impulse back, it goes back to form and also goes up to here. Now, as you begin to be able to slow this whole process down so it doesn't happen in one two hundredth of a second. You begin to be able to let consciousness, in a sense, settle into associations. And associations settle into perceptions, and perceptions settle into feelings, and feelings settle into form.

[39:53]

Now, let me say that again. Although we usually start with consciousness, When we practice with it, we start with form. So this is the way you usually live, and this is the way you practice with it. So you practice in very simple ways. You hear an airplane. You just hear it. See if you cannot say airplane.

[40:56]

And you can experiment with it a little bit. You can think a lot about it. That's the plane from Berlin to Hamburg. You can think that thought. That's a thought. Okay, now you can take that thought away from it and not think it anymore and just hear the sound and say, I don't care whether it's going to Hamburg or whether it's an astral body. You're just hearing it like music of the spheres. That's easy. Do you understand that? We've just changed skandhas.

[42:00]

You've gone from a thought skanda into a... I think somewhere in here, a perception. But you haven't made any associations, like it's a airplane going somewhere. And if you cannot even think it's an airplane, but just a sound, then you're somewhere in here between form and feelings. Now this is very useful to do actually. And I would suggest every... Why is it form?

[43:01]

Because what form means in this sense is you're just hearing the sound. So you don't even have a feeling about it yet. Okay, so you can practice with this, I would suggest, every morning at breakfast. After Zazen. Of course you've done Zazen. Or, of course, you've thought about doing zazen. Or at least you've forgotten to do zazen. OK. And listen, you can do zazen one minute. Just sit for a moment. OK. These are the secret teachings.

[44:06]

Hotel room teachings. The whispered succession at the Hilton. Okay, so you just pick a water glass, the flower vase, if there happens to be one. The salt shaker or a piece of cheese. You just see if you can look at it with as much as possible not having any feelings or thoughts about it. This is called bare perception. And then you let, if you can hold it at that spot for a little bit, then let a feeling come in.

[45:23]

And then cheese. I'm hungry. It's all good, it's breakfast time. Where's the coffee? Cheers. And then back, just flower. But it's not even a flower, it's some sort of color in white. Now what you do when you do that is you're not actually eliminating these. You're you're infusing form with all these others. Yeah. Do you understand?

[46:24]

More or less? Less or more? Yeah, sort of? Okay. It's a little bit like Suzuki Roshi told me when I first started practicing, to put my mind in my hands. As I told you before, I had no idea what he meant. I imagine some apparitional brain that I kind of... But I discovered, because I didn't know what else to do, that if you just bring your attention to your hands, your hands begin to warm up.

[47:19]

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