that everyone carries in mind. So it's attempting to be a universal teaching that touches everyone. And that is not just for an elite few who practice carefully. Now, in fact, it still remains in some ways a few people who really do the practice thoroughly. Like there are only so many you know, artists in a generation or something like that. But the conception came to be that practice has to be realized as if it were possible for me.

[01:03]

So if we read this as a prescription, I don't know how quite I'm going to get to where I want to get to. I have some feeling and kind of aiming toward it. So we have this phrase, the highest, most fulfilled, awakened mind is equally, it's everywhere equally present. because it is neither high nor low. Now the specific practice of this then is what I gave you in the beginning to bring your attention equally and your energy to each moment. And that can also be understood to be ready to act in each moment.

[02:15]

Now, normally the way we perceive an event, an occasion, is in terms of likes and dislikes. How it might affect us or not. How it's useful to us. Now, when you start trying to bring your attention equally to each moment, and not just your attention, also your energy, you begin to change the surfaces in which you live. The topography changes. Now again, you're going to have to figure this out by your own craft.

[03:17]

Because still, what appears is some choices being made by your body. I noticed, you know, sometimes I notice, if I'm watching television, a group of people appear on television. And I'll find I'm looking at the person on the left. So I'll say, who are these other four people? So before the camera changes, I try to see who the other four people are. But then I try to study, why did I go to that person and not the other four? Because as soon as I let loose of my effort to look at the other three or four, my eyes go back to this one person. So obviously, as soon as the picture was on the screen, something in me had made a choice.

[04:21]

So I have to make an effort to look at the other people. So then I practice with trying to trust that choice. I don't look at the other four people. I just look at the one I have to be looking at and make no effort. Oh, this one's all right. This is good enough. So this is part of, you know, I just try to look at the decisions already being made. But at the same time, you can practice within that this bringing your tension and energy equally to each moment. Now, it says also, in the Diamond Sutra, as I said already, there is no lifespan, no self, no living being, and no...

[05:30]

Okay, now this is also a prescription. But it seems like a very obscure practice. And kind of far out. Maybe we could call it radical detachment. Or dharmic detachment. Because in absolute reality, which is considered to be a dharma moment, There's no lifespan. Right now, if I'm looking at you, lifespan is not part of what I'm looking at. I turn and look at it. All I'm looking at is the interdependence, but I'm not looking at lifespan. Okay. And if I'm looking at you, I'm not making distinction, living being or not living being.

[06:54]

I'm trying to go over some of what I talked about yesterday to see if I can make it a little more handy. Now, the practice as Nagarjuna emphasizes it is this negation. Like you see in the Heart Sutra, no eyes, no ears, no nose. So Sukhiroshi speaks about how negating each perception turns around your ideas Cut through your preconceived ideas.

[08:00]

So that you just have a habit, like the name Seamus Cohen in Zen, of moo. Does a dog have a Buddha nature? Moo. I think it should be, does a cow have a Buddha nature? So you look at flowers and you say no, you negate the looking. And in your ordinary life you can do this. So you look, tree, no tree. Now, as much as possible, whatever you see, you negate. You just develop a habit of doing that. And one of my first primitive ideas, versions of it, which I could tell you, I've mentioned it before, I just noticed that when I would see people, they always had ideas about me.

[09:08]

Even if they said good morning to me, it was kind of loaded with ideas. So I... develop the phrase, don't bug me, man. How do you say it in German? Leave me alone, nothing. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So somebody said to me, good morning, I said, don't bug me, man. And he said, oh, let's go, don't bug me, man. For about a year I said it only. And then now people come up the street and say, oh, don't bug me, Man Baker.

[10:20]

But it's basically a practice of magasin. Whatever they said to me, I negated. And then something fresh was there. Did they still talk to you? I'm so interesting. I don't know. Yes, they still talk to me because they were my friend. Okay, so we have the sense of continuity for most of us happening in our thought. And that's how we check up on reality.

[11:21]

And if you begin to have thoughts that don't seem to be consistent, Yeah. You often will go to a therapist or something. Because it's very scary to have your continuity of thoughts interrupted. So this is actually a kind of scary practice to really bring your sense of continuity out of your thought. So you have to do it gently. And by repetition. And as you do it, your ideas change. You begin to feel okay, not being okay, just being in your body. And I remember as I was developing this practice, there were a number of moments where I really lost all thought continuity.

[12:24]

Because normally it's our thoughts which present us with the world. And the memory bucket or memory pantry that supplies the ingredients to cook thoughts. I'd suddenly interrupted that and walked along the street and literally everything went black. In the middle of it, I felt to myself, this is going to be a short period. And I was a little bit relieved that I thought it would be short. And then I realized at the same moment, I remember, it does not matter whether it's long or short, because this is an actual interruption in my upstream. So I tried to open my eyes.

[13:40]

I think my eyes were open, but I tried to open my eyes to bring the trees back. Yeah, that was quite interesting. And partly through the practice of mindfulness, you can notice such a thing. If I hadn't been practicing mindfulness, bringing myself into the present all the time, such an experience would have been unnoticed because I'd been thinking. But I also had physical interruption. I can remember being in a store and shopping. And suddenly I didn't know where I was. I didn't know if I'd spoken to the woman or not spoken to the woman.

[14:51]

And I felt like I was standing sideways or something. Yeah, tilted. And I thought, I wonder if she's known someone tilted. Hey, I'd like some soap. But your proprioceptive organization which keeps your balance, is also tied into your thought body. And as I often say, there's a thought shield surrounding it. In the text, we talked about a spot covering. And the example I usually give of that is if your arm is asleep and you don't know where it is and then you can move your little finger and then you immediately know where your arm is.

[16:00]

But your arm is still asleep. It's only your little finger. So your little finger has allowed you to identify the thought image of your arm. So you actually have a thought image and emotion image that your body lives. lives within and lives as. I could give another example, but that's enough. And at some point, these thought coverings crack open. And the more you gently bring your sense of continuity, identity and reality, Out of your thoughts, through realized practice, into body, breath, and phenomena, which is the real point of the four foundations of mindfulness.

[17:25]

you also begin to crack the thought coverings. And then there's koans about this with phrases like, exposed in the golden wind. Now, I don't mean that all of you are like eggs, and at some point, if you keep this practice that I'm recommending, you'll be a yolk on the sidewalk. Usually it happens that one day you just notice there's a different kind of cliancy to your body. And there's not so many tight places in your back. And you're literally not holding your body anymore. If you go to a masseuse, they say, oh, can't find anything. Mm-hmm. So let's say that you've moved your thought continuity, your sense of continuity, reality, into the embodied present.

[19:17]

Then you tend to have mirror-like perception. If I look at you, I just see you as if you're reflected in a mirror. There's not so much association for it. Now, this is where the kind of acupuncture point where Nagarjuna's teaching comes in. We negate this mirror. And then you don't have any idea of what you're seeing, thinking, or anything. And something begins to act.

[20:18]

And there's no problem with taking action. It's just at another level, but it's very much like a sport where you don't think about what you do, you just do it. And you can enter more and more into this feeling. And it can be a kind of secret practice. You're talking to your friend and negating at the same time. Which is not the same as criticizing him or her. Because taking away all the ideas about the person. So they're completely new to you at that moment. And then the world changes. comes in as working through you and you're working through the world. And at first it's a taste, but eventually it becomes more and more full.

[21:24]

And you feel strangely at home in every situation. At the same time, every situation is completely new. And a certain kind of danger. Because it's not predictable. So now, how do you bring this into your daily life? I think that, first of all, you can't bring practice very easily into just adding it to your daily life. You don't have to go to a monastery, but you do have to readjust your daily life so it supports practice.

[22:39]

That means some sort of schedule that lets you sit. Or some sort of way of getting your work that allows you to practice mindfulness. because at first you have to practice these things when you have a chance in your schedule. But eventually they begin to be able to be practiced all the time. So you can be taking a walk and at the same time you can either practice with the jnanas Like being present to the tapestry of sound. Or the topography of smell. Or you can, even in the midst of that, take it all away. No eyes, no smell, no tastes. Yeah, and this allows you to enter what would be called Buddha nature or Buddha activity, but I don't have a very good word for it.

[24:07]

You're sort of locked into the present without much subject-object. While at the same time, another part of you, or at the same time all of you, is involved with what you have to do next and so forth. There isn't a separation. Sometimes you emphasize one side more than the other. So from an adept practice point of view, this would be detachment. To free yourself from every object of perception. That's the best I can say about that.

[25:18]

I think it is quite a radical practice, actually. Radical in its effect and its vision. But also radical in that if you want to, you can actually practice it in daily life. Truly a bodhisattva practice. As you know, bodhisattvas have hair and jewelry and stuff like that. They're not monks. Oh. If you're a monk, you're a disguised bodhisattva, and if you're a bodhisattva, you're a disguised monk. What you're talking about now? What you're talking about? . My impression is that this is one part of a state of mind.

[26:41]

Because I suffered a lot from these kinds of states of mind. I would like to learn something new. I have the feeling that something else should be accepted and made accessible. I want to add something to this because I think that to be able to bear this, to make it possible to bear this, you have to practice something else too. Okay. And although I have ideas about what I could do or what you could do, but they are not too elaborate.

[27:50]

And my idea is that to be able to bear this state of mind, it is necessary that you are anchored to some kind of core. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then it is especially important how you move and in what relationship you enter to space. Is there a practice which gives us, on the one hand, this anchor, and on the other hand, the choice of directing yourself in space?

[28:53]

How can you especially practice these things? I thought what you said was going to be simple, what you said. Can you give us an example of what you mean by this space? That's dangerous. What is its danger? It's not that I said the space is dangerous. States of mind. What's the state of mind machine? You described that you don't know where you are and that you have forgotten everything you wanted. Yeah. Okay, so you need an anchor.

[30:16]

Well, those experiences may have happened to me partly because maybe I pushed my practice a little too hard. But even when you're sitting zazen, Sometimes you may have the experience that you're sitting straight, but you feel like you're over here. That's fairly common. And you find out that generally you may be slightly off, but often it's a very tiny bit. And you usually find that either straightening yourself or changing your energy in your backbone reestablishes a kind of sense of place. And some people, when they go to sleep at night, just before they go to sleep, sometimes they feel they're floating above the bed.

[31:33]

And that type of experience sometimes happens to meditators. And I think what's best in general is to sit in such a way that you allow there to be a wide feeling, but it's centered here. The point I'm making is that If you practice regularly, there's many similar type experiences that are of various degrees of intensity. And you begin to learn to handle them. And you also begin to learn not to panic. Yeah. Whatever happens is okay.

[32:37]

Mm-hmm. I mean, if you're at a job interview and you're like this, you know... It might be better to learn to relax before the job interview. They offer you a drink and you say, oh, thank you, throw it over your shoulder. Oh, thank you. Oh, excuse me. So when you begin to practice, and you're practicing with intention and seriously, you're, as I say, re-parenting yourself. you're making your personal history your own. And you're a constructed being.

[33:38]

And you're constructed in a way that you learn from your parents and your culture and so forth. And if you start referring to experiences of original mind or shunyata and so forth, it actually begins, samadhi begins a process of reconstructing yourself. Now, one of the reasons people practice in monastery Because you can handle these discontinuities in a situation where you're fed and housed and so forth. Because sometimes there's shifts in this construction process. You're building another person inside this person. So sometimes there's little transition or gaps that can be disturbing.

[34:49]

But if you practice gently, and as you said, I'm getting more and more permissive all the time, But I don't know if that's true. It might look that way. Maybe it's true. OK. But if you practice gently, and on some regular basis, like so many times a week you sit or something like that, and almost equally important with sitting is the schedule, if you schedule three times a week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday or something,

[35:57]

That's much better than sitting five times as much irregularly. Because the quantity of sitting is really not so important. What's important is to take your sitting out of the control of your ego and wish it. Otherwise you only sit when it reinforces who you think you are. So if you really want to see yourself and cut through your preconceived idea, you sit rain or snow, sickness and health, at a particular time, every day or seven times a week. And that's the hardest part, I think. So it's better to make a schedule you can follow than a schedule you don't follow.

[37:05]

I could schedule three times a week or four times a week, and then if you sit more, fine. But what we're trying to do is bring, as I said, a radical practice into daily life which hasn't been done ever before the way it's being done now. You're reconstructing yourself in the middle of your life, which is simultaneously, as Regina pointed out, constructing you in your old way while you're creating a new construction project on the same site. But I think the main anchor is the bringing your attention to your breath. The more that is, you can always turn to it. If you're trying to buy something and you find yourself kind of, am I standing up straight or not, and so forth, if you have any developed breath-body practice,

[38:26]

As soon as you remember to bring yourself to your breath, everything becomes okay. Your question gave me a chance to say a lot of things, but I don't know if I really responded to it. It is important to do this carefully and not push yourself. It's important to trust the strength of the intention not how much you try to realize the intention.

[39:33]

If you're just holding an intention, subtly penetrate their life. And what I find interesting, I started practicing with quite a lot of people back in the beginning of the 60s. And I'm thinking of particular people now. And some of those people I practiced with from the 60s into the 70s, into the 80s. But then for various reasons, their life situations changed. They had jobs and children and whatever. And to all, even to themselves, they thought they'd stopped practicing. But 15 or 20 years later, they start practicing again.

[40:39]

And you find that practice has matured. underneath their thinking they weren't practicing the whole time. It's not the same. It hasn't matured the same way as it would explicitly, but it's not necessarily worse. It's both good. Yeah. A basic question. How to bring attention to your bread without taking over the bread? Without interfering with the bread. Yes. It's very difficult to clean it and watch it. You're not so close. I think that they probably...

[41:42]

I think in the beginning of practice, first six months or a year, develop the skill to count your breaths. And then develop the skill to follow your breath. And then, more and more, just practice uncorrected mind. You don't bring your attention to your breath, you don't bring your attention to anything, you just see where your attention is. You have an observing now attention of attention.

[42:46]

But then in your daily activity, you try to bring your attention to your breath. When you're going upstairs, downstairs, when you're doing something, when you have a moment to just be alone. Now, in meditation, at some point, if you practice the first months or year really counting your breath, at some point, usually, breathing begins to breathe itself. You don't feel anymore that you're doing it. You're breathing it from. And that's an important point. It's like the point where you suddenly stop practicing for yourself and you start practicing for others.

[43:50]

It's the same. It's very similar, yes. We let the world breathe you instead of breathing yourself. We find you go to the Zendo because other people go to the Zendo and they'll feel funny if you're not there. And that's an important step forward, but you can't force. It just happens. So then you hopefully can bring this breathing, breathing itself into your daily life. I think... To say, the two most important yogic skills are one-pointedness and a non-interfering observing consciousness, which means that you develop the ability to be in samadhi and observe samadhi without disturbing samadhi.

[45:02]

And the non-interfering observing consciousness is similar to letting breathing breathe itself. I think we talked, at least I've talked enough. Why don't we sit for a couple of minutes? And then we can have some time with nature before lunch.

[45:30]

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