So the benefits of Zen practice. Yeah, I'd like to start with the ingredients. If you don't have ingredients, you can't do much. Yeah, but you have to notice the ingredients. If you have ingredients and you can't notice them, yeah, but most of the ingredients we have we can't notice. As I said, I think, in the seminar this weekend, on the background of my speaking with my little daughter Sophia, I say to her that the first thing she has to stay alive, that's her first obligation, her first job.

[01:01]

Second is to take care of her body, you know, don't fall off the window or something. Ja, und das zweite ist, fürsorglich mit ihrem Körper zu sein, also nicht aus dem Fenster rauszufallen. Ja, and the third is to take care of her state of mind or mood, etc. Und das dritte ist auch fürsorglich zu sein mit ihrem Geisteszustand, mit ihren Stimmungen. Ja, those three I'm emphasizing this morning. But I also say, and then take care of your relationships with people. And then, lastly really, educate your mind and educate your body.

[02:03]

So, no, I couldn't say this to her unless she had some, you know, unless she took care of her body. No, let me just throw in, if I, you know... I wouldn't dream of it, but hit Maya with a hammer, right? She would probably move or complain or jump or something. Now, who jumped? I mean, was it Maya's self that jumped or just Maya moved away from the hammer? Ja, und ist es mein Selbst, das da sich wegbewegt hat, oder was bewegt sich da weg? Ja, so now let's say that I swat the cat. We have a new little kitten I told you about, and we swat the cat.

[03:20]

Ja, wir haben so ein kleines Kätzchen jetzt, und nehmen wir mal an, ich würde dem einen Schlag geben. And once I swatted her, and she never peed on the couch again. Marie-Louise is a parent, educated to be a parent in the 90s, and so she's very kind to the cat. I sometimes am not so kind. She didn't believe it would work, but the cat has never peed on the couch again. But moments later, the cat's this sweet little kitty. I told you, we call her Charlie Girl. She's named after this Charlie, and it's Charlie Boy. We have to have something similar in both places. So moments later, Charlie girl is quite friendly with me. But if I hit her too much,

[04:21]

Then I'd just raise my hand and she would jump. Then I think you begin to have a self or a who come in. So, if I hit poor Maya with a hammer... If she reacts normally, I think, yeah, this is just, you react as even as a baby that way. But if she's been beat up as a kid or something like that, then there's an other component to my hitting her up. So I just bring that up.

[05:43]

I meant to, I don't know why, it's just not what I thought of talking about today. But when do we begin to have the accumulated effects of actions in our behavior? To react to being hit isn't a who that reacts. But to react through an accumulated... This is what Buddhism means by the construct of self. Okay, so Sophia notices she has a body, or there is a body. And she has to take care of it.

[06:57]

She realizes she gets hurt or gets burned on the stove and all that stuff. So she notices her mind. Yeah, she notices her body from pretty early. But mostly she doesn't, you know, most of the functions of her body, you know, she can feel her heartbeat, but she doesn't really notice it, it just goes on. And you notice your eyes are... closed or open and your nose runs or something. But really, the basic body function we can notice is breathing. So we notice, basically we can notice that we can perceive differently mind than body. And Sophia is quite, you know, she falls down and, yeah, falls off a bicycle going down a hill and it's all cut up and she says, oh, I was going very fast, I almost got hurt.

[08:32]

But she's actually bleeding and everything, you know. But, you know, I almost got hurt. So this is already some distinction between her mind, which isn't so affected by it, and her body, which has got a big cut on it or something. So there's some separation there between maintaining her state of mind and contrast to her body. So my, you know, very sort of simple point here, I'm sorry to be so simple.

[09:38]

Is that basically we have these ingredients. Noticing. noticing mind, noticing body, and noticing breath. And that ability to notice plus mind, body, and breath are the main ingredients of all Buddhist practice. Now, we're born with this ability to notice mind, body, and breath. What we do with this noticing is culture and wisdom. And in a yogic culture, the emphasis is these three ingredients, working with these three ingredients, are the most important education.

[11:06]

It's either implicit in the culture or it's explicit. Also es ist entweder implizit in der Kultur oder explizit. In yoga and in Buddhism it's explicit. Und in yoga und im Buddhismus ist es ganz explizit. Okay. So what's the first benefit of practice or activity of practice? It's this still sitting. Still sitting, sitting still. And the settling of mind and body. And it's really simple.

[12:17]

You have a glass of muddy water and you put it down at night by your bed. In the morning, the mud mostly has settled out of it. So I would say the first benefit, if we have a review here, A review based on my own experience and my experience in observing others' practice. It's the first benefit is the settling of mind and body. And what settles out of the settling of mind and body, like the mud settles down and the water settles up or something?

[13:24]

Yeah, you begin to, you really begin to have noticing. The settling of mind and body allows you to notice the settling of mind and body. So I would say these are the first two benefits of Zen practice. The settling of mind and body and the development, enlivening of the noticing, the ability to notice mind and body is augmented or increased. And this simple noticing becomes the seed of mindfulness.

[14:26]

Because noticing that's mindfulness isn't just like looking around and hearing things. It's a noticing of noticing. It's noticing that you can notice. And developing that is called mindfulness. So the settling of mind and body and the noticing of the settling of mind and body and this noticing that evolves out of the settling of mind and body, it's not only the seed of mindfulness, but the seed of the fourth mind.

[15:41]

Now, by fourth mind I of course mean in addition to waking mind, sleeping mind and non-dreaming deep sleep, we begin to create a mind that we're not born with. We find a mind that overlaps with dreaming and actually is very close to non-dreaming deep sleep, but you're awake. And it's a different kind of being awake. Yeah, I think I've told you the Dharma Sangha practitioners in Boulder have bought a bed and breakfast. You know, in America, bed and breakfasts are called B&Bs.

[17:04]

So sometimes they spell it B-E and B-E. And as I told you, it's a nice little place with trees and a lawn and so forth. And they even have a blog. I never knew what a blog was until they told me they have a blog. A web blog, yeah.

[18:11]

Aha, im Internet. Sie haben so ein Forum, um Nachrichten zu empfangen. And the employees, who are mostly students, some students and some becoming students, I don't know, they're in the same building together, but they blog as well as talk to each other. That's actually quite interesting. I read it the other day by chance. They told me one of the raccoons that climb in the trees died by the Buddha, and so now they buried this raccoon. Anyway, we've started staying there when we, like, come to Europe or go to the dentist or something, because boulders are a place to do normal things you can't do in Creston.

[19:13]

So I've been there quite a bit. I participated in the decision to buy the place and so forth. And I told you, quite a number of people mortgaged their houses and things to come up with a million dollars to... Which is actually inexpensive for property in Boulder. Yeah, so we're turning the little bed and breakfast into a you know, a meditation center eventually in 20 years or something when we've paid off the money. But we'll make a Zendo in the next few months probably. Now we have a little room upstairs while some remodeling is going on that's being used as the sender.

[20:47]

So I've been there many times in the process of buying it and negotiating, and then about ten times I've stayed there. So I know it quite well. But when I did Zazen and the new little Zendo, I knew it really quite differently. So just after the first period of zazen, I suddenly knew it not as an object but as space. You can feel the rooms, you can feel the cars on the street and what's happening.

[21:53]

Yeah, the birds in the trees. And Naropa, the Buddhist university school started by Trungpa Rinpoche. It's across the street. So you hear the students coming in the morning and so forth. Things you hardly hear in the mix of noises that's just part of the object of the place. And I really was surprised, you know, by the physical feeling of the place I have now after two or three times meditating there. Nothing special.

[23:06]

But my perceptions were organized in a different way and physically experienced in a different way. And before I meditated in the building, I saw the place in my mind. You know, since I have an architectural sense, I can see the rooms, floor plans and so forth. I tend to see floor plans when I walk around rooms. But this was in my mind. Now I feel the building, the space of it, the location of it in my body.

[24:21]

And I hold the space of it now in my body instead of holding it in my mind. So the noticing, just a simple example, the noticing through this fourth mind is different from the noticing through waking mind. So this fourth mind, what I'm calling it a fourth mind, and sometimes traditionally it's called a fourth mind, begins to realign the other three inborn living spaces. In other words, the inborn living spaces are waking, dreaming, and non-dreaming deep sleep.

[25:27]

Now, using these ingredients I mentioned in the beginning, And I created a fourth living space. And this fourth living space, the more you meditate, the more you establish that gradually, incrementally, suddenly. And it begins to affect this fourth, begins to readjust the other three. And in the process of readjusting the other three, sometimes it's very subtle, you don't do anything much. And sometimes it's more gross or more obvious.

[26:48]

You change when you get up in the morning, you change how you walk down the street or something. So this realignment, let's call it, of the four together, allows mindfulness, mindful attention, to come into our daily life. Yeah. And again, now the mindfulness, the noticing is developed through zazen practice. That's developed and spread out in the senses in a more even way. begins to be something that can be a new kind of noticing in our daily life.

[28:12]

You're not just born with a capacity. You're born with a capacity for noticing. You're not born for a capacity for mindfulness. Not in the sense that Buddhism means. Sophia, I can say to Sophia, be more attentive, be more mindful, pay attention to what you're doing. She knocks over something. And she can pay more attention. But she has to make an effort to do it and remind herself. It's not a field she carries with her yet. But I hope that she gets a feel for that even without sitting before she goes to school.

[29:24]

Because you also can learn this from another person. Yeah, you really learn it by your settling of mind and body and zazen. But you can also catch the feel of it from another person. Both are good. For example, if we had one or two experienced people here and all new people, And all new people who were not interested in practice. The way the Chinese government used to fill the Buddhist temples with monks, with vagrants dressed up in robes for the tourists.

[30:29]

You go into such temples, I've been there, and you look at these guys. You go into such temples and you look at these guys. There's a costume part. There's no feeling at all. You get nervous just being there. And if you go to a temple outside the tourist network and where there happens to be a real teacher, it feels very different. There's only a few of the fillers. So we're all educating each other by our own practice all the time. Okay, so now we're at stage six or something like that now. I'm at item six now.

[31:46]

You've brought mindfulness into your daily activity. And strangely, this mindfulness is like a kind of container. It's a container you developed in Zazen practice. But now it begins to contain your daily activity. And this container brings the physicality and activity of your daily activity. Back into your zazen.

[32:51]

And you can feel in your zazen, you begin to have your daily activity in a new way is present in your sitting. And it's not just simple thinking. And this is a process now in zazen, not just of settling mind and body, but of weaving mind and body together. Und das ist jetzt ein Prozess nicht einfach nur des sich Setzens von Geist und Körper, sondern von dem Verweben von Geist und Körper. And you begin to have a physicality to mind. Und du beginnst eine Verkörperung des Geistes zu haben. A visceral mind, a hara mind. Ja, ein hara Geist, ein visceralen Geist. And now you've created the conditions for the teaching.

[33:54]

Because during this process of the weaving together of mind and body, which goes on for some time, you can enhance this process now by bringing the ingredients from the cookbook of Zen. kannst du diesen Prozess verstärken, indem du jetzt die Zutaten aus dem Kochbüchernissen nutzt. You're cooking your experience now. Jetzt fängst du an, deine Erfahrung zu kochen. Now you have the situation, the condition in which the teachings work. Jetzt hast du die Situation und die Bedingungen, in der die Lehre funktioniert. And if we want to be real specific, we could call this Realize Pratitya Samutpada. Just P-P-Pada. How do you pronounce it?

[35:00]

Do you know? Pratitya Samutpada. So I did it sort of right. I have to go to my scholar. I need to travel with a scholar, so I Ich muss zu meinem Schüler gehen. Which means conditioned interdependent arising. Welches meint bedingte wechselseitig entstehende zusammenkommen und erscheinen. Sometimes it's translated as situational patterning. It doesn't make sense in English. I don't think it makes that much sense in German. I can try nevertheless. But we don't have quite a word for it, but it means, again, something like causal nexus.

[36:06]

Now, this is one of, again, very earliest basic historical Buddha teachings. That things arise moment by moment and are conditioned by each other. But now this is not philosophy, it's your experience. Because through this eightfold enfolding, we could call it that, eightfold enfolding of meditation and mindfulness, Now, I should have said that at the end of the last seminar. Because the last seminar was the teaching of mindfulness and meditation.

[37:13]

But I mostly spoke about mindfulness. But now I've talked about the eightfold enfolding of meditation and mindfulness. Yeah, but all those people have left, most of them. Some of you are still here. Send them their money back. Or these things have their time and they come out when they come out. But if the teaching was good, just this moment it might be appearing in them who are not here. They woke up feeling, ah, the eightfold enfold.

[38:21]

And a flower, an eight-petaled flower bloomed in their bed. Now, in the bed and bread. And If you continue in this vein, you can see how the Lotus Sutra was written. And what did you say? Yeah, that's what the director thought, too. Okay. Okay. Now this is the embeddedness or implantedness I was speaking of yesterday, the day before.

[39:29]

In each situation we feel an embeddedness in the situation. Embedded in our mind, our body, and our intentional mind. And embedded in the situation. Actually, a good word is the occasion. In English, occasion means the sun setting. When something falls down to make an event. Or falls into place.

[40:30]

So at each moment things fall into place and the place is this enfolded Meditation and mindfulness. This pratichya samupada. This causal nexus which experienced causal nexus which allows the teachings to bear fruit. which is the very condition for dharma practice to see and feel the arising of each moment. So the benefits of zazen and meditation practice The benefits of Zen practice put you at the center of your life in a way that you can act and function in this causal nexus.

[41:58]

To complete that which appears, as Dogen says. And there's a luminous vitality to it. Starting with the simple ingredients of breathing. Ja, angefangen mit diesen ganz einfachen Zutaten von Atmen, Geist und Körper. And the power of noticing this within mind, the practice of mind and body settling together. Ja, und die Fähigkeit, dies zu bemerken im Setzen von Geist und Körper.

[43:00]

You change the location of your living. Or your living becomes the location of your living. Okay. Thank you very much.

[43:09]

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