You know, I started out, I pointed out a couple times, the certain shyness to speak into your, speak into our consciousness. And now I'm I feel I'm in the tiger's cave. Which means that you're, it's an expression meaning that you're into how things actually exist. And hence it's a little scary, even dangerous. Okay, so I thought maybe I would speak about saccadic scanning again.

[01:02]

And it's one of these things I come back to regularly. Like Benjamin Levitt's research. Which in both cases... I feel quite clear about it because my dharma practice anticipated both. Although I seem to draw somewhat different conclusions about the significance of sarcastic scanning. Now, as through practice, consciousness kind of merges into awareness, Yeah, and... Again, I feel I'm just saying obvious things.

[02:12]

But... But absorbing the obvious into our views is not so easy. Everyone we know is constantly repeating to us our views. our cultural views. And the practice of the Sangha is to repeat into ourselves wisdom views that often in any culture contrast with the prevailing culture. Yeah, and so, you know, one of the names for everything that exists

[03:16]

is the non-generalization of Tathagatagarbha. It doesn't mean cosmos or world or something. It means that everything is coming and going as in a way that is simultaneously a womb and an embryo. So if you're in a womb-embryo world, we're not again talking about development, we're always talking about evolvement. I'm trying to create a picture again here for us of what we're doing.

[04:37]

Okay, so... So one of the things again that happens when you practice regularly and you make the intentional efforts that support practice consciousness becomes permeable and is penetrated by awareness And awareness extends and overlaps with what we call unconscious or non-conscious. And begins to overlap also the embodied mind And the right bodied mind and the left bodied mind.

[05:58]

Okay. Now, that's happening through the simple practice of plus the accompanying views that give it power. It's not just passive, you just do zazen and everything flows from that. But it's also not the case that you try to make your zazen be something. But you have to allow zazen but you allow zazen within a doubting context. So I seem to be right now sort of trying to sum up a bit what we've done these last two and a half or three days.

[07:06]

And I think I'll try to continue this in Kassel, if that isn't too boring for you, Gerald, since you'll be there. Because I feel if I can stay with this, we can open it up more. This afternoon, Peralta will drive me to Kassel where I'll meet with people, primarily psychotherapists, but not entirely. So varieties of ways, various ways of looking at self ought to be of some interest to psychotherapists, right? Okay, so if awareness begins to permeate consciousness, to be inclusive of consciousness, but also transforms consciousness,

[08:27]

and overlaps non-consciousness, and overlaps the embodied mind, right and left embodied mind, then a process of noticing, a more sensitive noticing occurs. I had a conversation with a physicist friend of mine that I like a lot the other day. And we both were admiring Einstein. Sorry, it's kind of obvious to admire Einstein, but you know. Because he, in contrast to Einstein, all other major physicists.

[10:01]

And Harold, this is my friend's name, gave me a particular example of that. I'll try to see if I remember it. But in any case, Einstein was specific in feeling he did his thinking with his body. And as Harold said, he wasn't compared to his peers, wasn't particularly good at mathematics. Once he got a feeling for something, he then went to his mathematician friends, Harold says, and said, how do you solve a problem like this? So in any case, awareness as it overlaps other modalities of knowing Us ordinary folks, like us, you start to know things, not just as intuitions or guesses, but you begin to know things.

[11:22]

a new scale, it's not so much that you're having some kind of extraordinary experiences, out of this world experiences. But you're having more in this world experiences. The world is more revealing itself to you, opening itself. Yeah, okay. So in that kind of... all of that preamble, you know, I just noticed that my body knew what I was going to do before my conscious editing did.

[12:40]

Also jetzt im Sinne dieser Präambel, jetzt von eben, hatte ich jedenfalls bemerkt, dass mein Körper Dinge wusste, bevor mein Körper So ten years later or so, when I read Benjamin Levitt's work, I said, yeah, of course. And somewhat similarly, again, I'm... in some awe with the simplicity and power of dharmic practice. I'm having a question. If the present is not even a knife edge, It's already past and already future.

[13:51]

Which is a question that I even in childhood puzzled over. So I'm really in the back of my mind. Do I think it's... Back there, in the back of my mind anyway, I'm filled with the question of why does the present have duration? So I remember very clearly, standing next to Hotuan in Creston. And there was the corner post of the building. And I don't remember exactly what else, but there was an insect flying. And I was standing

[14:52]

not consciously asking myself the question, what is the durative present? But it was a question built in to my thinking, to my noticing. Yeah, and somehow I have to go back to my notes, because I wrote notes on this experience. But somehow the combination of the post being there and my thinking that the post was hooked like it wasn't changing. But it was just changing very, very slowly. I mean... Yeah, my grandchildren will see it really needs to be replaced.

[16:03]

And Japanese buildings are made that way. You can take out a post, and this is a completely wood joinery building called Hotawan. And you can simply take out posts and make a new one and fit it back in because it's not nailed together or glued, it's just joint. So I'm thinking about, you know, the post is very slowly moving. And the insect is very quickly moving. And I noticed that I was paying attention to the post and the insect. And I suddenly had the experience the present is a biological phenomena. It's occurring through how I function.

[17:16]

Okay. Now it's interesting to think of it as a biological function. I've never called it a biological function before. That was an observation of the last couple of days. Okay, so let's speak specifically about saccadic scanning. As I mentioned the other day, it was discovered by a French ophthalmologist, and I couldn't remember his name, but his name is Emile Jamal. Yeah, in 1880 or something. He put a mirror up and watched himself reading. And he saw that his eyes moved constantly scanning.

[18:28]

And the duration of the scans they now know is usually about 20 to 200 milliseconds. It's the quickest movements the body makes. And there's a young woman who's I think in college now, who for some reason was born with eye muscles that don't work. So to see, and she sees rather normally, she's a college student. She can't move her eyes, but she moves her head. I don't know what it looks like, but anyway. Yeah, okay. Now... So we have these rapid eye movements.

[19:36]

And the scientists commenting on this phenomena. It's interesting that all animals do it. Across all phyla. Across the phyla? Yeah. Except most birds don't. This is interesting to me. And Francisco Varela particularly studied the eyesight, the eye process of birds. I wish he was still alive. I'd love to discuss it with him. Anyway, the scientists who do these studies now, now do the studies, conclude that this is about increasing visual resolution.

[20:40]

Yeah, and avoiding blurring. Well, I don't doubt that that's true. But the most important fact for me, because it relates to my own experience of how the present is durative, has duration, is that I think psychotic scanning and other bodily processes and perceptual processes is what creates the present. Now, dragonflies, they live in a different present.

[21:47]

And I don't know what the experience of time is for some insects which live only... weeks or one season. But certainly our experience of time is related to our experience of the And I think one of the ways in which we have an experience that time slows down or speeds up, And I know that sometimes I really have to accomplish quite a bit in a short time. And I hope... I hope I can slow time down so I can do it. And I don't really, I can't say that I have the yogic skills to do it at will.

[22:52]

But if I really need it to slow down, I kind of Seventy, eighty percent of the time I can make it happen. It happens. I don't know quite, I haven't figured out how I do it yet. At lunch I watched, there was a big table of adults. You know, it's interesting to watch a group of German men, businessmen, I've watched them now in two or three restaurants. They have a much stronger... feeling of being in the same togetherness than an American group of businessmen.

[24:08]

They know what they're all going to laugh at much quicker. And I think if you had a group of German, French and Bulgarian businessmen, it wouldn't be the same. And that's more like America. These people don't have the same kind of bodily sense of the world. And what many Europeans don't realize is while America is not as diverse as Europe, it's pretty diverse from one part to another. horizontally and vertically. So here was this table of actually

[25:11]

rather 40s and 50s and 60-year-old men and women. And here was this young girl, I don't know, 11 or 12 or something. And she had her head out of the realm of heads. All the adults have their head in the same realm. And she's down in a different realm. And she's, I think, playing a computer game. I couldn't quite... And I think if I were in that group, I would prefer to read a group book, really, if I could get my head out of the realm and read a book. But if you do lift your head up, then you have to participate in the scene.

[26:30]

But she might at some point realize what's going on among the heads is more complex than what's going on in your computer game. And more interesting. Okay, so the saccadic scanning also has a kind of saccadic integration of memory. There seems to be a correspondence between how memory works and the pattern of saccadic scanning, this and that. So there's an integration of memory, visual memory, and visual perception, which creates a present

[27:44]

which includes our visual memory. Okay, so this is, I would call a biological present, just the way we function. And I'm mentioning this because I think we can practice a biological presence, present and presence together. Without bringing self into it too strongly. Okay. Now, again, maybe this sounds like a kind of science of some sort. But for me, we're trying to look at how things actually exist.

[29:04]

And if science can give us some confirmations of a sort, that's good. And if it parallels... Dharmic practice, this is, you know, maybe gives us confidence in practicing. Now what I spoke about before lunch the wisdom that goes beyond wisdom teachings are primarily based on a simple dynamic If interrupting mental processes and substituting something else

[30:07]

changing the target of the mental processes. Okay, so the five dharmas, you've heard me talk about this at all, but again, it's, I think, useful to have this in your mind. as a part of your perceptual functioning. I'm sure you all have the five dharmas memorized by this time. So there's appearance. And there's naming. And there's right knowledge. And there's suchness. actually there's appearance naming discrimination.

[31:36]

Right knowledge. Okay, now this presumes that you're practicing in such a way that you understand it's only pink and blue. My Marilyn Monroe story. In other words, you're first of all just what appears, colors, you know, before you think about it. And what happens next is naming. What happens next is discrimination. What happens next is right knowledge or wisdom. What happens next is suchness. So the yogic practitioner takes these five words, in a simple mechanical way, notices appearance, like the finger to the forehead, appearance.

[32:54]

nor a color or a light or a flashlight in the dark or something like that. And sometimes it's useful to go out in the dark. And one of the things I spoke about at the recent seminar is how much, until very recently, how people lived in the dark. half their life. Just imagine if there was a blackout in Hannover. No light. No flashlights. And occasionally a candle if you were rich. Only rich people had candles. Just walking a hundred feet would be like And everything in Europe is forested.

[34:03]

It's not only dark, there's trees everywhere. And what's in between the trees? Wolves. Dogs. Scary things. Highwaymen. Robbers. Roiber, yeah. Somebody I know has written a book, The Buddha Was a Roiber, which Marie Louise is reading it to. I don't know what the book's about, but the title is The Buddha Was a Roiber. There's a Hudson's Lodge. Yeah, that's where I live. I live in the hot Zen forest. It's dangerous, man. Oh, really? There's a statue of him in Bad Seki. Part of my culture. I lived there. If you live most of the time in the dark, or a big percentage of the time, and you have to sleep all these hours so you get up in the middle of the night because no one can sleep that many hours...

[35:16]

The Catholic monastic schedule is getting up so early. It's about you can't sleep that many hours. It's not about... Okay. Awareness becomes much more part of your normal living. In Edison invented the light bulb. And disinvented awareness. Because if you spend a large percent of your life in the dark, you function in the dark with awareness, not consciousness.

[36:24]

So us well-lit, which also in English means drunk, He's well lit. I don't fool around with words as much with any other translator. I can't resist because you read all those British novels. So us well-lit Westerners are deprived of a natural embodiment of awareness. Okay, so temporal location temporal location, let's call something like the saccadic present, or the biological present, which is an illusion.

[37:40]

Anyway, that's called an illusion. Not a delusion, an illusion. But it corresponds with the physical world. There are parts of it, a percentage of the physical world. And as I started to speak about this child, The child has not only got her head down out of the... head culture and societal activity, etc., of adults. She's also in another time zone. As you all remember, childhood was half your life. Time is different for the child.

[39:02]

But when you begin to experience the present as a biological present, related to how you scan and how you absorb and integrate visual memory, Sometimes you can have Time, like a child. Or like an animal. Like Crestone, where we have a lot of wild animals. The most prominent being deer, who are all over the place. I've discovered a number of times, and I won't go into the stories again, that if I'm in awareness and not consciousness, the animals aren't scared of me.

[40:13]

They just come right beside me. I can walk right up into a group of deer and they don't do anything. As soon as my pace changes into discursive thinking, So part of self that I have here, this second one, location, is spatial location and temporal location. And I thought I should go through that. Which I have done enough. Does anyone want to say anything, bring up anything about what I've been speaking about?

[41:25]

Is any of it catch your interest? A short remark. When I'm very tired, you can see the process. At the corner of your eyes, you can see the scanning. It gets slower then. You can notice it. It's interesting. I don't know whether this will lead to what I am saying. You're in the middle, remember?

[42:36]

You're appearing in the middle. Okay. What appeared to me was what you were saying, the biological presence. Present. Present. The direction into becoming present has to be always a bodily aspect. The entry can be the breath or hearing. It's not possible without bodily presence.

[43:42]

And as you said, it's like an invitation to go deeper into it. If we could imagine the present as I don't know, I can't think of a good metaphor right now, but drops of water. And very, you know, like sort of misty, not too many. And then mist which runs off you. And then rain. And then water. Yes. Through practice you enter the present, something like that.

[44:57]

It's only a little mist and it gets wetter and wetter or something like that until you're really immersed in the present. It's not really about being calm or something like that, though that's nice. It's about how fully you're present in the information of the present. And perhaps in the new, more technical use of the word information in computer science. For instance, such theorists say everything is information. There's nothing but information. if we use the word that way, practice

[46:13]

you know, through the five dharmas, allows you to be more immersed in the information of the present. And allows you to more act through the information of the present. The water ripples from your hand, it doesn't wet you. Now what I'd like to speak about, which I don't really feel I'm equipped to speak about yet, Which is other aspects of this process of interruption and substitution in the Prajnaparamita literature. For those of you not familiar with the word Prajnaparamita, it means wisdom beyond wisdom. Okay.

[47:24]

So, for example, it will say in the Prajnaparamita literature, I'm speaking now about the large sutra of perfect wisdom. Which was, I actually got published. I arranged, anyway, the University of California to publish it. I mention it, I don't know why I mention it, just because I'm surprised I've been engaged in the history of what's happened in Western Buddhism. And I mention it because I knew Herr Dr. Konze, who translated it quite well. And the problem I have with the book is, I mean, Dr. Konze is one of the brilliant scholars in Buddhism.

[48:36]

He created, really, Buddhist Sanskrit. created in the sense that he recognized that Buddhist Sanskrit is different from general Sanskrit and he developed the vocabulary for Buddhist Sanskrit. A seminal figure in many ways. And he did have some enlightenment and some practice. But not too much. So I don't trust his translation. So when he says the Bodhisattva develops a

[49:37]

stability of thought. I'm not a scholar, so I can't do anything about it. But I'm pretty sure it means a stability of observation. When the Bodhisattva develops a stability of observation, which arises from the realizing the concentrations, as I said before lunch, of the wishless, the signless and emptiness. Now that may seem too much for you. But if you really see what I said before lunch, is that you take the process of naming, We name, and all of us can do that.

[51:10]

You notice that you name. The five dharmas require noticing that There's appearance and you name the appearance. That much subtlety of attention has to be possible. Now that's when the big difference is between movement. Western world, which emphasizes studying the world independent of the mind. And the yogic world in civilization, which emphasizes studying the world as the mind. And as I said earlier, the Western view produces Western science. The Yogi view does not produce Western science.

[52:11]

But it seems to, with yogics, with scientists from yogic cultures, they seem to notice things differently than Western scientists. in a positive way or adding to the scope of science. So all you have to do is no disappearance notice our natural habit of naming appearance and then interrupting that naming becoming discrimination. Interrupting. And then substituting for the associations, the objects that appear.

[53:48]

So substituting for the associations. First of all, just naming only, cutting off the association. And then, as I said, naming the nameless. Naming the namelessness. If you practice, it couldn't be simpler. Naming namelessness. Becoming aware that what you're naming is actually not contained in the name. And you really don't even know what's appearance, the fact that, as they say, the cosmogonic...

[54:52]

perception that anything exists at all. Heidegger and Wittgenstein, all part of their philosophy is the background is Anything exists at all is totally amazing. And Wittgenstein pointed out you can't even ask the question really because the ability to ask the question depends on something existing. You can't ask the question, why does anything exist unless something exists? You can ask the question from the point of view of something existing but you can't ask the question from the point of view of something not existing.

[56:01]

Okay, so if you have this feeling It's amazing. Anything exists at all. You name it, you immediately limit it. But naming is our natural habit. We function through naming. So you make use of that habit and name namelessness instead of names. Now, if you practice naming namelessness until always you know that what you're naming is nameless The concentration is called the wishless.

[57:06]

the signless, which I said earlier, formless, and emptiness, will appear, will appear, will appear through simply naming namelessness. If you do it with enough Deep enough intention. And these are called three doors to enlightenment. Maybe that's a good place to stop. And leave you standing at the revolving door of the wishless, the signless, And this is a door that we can push our way into.

[58:14]

But unfortunately we can push our way back out. But what we want is a deep enough intention that you can't push your way back out and you end up. Now, you know, For instance, that the large sutra and prajna paramita, blah, blah, blah. It says substitute, basically it says substitute, the intention to do. That's a natural thing to do. It's a form of naming. I want to do this. That's a form of naming. The sutra says, substitute that with vigor. Yeah, now I'm going to have to I have to spend some time working with this.

[59:38]

I can understand that you substitute doing with just the sheer energy and vigor. And you substitute discursive thinking in the sutra with the I'm changing Kansi's translation a little here. With the intention to accept and explore. Now I have to practice this some before I can talk about it, Martin. But this is really, I consider wonderfully subtle. You have to substitute discursive thought with an intention to explore.

[60:39]

Maybe I can explore this in Kassel. We'll see. Okay. So let's sit for a few minutes. So transforming the habit of naming.

[62:06]

And changing the habitation that arises through the objects as they appear through naming. Changing the habit of naming. into the practice of namelessness. However you want to introduce namelessness to yourself. Most easily done through the habit of naming. You change your habitation out of the world of objects and associations.

[63:07]

And anytime you want, you can enter the world of objects and associations. So-called the conventional world. And you can use the simple habit of naming new habit new habitation of naming the nameless. Recognizing namelessness. Hmm. into the concentrations of the wishless, the signless, and emptiness. And knowing that all Dharmas are without marks.

[64:15]

Through the stability of observation. These are the doors of enlightenment. It sounds like a lot, but it's as simple as naming namelessness. shifts our habit from the conventional truth of the world to the fundamental truth of the world impermanent empty interdependent absolutely unique Continuously emergent.

[65:17]

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