Someone came to me recently, just a few minutes ago in fact, and said the koan they're working on, they just have a kind of image of the koan. Is that enough? I said, yes, absolutely. But if you've ever studied a koan in any detail, they're about as complex as any human creation. We can take one koan, which is a vehicle for the teachings, And we could meet together every day now for two weeks and just get the rough outlines of what's happening in it.

[01:03]

But If someone asks me, when I'm practicing with a koan, do I have... No, just the image you have drawn out of the complexity of it is what you practice with. Everything... Sequentially, everything isn't included in it. Simultaneously, everything's included in it. So the actual practice that you do is always very simple. But the understanding you keep bringing to that simplicity is sometimes pretty complex. But the practice of beginning is simple. I think of those, I can't remember, Astorica, the name of those bright purple rocks that are very crystalline.

[02:07]

You can buy them in rock stores all the time. Anyway, one side is very smooth, and the other side, when you look at it, is like a city of the future with stones. What? Purple. Purple, very purple, and it's got this very elaborate crystalline structure. And I think Buddhism's like that. One surface is smooth, and then you look at another surface and it's just quite complex. And we Westerners live in a very complicated and complex world. And we want our religious practice to be simpler. But sometimes the antidote for poison is a poison. I think I want you to practice simply, but be exposed to the teaching.

[03:42]

And you don't have to understand this as well as I do. And I don't, compared to how I'll understand it 20 years from now, I'm barely scratching the surface. But my formative practice was done in the first two or three years in which almost everything has come out of. And in those first two or three years, I was exposed to this stuff, but I had the vaguest idea of what it was about. See, you don't need to understand it well to realize it. But you have to understand it well to teach it. And if it's taught well, but you only understand it vaguely, that's okay. Because you're probably not going to misunderstand it.

[05:05]

But if it's taught by someone who doesn't understand it or taught poorly, then you're likely to misunderstand it. So I'm doing my best to teach this so it's not likely to be misunderstood, but I don't expect you to... Because it's unfamiliar. It takes a while. Okay. I mean, I have to talk about what I'm doing with you in order to teach. And I think you have to talk about what you're doing in order to study. And I think you did some of that when you met together yesterday.

[06:09]

Now, what I'd like to do now is practice with you, until we go to lunch, some of these vijnanas. So let's sit in zazen posture or whatever your meditation posture is. Ulrike and I walked along in Berlin along the Krumme Lanke.

[07:14]

Which I, since this teaching comes from the Lankavatara Sutra, I felt it's appropriate to be on the Krumme Lankavatara. So we walked along the lake two and a half kilometers around, practicing these six vijnanas in orders that Ulrike could translate them. But you can practice these jnanas yourself when you take a walk or any time. And it's okay to practice them in zazen.

[08:16]

It's a kind of preparatory practice. One reason why it's so hard to get out of your distracted thoughts and the kind of flow of associations. When I first started practicing, I often felt it was a kind of mental diarrhea. Anyway, part of the reason it's difficult to get out of the stream of associations is because our eye vijnana is the primary one we have developed.

[09:33]

And so, just to balance it, we need to develop all the vijnanas equally. and occasionally remind ourselves of them with practicing them a little bit. Let's start with where we left off with bringing our attention to our field of nose consciousness. Let's start with where we stopped. We bring our attention to our nasal field consciousness. And again, as is customary in Buddhism, in these divisions, any division is a particularity and simultaneously everything.

[11:02]

Simultaneously one and all. So even though you're emphasizing nose consciousness, you're also hearing and so forth. And as I said, the nose consciousness is related to your backbone and your subtle body. And when you emphasize the nose consciousness, you may begin to feel your backbone more.

[12:07]

So you might be able to imagine a cat smelling its way through the garden, maybe organizing its whole body through this sense of smell. And there's the readiness of mind that goes with the nose, field, consciousness. Now let's just move down an inch or half an inch or so to the mouth-tongue consciousness.

[13:28]

You can feel, now you can feel your consciousness in your mouth. Your mouth is definitely a center of consciousness. You can feel the wetness of your mouth. Depending on your emotional state, your mouth may be dry or wet. So we don't understand your mouth being dry, say, as a symptom of your state of mind.

[14:30]

But your mouth itself being a center of consciousness, So if you swallow now once or twice, I think you'll notice it actually changes your consciousness slightly or greatly if you swallow. And for some reason, this mouth consciousness your tongue touching the roof of your mouth makes one of the major connections of your energy body.

[15:36]

And for some reason, if you are concentrated on the your mouth-tongue consciousness, you may feel more a sense of light, like an interior physical light in your body. If you don't worry Not important if what I'm saying you don't have the same feelings I do. The important thing is to be able to begin to notice differences in your consciousness when you shift your attention.

[16:41]

Now feel the consciousness of your whole tongue right down to the root of your tongue. There's a kind of a quality in the root of your tongue of maybe free speech. Your tongue is sort of got language or questions or language in it before it moves.

[17:53]

So it's in your tongue actually you can most feel the state of mind and body that anticipates or precedes speaking. So I might be able to say something in a koan-like way, locate your mind in the body of pre-speech. And such a statement would only probably be understandable to somebody practiced and articulated the vijnanas. And that sense of being in the body of pre-speech is the body that precedes speaking is a kind of silence.

[19:55]

And feeling the sensitivity in your mouth to the sounds of the birds and to Tina drawing. And when you practice zazen, if you notice... Well, when you practice zazen, we don't usually notice. That we're breathing through one or the other nostril.

[21:38]

Or that we've situated our sense of zazen in the mouth, tongue, field consciousness. Or we may have situated it in nose, field consciousness. Then after a while it shifts. And you may notice our state of mind is different or more settled, but we don't see that it was accompanied by a shift in the vijnanas. In Sanskrit, the word vijnana literally means, in its roots, the ability to experience the parts separately and together. And the word Vishnana means in Sanskrit, from its root word, to learn the parts separately and together.

[22:58]

Now let's go to the ear field consciousness. You actually feel like a mannequin or a little tiny person standing in the threshold of the ear. And you can hear all these big sounds. And tiny little sounds. that weave out into the tapestry of space. And in the ear field, consciousness, there's little sense of distance.

[25:14]

Space is collapsed in your ear. Whether a sound is far away or near, it's just in your ear. You don't think about it, it's just in your ear. Now let's move to the the field of the body in touch. This includes the solidity of you, the stuff of you. and the liquidity, the juices, blood, and so forth.

[26:41]

And these, this is a separate meditation when you meditate on the elements of water, earth, heat, and air. And this is our own meditation when we concentrate on the different elements, water, fire, earth, air. These are not elements in scientific sense, the ways in which we can identify our body. So you really get to know your body as a field of consciousness. And almost like you have a little flashlight inside you, you can begin to see inside you. You can feel the bones in your arms.

[27:58]

And the cavity of the chest. And the lungs and stomach. The practice of bringing consciousness into the body from the tips of the toes and fingers into the internal organs is part of developing and awakening the proprioceptive body field consciousness. You begin to be able to feel the space around you. Almost as if you had an aura, in fact you do, around you.

[29:19]

Now let's bring ourselves into the last of the sense-vijnanas, the mind. The mind means all of these things together. Mind is the territory which brings all these things together, body, ear, nose, tongue, eyes. And mind brings all these five senses together, eye, ear, tongue, nose, and body. And not just representing. The mind doesn't should the mind is equally the proprioceptive body sense of what's around you as the visual sense of what's around you.

[30:52]

So mind in this sense is not that which thinks, but that which absorbs all the vijnanas. And then is able to become concentrated. And now you can bring this whole field of the vijnanas together in a little dot inside your chest. And first feel it on your skin, your cheeks. And then in the center of your chest. And you can breathe into this spot.

[32:10]

And you can still expand this spot. Until it reaches everywhere in your body. And reaches into my voice. Reaches into the people next to you. And then this whole room. And then everything around here as far as you can imagine. And this is a kind of imagination. But an imagination based on five sense fields.

[33:12]

So this ability to expand and contract through imagination the mind of the jnana is real, but it's also an act of imagination. And you can bring two of the jnanas together, or three, emphasizing, say, the mouth and nose and ear together.

[34:12]

Or you could just emphasize the mouth and the body. This is all the activity of the mind jnana. and its clarity and brightness. This practice of the vijnanas is a kind of purification of the mind, as mind and consciousness just arise from the sense fields. Thank you for joining me in this practice. Is there anything you'd like to speak about or to share with anyone else?

[35:33]

Yes. Is there a danger of conditioning also for the interior space? What would the danger come from? Where would the conditioning come from? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Because the danger could come from the representation of thinking, and the interdependence with culture and social context, and like, do Asian people have a different interior space than us, and so forth?

[36:52]

If we lose one person... Yeah. They both left? She asked me about vow, and I was about to respond. So, I heard what you said, Ruth, and I'll respond in a moment. Someone else? You've asked so many, let somebody else say something. Yes? I often find it difficult to sit and to let myself go.

[38:04]

What could be a help, this energy, to not be so burdened, so that it is not again and again an act of detachment, as it is described in the Japanese Bible with the word gammon. I know the feeling of taking care of myself through sitting meditation, and sometimes I find it difficult to just start, and is it possible to just create an energy flow that is more supportive of that, so I don't always have to attend to it, which the Japanese describe with the word gammon. Well, there's not much in your daily life that arises that leads to sinning unless you're in a crisis. And there's not much that leads to brushing your teeth either.

[39:08]

But after a while your mouth gets so stinky you brush your tooth. So pretty soon you get in the habit to just brush your teeth. And if you don't do zazen, sometimes your mind gets pretty stinky. So you just make it a habit to do it, so. I would like to know in what, which one to choose of these many practices you introduced as a kind of practice in my sas, in which one would be good for me, in which moment? You, as you like.

[40:08]

I know. Mm-hmm. Trust what comes up. Do you think I know what's good for you? No, you have to find it. Ultimately, this practice comes from you, and it's your own choice. You do it as you wish. There's no rule book in Buddhism. So it's up to you. So that's one reason why just how you feel and being open to how you feel is your real guide in practice and why it's necessary to develop that openness.

[41:09]

Particularly it's the style of Zen. Instead of presenting a whole bunch of stages, Zen presents the picture and says, do it as you wish. But if you're practicing with a teacher, the teacher at some point may suggest, well, you should do this or that. But that requires, you know, being together, spending time together. Now, Christiana has been practicing at your Crestone for three months? Five. Five months. And you're back now four or five months.

[42:25]

And I heard you, someone said last night that you were, you didn't say to me, that you were adjusting to the difference between being there and here. So I I don't know what you had said, so maybe you could share with me in front of everyone, because I'm trying to get a feeling for the difference between practicing there and here and so forth. I would have said that I find it very difficult, because life, especially in Munich, is very purpose-oriented, very surrealistic.

[43:33]

And I think it's very important to practice these things. On the contrary to questions, where everything is not as it is, [...] So you feel that the situation is more supportive of practice? And you have such an outsider when you practice. I mean, in Munich, I often feel like somebody strange, totally beyond everything you practice. I mean, you find people who practice, but still, most of the people you work with don't practice.

[44:41]

And you're just too strange. Yeah. Do you want to say that in German, or did you? Yes, because most of the people I talk to on a daily basis don't practice. And that you have a little bit of an outside look, that you still have it like that, or you just look weird. That's just not the case. That's what you do with most people in the evening. Yeah. So there's another question I have, which is connected with that is, if it would be supported for practice to be with people who do some kind of practice, it would be better to separate from friends who don't practice, but I often feel

[45:49]

I'm carried away on people who don't do anything. Okay, I understand. So I go out at night, and I'm tired the next morning, and then I don't sit. And so it goes on and on. Um... Everything was said in German? Yeah. Why do you think I'm doing this? I'm trying to increase the number of people who can support me in practice. Well, you know, this is... There's a whole... The teachings in Buddhism are...

[46:51]

solidified in symbols as a way of teaching. These really aren't symbols so much as little drawings representing essentials and practice. And two of the drawings are swastikas. Yeah, and he got that from some Tibetan Buddhist source. And when it's turning one way, it means the practice where you're turning inside. And when the swastika is turned the other way, it means the practice going out.

[48:23]

And you'll sometimes see in some Buddha figures a very tiny swastika here with circles swirling out from the figure. So it means at one point you withdraw and create inner space. And during the time you're doing that, it's hard to do ordinary things. The more seriously you're doing that, the harder it is to do ordinary things. And during that time, you probably really do need a sitting group or some Dharma friends you practice with. And since it changes you in subtle ways and significant ways, I should have said small and big ways, maybe, it makes your friends nervous.

[49:36]

And your friends often will feel your interests are changing. You don't respond to the same kind of things you used to. And so they'll subtly try to stop you practicing. By trying to draw out your energy away from practice. It can be an exciting time. But after a while, you get so that your practice is strong enough that you can begin to bring people into the practice rather than they bring you into their life. But actually you don't want to really bring people into the practice particularly. But it's hard. The first stage is you need to withdraw, and the next stage you need to start including people, and the third stage doesn't make any difference.

[51:24]

Now, these two swastikas going the two different directions Also mean right now there's those, it's not just big stages, just right now there's those two motions. And we're always, and that would be part of the sealing practice. You also asked about the equanimity I talked about at the beginning. This unlimited friendliness is often called loving kindness.

[53:07]

Now, part of the reason you're practicing these things, as I said, These are also called the four stations, like train stations. Simply, part of the reason you're practicing these things is you're emphasizing embeddedness or connectedness with things. And you're emphasizing an affirmative state of mind. Now, an affirmative state of mind is different than a negative state of mind. It's not like they're the same mind and sometimes it says yes and sometimes it says no.

[54:22]

An affirmative state of mind basically acknowledges things. Like the word H-A-I, hide in Japanese. which is translated as yes, actually just means I hear you. It really doesn't say yes or no, it just says I hear you. So in a way, the sense is the permanent state of mind which is emphasized here is just I hear you. And the second stage is, I agree with you or I don't agree with you, or sure, let's go to the movies. Or let's not go to the movies. But the first thing is, somebody's coming to you and saying, let's go to the movies.

[55:27]

And your first reaction isn't, whether you really want to go to the movies or not. This whole cosmos has walked up in front of you and stopped and said, the cosmos, no, excuse me, I want to go to the movies. So you hear the word cosmos first and then you say, oh yeah, he doesn't know how to say cosmos, so he said movies. Do you see what I mean by an affirmative state of mind? You may say, no, I don't have time to do it. And then you say, no, I don't have time. So the development of that affirmative state of mind is to approach these things a person or anything with a sense of loving kindness.

[56:37]

Dogen says treat everything as if it were your own eyesight. He means like you have some sand and you put it in your eye, it's not very nice. Even if it's gold dust. So he says you treat each thing as if it were possibly could be in your eye. You treat it like your own eyesight. And And in each situation there's a feeling that there's this kind of spontaneous joy in each situation. And you, it may be very small or very large, but to the extent that it's there, you respond to it.

[57:38]

And that would also be emphasized, hold, experiencing hold. To heal excessive wholeness and completeness, there's an ease and joy to that. And one of the guides in practice, on one hand is an awareness of suffering, on the other hand is an experience of ease and joy. And compassion is, as I said, to put yourself in the place of others. And equanimity You started with that and I want to go back to that.

[58:56]

That's good for the tape, isn't it? You started with that and I want to go back to that. If you're in, I do practice just before lunch. It's the consciousness here. All of those fields of consciousness were arising in the realm of form and to some extent in the realm of feeling. But very little in the realm of perception. That make sense? Yes? You weren't really, you were hearing things, but you weren't really saying, is that a voice or a bird or is that? Just, you were hearing a tapestry. Look, when you can rest in that territory without going into perception, that's equanimity.

[60:10]

So it's not that you're not reacting. It's just that you don't need to react. You're just present. And so the point of this is it establishes a kind of flow because Now, again, to use a quotation I use quite often, Immanuel Kant says, what's essential to human beings, to a human life, is the integrity and

[61:25]

The integrity of self over time. Something else. Integrity in what? Self over time. Yeah, but there's integrity and... Anyway, continuity. Continuity, integrity of self over time. And St. Augustine says, we grasp time as self. No, no, neither of those are very Buddhist. So if you don't have a continuity, a temporal continuity in your thoughts, where's your continuity? And if you are not in this jhana, then the continuity is here, in the sense of the old consciousness.

[62:32]

And if this continuity is not in the identifying perceptions, then it is simply in these many different fields of consciousness. Something else before I pretty much finish, I think, what I want to say. Oh, Jurgen, you have had some experience acting. Well, I think since you've had some experience with this, it might be interesting to ask. Actors talk about that you have to empty out the vessel so you can actually adopt all these different roles.

[63:47]

Can you put being in empty ways on the same level as being equanimous or indifferent? Yeah, I think that if that would kind of be not just a technique, but where you resided, with a kind of readiness and responsiveness, that's very close, I'd say. And the readiness of mind, Zen and Buddhist practice emphasizes a pliancy and readiness of mind. A mind that's at rest but at the same time immediately responsive. So that kind of, if that was sort of your base or your home base, that's very similar. Now, it was 30 years... 30, 30, more than 30 years ago, I studied Boleslavsky and Stanislavsky.

[65:30]

Boleslavsky and Stanislavsky were two Russian theater... The first six lessons... And I don't remember them exactly, but it seems to me it fit in with my study of yoga and Buddhism at the time. And that I learned quite a bit from it. Oh, you're welcome. Yes. I used to think in polarities was your love, hate, aggression, destruction.

[66:32]

Oh. I'm trying to think of how to respond to what I've been talking about. When you first start practicing, One of the major ingredients, probably, of your practice is a lot of discomforting feelings, awareness of suffering, anger, and then your own anger.

[67:53]

And one of the things that happens in practice is that your emotions actually become more powerful. and you feel things more deeply and it can be kind of scary and the basic practice is to allow yourself to feel something whatever it is as completely as possible but without reacting to it. So if somebody came to me consumed by anger, say,

[68:57]

I'd say, get angrier. Unexpectedly poke them with my stick. Amplify it, exaggerate it. Get used to being in the middle of it. You're going to be angry all your life, so get used to it. So, one thing is, because you're learning to sit still, you're carer of extreme emotions lessons. I think what I'm trying to say what happens Okay.

[70:26]

I was going to start without going up there. Some parts I would like to say, I'll wait until I can do it on the board. All right. but before that let me say when you there's a point at which anger arises in you about something But you don't have to live at that point. So there are certain things that have happened in my life that I feel very deeply angry about.

[71:29]

And of course I can remember discussing this with Sukhya Rishi. And at that time, I had a lot of anger about society and injustice and things like that. And Suzuki Roshi said to me something like that he had the same anger But he seemed slightly impatient with me that I didn't know how to turn it into fuel. Because for him it just turned into a flame that burned as part of his being. For him, for Sukhirashi, it had become a kind of flame that was just part of his being. but for me it still kind of pulled me away from practice just made me think I had to do certain things and stuff like that so in one sense you these things become your your

[72:54]

anger and various things become part of your compassion. But the things that I would say now that I feel deeply angry about As a Buddhist, I don't try to get rid of that anger. I actually every now and then explore it. But I don't live in that place. And I can't explain it any better than that. So I have to have some place to live. And through this kind of practice, you begin to be able to shift where you feel yourself located.

[74:17]

Now if I'm just located here in my physical, this physical body, and I'm not thinking perceptually, and I'm not drawing on memories, and perceptions requires, anger requires comparisons and things, How can I be angry? My consciousness is just you guys in my eyes. But something can remind me suddenly and I can feel myself drawn into that place where suddenly I feel the comparisons and the anger and the injustice and so forth. At this point in my life, I can look at it like I was looking in a shop window. Or I can go in the shop and break a lot of things. Or I can come out of the shop and walk down the street.

[75:29]

Now, since I do need some place to live, and that's why those four immeasurables are called four stations, they're four stations I can decide to live. Because When I'm in this lived life, I'm always, there's things happening all the time, there's input. I'm not isolated in a cave. So I decide to develop, you can't force it, this sense of friendliness and compassion and empathetic joy as the stations where I rest.

[76:50]

And I'm not really very good at it. But I'm good enough at it that although you may not feel I'm such a nice guy, but I feel much better myself since I started practicing this way years ago. I think if I live to be 80, Between 80 and 120, I'll be a good example of a Buddhist. But now I'm sort of an awkward amateur. Okay, let me do this other little bit here, then. Do we need to keep it?

[78:25]

OK, sure, we can keep it. You can wrap Christmas presents. We bought this just to put us in it. Put our new . Yeah, that's good. Okay. We have the relative world, relative nature, the three natures. And under relative, we have seemingly real. And we have imagined nature.

[79:45]

And absolute. Absolute. And this is in essence formless. And this is delusion. Under imagined nature, we have delusions. And real to emotions.

[80:47]

What do you mean with real to emotions? Real in relationship. Your emotions see this as real. Is that enough? So From the point of view of what we've been talking about, this and this combine to make your story.

[81:54]

From a Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike. And this and this go together in the essence of mind. The relative and the absolute nature of the essence of mind. So the relative obviously, as I explained it before, only knows that, so it knows this is an illusion because it knows this.

[82:56]

But this one, the imaginator is lost in distractions And thoughts, so forth. So, for a person who's practicing, you're not entirely free of this, but slowly you get more you know this isn't real to actually act as if it was sometimes. I think of the thing I've read once that I, Phil mentioned before, is that they put some tape recorders in children's beds who were dying of cancer.

[84:10]

These children were four years old or so, up to about seven or eight. So the parents arrived in October with Christmas presents. And they say to the little boy, Well, we brought Christmas presents early, and the little boy says, yes, of course, Santa's so busy. So they have this whole discussion with the parents. The little boy talks about how Santa's busy and he can't go to everybody on December 25th. And then the parents leave. And then the kids start talking among themselves.

[85:16]

I'm not going to die. I'll be dead in two weeks. And the kids are talking very frankly about when they die. They have to keep up the illusion with the And I know Trudy Dixon, who was edited with me, as in my beginner's mind, and he's on the book. She was 29 when she died of cancer. She was a senior woman disciple. She was also my main Dharma friend when I was practicing early days. And from what we knew, she was going to die. Sie wusste also total, dass sie sterben würde.

[86:27]

But sometimes she didn't know. Und manchmal wusste sie das nicht. And sometimes she thought, in three or four years we'll do this or that. Und manchmal sagt sie, in drei oder vier Jahren werden wir diesem das machen. And just to use the language required a belief that she was going to live. Denn die Sprache an sich erforderte einfach den Glauben, dass sie weiterleben würde. So then you start using the language of talking about something that's going to happen, and you're drawn into the belief of it. So this imagined nature, it happens even to people who are quite experienced in practice. Now, for the For many people, their whole self is in here. Without knowing about practice and some experience of emptiness or relativity, you wouldn't know about this.

[87:31]

But actually, everyone knows about this, but they don't notice Now even in the absolute, to the extent that we can give these things an identity. Since the absolute is no different than the form, It's just another way of looking at form.

[88:32]

It actually accompanies circumstances and is completely disguised as circumstances. So even the absolute nature leads to illusions. So you have to make decisions about how you're going to live, whether you're going to be married, whether you're going to work a job, whether you're going to go to Crestone, you can make these decisions. And the images of your culture are part of you. And it's using the images of your culture that allow you to develop things, help people and so forth. Und indem ihr die Bilder eurer Kultur verwendet, gestattet euch das, also bestimmte Dinge zu entwickeln.

[89:38]

And your own personal stories you put together. Und wie auch eure eigene persönliche Geschichte zusammensetzt. When I first started practicing, I for a long time really dropped in personal history. Und als ich anfing zu praktizieren, habe ich eine lange Zeit jede persönliche Geschichte fallen gelassen. I didn't even know who Big Baker was before I started practicing. And then people asked me about, what did you do? I just didn't respond. I mean, I wasn't impolite, but if you asked, did you go to college or something, I'd give as brief answers as possible with no elaboration. Since I was moderately became slowly sort of well known because of what I was doing in Buddhist practice, I got asked to You know, do things like the New Yorker profile and the ABC television thing.

[91:04]

I always said no. Because I knew what they would want to ask is, how did a person like you get to do this? When I had to think about all my fatherly sacrifices, I didn't want to bother. But I think it was sort of a mistake. Because I refused a public and personal identity in people's minds. So in other people's minds, I floated in a way that was kind of groundless. So now what I'm trying to work with this book on, I'm bringing in actually much more than I expected personal experiences in practice to make clear some of the things I'm talking about.

[92:20]

So I guess my sense now at my particular age is that you don't want to eliminate your personal story through residing in essence of mind. And in fact, by taking my personal story outside of the interaction with people, A certain part of my own identity didn't mature. From 19... Well, the first five years I just concentrated on practice and then from about 1966 until 1980.

[93:22]

I just practiced and worked to establish practice sometimes for four or five years, sleeping two or three hours a night. So because I was so busy, it was easy to kind of eliminate my personal identity. I just did things. But then my personal identity existed as a shadow. So I think that in fact, I've never mentioned this before. I know what they mean. Drawing this picture on Netflix. In the presence of you guys. I think that you have to... You see, in practice, you get so that you can live over here.

[94:42]

And you can live sort of in this half of this. Because this goes both ways. It goes toward the story, and it goes toward you. Yeah. So... My feeling is, and this is where the dance of the Western and the Buddhist self come in, is this leads down here to a self, and in our case, the Western self, And here we come to the point where it is about dance between the Western and the Buddhist self. And this story leads to itself, so of course to the Western. And the essence of the mind leads to Buddha-nature.

[95:25]

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