So what have we understood and not understood? We have some discussion and also thank you for having moved up some, but you can still move up more in the future. If I had my preference, we'd all simultaneously be sitting on each other's laps. But since we can't do that and it's not the custom in Germany, we can approach it. Okay, so please, something. Yes.

[01:08]

Yes. Several associations came to me. First of all, the word hear and hearing. Then I realized that these four statements are simultaneously questions and answers. Yes, that's right. And I want to share that. That's part of the point of everything we're talking about.

[02:13]

All these things are essentially transactional. As you'll see as we go along, everything is both the seed and the result. Yes. The question appears in me, how do I know whether I know how things exist, or whether I'm deluded by my mind or interpretations. How do I notice when I add or when I subtract? So what comes to mind is the question, yes, how do I know whether I know how it exists and whether I add something or remove something?

[03:19]

You can't establish an absolute standard. And you can only know for yourself. There's no outside reference point for this. So we say simple things like, you know for yourself whether water is wet or not. But we still have some doubt. And the more we're in a kind of mental space, there's much more doubt. But there's no way to There's no absolute knowing. But we can know when we feel more complete.

[04:31]

We can know, as I always say, when we feel more nourished. We can know when we feel more connected and when we don't. So when those feelings come together, There's a feeling of nourishment, completeness, connectedness. That can be such a strong experience. It can be a taste, it can be a strong experience. And it can be such a strong experience, it drives out any doubt. You couldn't prove it, but you don't have any doubt.

[05:32]

You just know it's so. Yes. I sometimes experience it the other way around. When I deal with something and dive into the subject, I notice how little I know, although I think I know a lot. And the deeper I go, the more I get the feeling of knowing less. I experience it as somewhat just the other way around, that from a point of knowing I go deeper into something, and the deeper I dive into something, the more the feeling of knowing disappears.

[06:34]

That sounds okay. Okay, good. I mean, we're aiming words at things. And the way you aimed words at that experience seems right to me. But the key to both is there's a source in knowing. You start out from knowing. A feeling of knowing. Okay. Yeah. I woke up this morning at five. There was the electronic signal on the security signal on the floor of my hotel. And I knew now there's something added that should be subtracted.

[07:49]

And I know that the truth was... There was a thief on... You mean there was a thief there? Huh? No. Yeah, I'm just teasing you. Yeah. And I couldn't get liberated at all by just having the knowledge that it exists, you know, like a man. So there are many things in life I can say it happens and I have to accept it but still I wish it could be subtracted and how can I do this? Do you get that? I heard an electronic signal this morning, when I was half asleep in the hotel. I thought, this is something that was found next to me, which actually belongs to Subtracted. So I didn't want to sleep that late.

[08:52]

And I have a lot of things in life where I think, if that wasn't the case now, Yeah, I had a similar experience the other day. I came up from Lohrach. Lohrach. Ja, ich kam aus Lohrach. Lohrach. Anyway, that place. On the night train to Hamburg. Jedenfalls im Nachtzug nach Hamburg. And they have a wake-up button the conductor presses. Und der Zugführer drückt da so einen Aufweckknopf.

[09:56]

And I had a little room and I was already a couple hours awake. wishing he would get up and bring my tea. And when he rang the wake-up buzzer, it wouldn't go off. So for about 35, 40 minutes, my wake-up buzzer was going. And I was sitting working on my computer wishing it could be subtracted. And I didn't seem to be able to do anything about it. And couldn't explain to the conductor. Because I'm helpless, you know. He said, yes, it's the wake-up buzzer.

[11:00]

He didn't understand that in my room it wouldn't go off. So I just had to, I said, okay, now I generate a state of mind which it's like the wind in the willows. So I did that. And then I didn't care whether he turned it off or not. But for about 15 minutes I wished he'd turn it off. So we have some choice. But the choice is central to it. I mean, freedom from this suffering is not separate from the suffering. So this isn't about creating a state of mind. Which is always not adding or subtracting.

[12:21]

But being present in states of mind which are both annoying and freedom from being annoyed. And from Buddhism's point of view, that's what reality is. This transaction. And the transaction is not understood unless you're in the middle of the two definitions which don't fit together. It's like this, you know, in science, that light can be both waves and particles. The awareness of that problem is popular science now. But it still hasn't been solved.

[13:32]

It's fundamental to, and it's not solved, it's not really understandable. One scientist said, how can it be like this? And the basic question is, how can it be like this? So it's like this. Yeah. Yes. When I add nothing, when I subtract nothing, then I'm adding something. But when I forget it, then I'm adding nothing.

[14:34]

It sounds pretty difficult. I think it's a question of thinking of being. Deutsch, bitte. And my question is, or is in Buddhism this difference between thinking and being?

[15:35]

And what do you mean by thinking and being? That's a question I cannot answer. See, there we are. Dojpita? Well, unless you make... somewhat clear what you mean by the difference between thinking and being. I can't, with much specificity, respond to what you've said. But I can speak with some generalness about it. Do not, in general, don't try to have a description of the world.

[17:03]

If you're trying to stir the ocean with a broken stick, you don't know the extent of the ocean. But you still stir. But if you wait until you know the extent, then you won't pick up the stick. We live in an immense mystery that is unexplainable, really. We can explain a lot And if you need the security of explanations, you can frame your life pretty narrowly. But if you look at the starry sky at night, it's not explainable.

[18:03]

Or if you think about the Big Bang, it's not explainable. So here we are in the midst of this thing. Quite happily sometimes. These teachings of Buddhism which always amaze me by their prescience for knowledge of the world. How the fundamental ideas of Buddhism are very, virtually identical to the fundamental ideas of contemporary physics. Facing the same problems. And I can't explain it except by two possibilities.

[19:12]

One is they proceeded through meditation. And they proceeded through root minds or source minds. So they didn't just look at the surface world of our senses. They tried to understand the world as experienced through meditation. That's one of the factors. Another factor is they saw knowledge as a lineage. As I've quite often said, one of the things the Greeks gave us was the recording of speculation. Instead of using writing as an external memory system,

[20:13]

To record dogma and truth, they used it to record what they thought at that moment. So it allowed next centuries to develop the ideas. So Buddhism tried to develop a way to explore things simultaneously through people and over generations. So the idea of Sangha is to know through sharing, not to know for yourself. But they did seem to, through this process, Not know everything, but surprisingly that close to what we think of today as knowing.

[21:45]

And most of this essential thinking was done 2,000 years ago. And it's been developed over these succeeding generations, but still the core understanding was developed over several hundred years, a couple thousand years ago. And up until now, it's only been really developed and continued by people who practiced meditation. And they definitely saw it as seeds they put out into the interactivity of society. And they, in a sense, have waited to see how it grows. And they've waited by teaching monks to practice waiting.

[23:02]

So a lot of the teaching is wait. And teach others to wait. And keep fertilizing the waiting. All right. Excuse me, I get carried away. So what else? Yes? Is the difference between illusions and reality real, or is the concept of reality the whole thing, the illusion? Is that the difference between the illusion and the reality real, or is the concept of reality in itself the illusion?

[24:03]

Well, Dogen describes Buddhism as a dream within a dream. I think if we take as our measure functioning most of the problems that what you have brought up by what you said are solved. There are no entities. There's only functions. And there's a difference between when things function and when they don't function. And the difference between illusion and delusion, I mean delusion and illusion and delusion, Actuality, not reality, is functioning, how they function. And suffering is not functioning very well.

[25:05]

So we try to make things into absolutes, into measurables. So if you drop the idea of measuring and just look at functioning things are much easier to understand. Is there anything to wait for? Well, Issan was asked, Tommy Dorsey was asked, why do we save all sentient beings? He said, oh, we save them for later.

[26:09]

Okay, what else? Yes, go ahead. With the not adding, not subtracting, isn't that something we do all the time? Isn't it maybe mainly about perceiving how we do it, as if we almost couldn't be freed from it? This whole issue about not to add and not to subtract, isn't it maybe more like this we should learn to just perceive and notice what we are doing, practice noticing more than anything else? That's okay. It's possible to get rid of it. Get rid of what? To add something or to subtract something. As you yesterday said, all perceiving is an interpretation. We add something or subtract.

[27:30]

And to observe this process, that's the way how we function in one way. Yes, what you said in English, I understand. If it's what you meant in German, I don't know. I think I speak broken English, but I... Yeah, but what you've said is just what you've said. There's no question in it. At least in English. Is that right? Okay, I'm sorry, but I'm not very good at your English. Is what right? Hans, maybe you're trying to say, does the practice of noticing free us from the process of adding and subtracting?

[28:40]

But I don't know if it could free us from it, because we are doing it. It's something that we do. And maybe make a distance to this, and we can see how we do it, and then maybe it free us. Okay. I mean, having, as I understand what you're saying, having such observations, It's part of the process of practice. But if the background of those observations is to solve something, then you don't really understand. Yeah. The process of observing is different than the process of not adding and not subtracting. They're not comparable. To observe is to observe.

[29:42]

Part of one way to observe is to neither add nor subtract. But there's other ways to observe. This is one way to observe. But you have to think of it as, again, a formula, a chemical process. You're just using this attitude. The attitude is not a description of reality. It's just a useful attitude. and you keep applying it and you see what happens it happens to be related to things as they are but it's still part of an activity

[30:47]

I don't know if I'm getting across, but maybe. Anything else? I found two things that are useful for me. Where are you tomorrow? I noticed that I like to add and that I always add but always take something away immediately. It doesn't work any other way than when I add something and take something away. I noticed that in the process of adding something, I simultaneously subtract something, and that it's impossible to add something without taking something else away. And that actually helps me not to add things, because I lose something.

[32:08]

And the other experience I had, this little instruction you gave us to really sit comfortably with a question. Yeah, and it helps me to really feel and understand that actually the solutions create the questions, the thoughts. It's an idea I have. Okay. And that helps me to be comfortable with the questions. Good. That's what Rilke said. A wonderful quote about be comfortable with questions as unopened boxes.

[33:17]

Now, I have some understanding of this in my body. It may not be in my language. And this was what we're trying to talk about today was debated over several hundred years. And trying to find ways among different schools of different lineages of teaching to open themselves to each other's insights and find some common way to describe these things without creating descriptions that lead into delusion because you describe delusion emptiness one way, for example, and it leads to other problems.

[34:38]

So we're in that process ourselves right now. trying to do this in western paradigms, western language. Just a little aside, one thing I've noticed when I listen to people who speak German, when they're speaking English, sometimes I don't know what they're talking about. But their English is quite clear. This is not you. Often it happens. And I keep trying to think about what it is, and I don't know German well enough to understand. But my guess is that English sentences are vaguer than German sentences. Aber mein Gefühl ist, dass englische Sätze irgendwie vager sind als deutsche Sätze.

[35:46]

So you have to, in English, you have to develop the habit of establishing the topic before you tell people the sentences. Und in Englisch muss man es sich jetzt angewöhnen, wirklich das Thema in sich selbst erst zu formulieren, bevor man die Sätze bildet. Because in English the sentences don't often tell you what the topic is. So somebody will tell me something, and finally I'll have to say, what you just told me, what does it apply to? Does it apply to Thursday evening or Friday evening? Or something. And then they say, oh, and then everything becomes clear. But my guess is that the German senses carry the topic in each sentence with more clarity than the English does. So quite often, somebody who speaks English well is talking to me, and I cannot figure out what the topic is.

[36:49]

And then when I stop them, they think I'm stupid. And that may be true. But still, usually when a native English speaker, I never have this problem. Okay. Does that mean we should rather speak German or English? That's why she's here. She gives us a choice. But in general, it's much easier for me to understand your questions in German translated than it is for me to understand them in English. The nuance, it's all about nuance, and the nuances are sometimes lost in translation. Okay, we have to make some practical decisions here. It's nearly 12 o'clock.

[37:57]

What time would you like to have lunch? Would you like to have lunch? So, we started at 9.30, should we have lunch at 12.30? Okay, now if we're wandering around to the local restaurants, And waiting in large groups while we're never served. It takes quite a while to do this. So if we break at 12.30 and come back at 1.30, 2.30 or 3? 3? Yeah, und wir kommen dann wieder um drei.

[39:17]

Three thirty? No, three. Three. Okay, so we come back at three and we'll go then till five thirty? Six? Four thirty? No, okay, all right. Also wir treffen uns wieder um drei und dann geht es entweder so bis halb sechs, sechs. Okay, tomorrow. Morgen. Morgen. We start at 9.30 again. Is that okay? Is that too early for Sunday morning? It's okay, okay. 9.30. And who has to leave in the afternoon? What time? Lunchtime? Yeah. Tomorrow? Yeah. Lunchtime? What time? 12.30 or 1 or something? Okay. Anybody else has to leave around noon or 2 or 3? What time do you have to leave?

[40:21]

2 o'clock. So should we tomorrow go until maybe, don't break for lunch at 12.30, go until 1.30 or quarter to 2 and then just stop? Since you all live here, most of you live here, it's not so difficult. Sometimes we do seminars like Ihanesov. People start leaving en masse. Yeah, now I have a problem is next week I'm getting married. It's already a problem. The institutional arrangements are a problem.

[41:23]

The marriage itself I don't think is a problem. And I have quite a lot of people have started flying in from the United States this weekend, right now, and Monday and Tuesday, etc. They're arriving at airplanes. Each one is, of course, expecting me to pick them up. Yeah. Because they're all my best friends, right? I'm not a best friend if I'm not at the airport. Okay. So I have to be back Sunday evening in Johanneshof. Which means I have a train around 3.45 or something. And it takes half an hour to drive to the station from here or something?

[42:27]

Yeah, okay. So I'll have to stop around 3 or 3.30 or something. But that doesn't mean you couldn't continue with... with our translator leading the discussion. I have to leave pretty early, too, because I have plans, too. Oh. Well, I'm sure there's someone here who is free of adding and subtracting. Anyway, so tomorrow afternoon we'll need to figure out when we stop. Okay. So let's go back to this discussion a little bit of Sangha.

[43:37]

Does anybody else have anything you'd like to bring up before I say a few things? Yes. Yesterday Roshi said that, if I remember correctly, Bodhisattva was similar to the fish, the other fish, and the sea and the sea, the Sangha, the other human beings. Then I also understand that it is not only the human beings or sentient beings, but actually everything that is perceptible or that is existent. Yesterday you spoke about the bodhisattva and that for the bodhisattva not only the other fish in the ocean is sentient, but also the water is fish-like.

[44:39]

So applying this for me, it's not just the other human people or the other sentient beings in the world, but isn't it everything or anything that I perceive? Yeah. So Sangha is everywhere. No, then Sangha has no meaning. I mean, if you're a fish in a school of fish, the you want to relate to the water, of course. But you also want to relate to the rest of the fish in your school. And you're swimming together.

[45:39]

And that's one of the definitions, that's one of the ingredients of your experience. That's the ingredients of the other fish. And there's the ingredients of the water. And there's the ingredients of sharks and seaweed and the moon. Buddhism would say that for that individual fish, To generalize it to everything is not helpful unless you generalize it in a way that it relates to your functioning. And first of all, to look at a number of particulars. One of the particulars is the other fish in your school.

[46:50]

And so Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, though, cover everything as you described. Okay. And that's part of what we're talking about here. And what's interesting, yes. When I was in my trailer in Colorado just these past weeks, I had very deep experiences of the sky and the stars and really the earth and rising with the sun and going to bed when the sun was setting. And one night I was sitting out there and I had a very similar feeling what you described of Sangha, that the stars belong to the Sangha. And the Heart Sutra came to me and I don't know the word Maha. And I was sitting there just practicing Maha Sangha.

[47:55]

Maha Sangha for me is including the stars and the earth and the rocks. And it was beautiful. I was in a retreat in a beautiful landscape near Crestone. I was very connected to nature and could feel it directly. The stars, the sky, the stones, the earth. So if you have an experience like that It's not only good to in effect remember the experience with your body, but to stay with the insight that arose from the experience.

[49:17]

in this case perhaps encapsulated in the phrase Mahāsaṅga. And now, instead of using nothing to be added, nothing to be subtracted, you could use mahasanga on each perception. That experience which we would say is the unity of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. But doesn't mean we still shouldn't look at the school of fish as Sangha. Then if the school of fish turns into an experience of everything, that's good.

[50:26]

So in this sense Sangha is one gate to this wider experience. So everything is particular and in its particularity is everything all at once as well. So Dogen's phrase, his most famous title of his most famous fascicle, is usually translated as the koan of everyday life. which is meant, well, we don't necessarily study the koans in the koan collection because every day life is a koan.

[51:31]

This is not inaccurate as a translation. But it's mostly a deluding translation. Genjo means to complete that which appears. And to know at the same time the all-at-onceness of each particularity. So, completing that which appears knowing it's all-at-once, everything in its particularity. So that's another prescriptive teaching.

[52:38]

It's not a descriptive teaching. It's prescriptive. Is that clear in German? It shows you how to make this into medicine. It's a prescription, not a description. And in Buddhism, there are really no descriptions. There's only prescriptions. Now, I am always trying to teach you, present to you all of Buddhism all at once.

[53:42]

And it's an impossible, of course, task. Noble, but silly. Okay. But what we can do is keep opening and shutting doors and slamming some of them. And maybe if we keep opening and shutting doors, we'll get a feeling for the room that these doors open into. Maybe we'll suddenly find ourselves already in the room. Okay. So one of the keys to this is what I was calling, when you spoke earlier, source minds or root minds. Now I've just created this phrase just now, or source mind or root mind.

[54:58]

Can we use quellen? Like Johannes is on quellen way. So a phrase like nothing to be added, nothing to be subtracted repeated can generate a root mind. So in a way it's a description of a root mind, a mind where nothing needs to be added or subtracted.

[56:04]

And it's also the seed of a root mind. If you keep planting this seed in your ordinary thinking, you may be able to generate a root mind. And once this root mind is generated, you may have the feeling of knowing things as they are. So part of this practice depends on you're generating a root mind. And we could also possibly call this moment after moment samadhi. If you complete each moment as it arises,

[57:05]

And we can't really say what complete means. But as you can have, although you may not be able to live rightly, unless you're a robot, we human beings can have a desire to live rightly. So können wir menschliche Wesen doch den Wunsch haben, Rechtschaft zu leben. And that desire to live rightly is probably more powerful in effect than living rightly. Und dieser Wunsch, ein rechtes Leben zu führen, ist vielleicht noch viel mächtiger als tatsächlich immer das Rechte zu tun. But that's not an excuse for failure. So as the desire to live rightly, we also have the desire to complete each moment.

[58:20]

So again, If you think in entities, you think it's about completing each moment. And we have the habit of thinking in entities. The self is an entity. Who's observing that I'm speaking? This is entity thinking. It's very hard for us to get out of it. but to have the desire to complete each moment. This is what us human beings do, or can do. And if you have the desire to complete each moment as it arises, as it appears, And what does appearing mean?

[59:32]

What is it that appears? What appears you can also practice adding nothing and subtracting nothing. Generates again a root mind or somatic mind. And this samadhi mind is the mind which gives you access to the experience of Sangha. That's W.H. Arden, the poet, the British-American poet. At least I think it was Auden. I read this some time ago. It describes being with some friends.

[60:36]

And he had the... Suddenly, for some reason, they were just having an ordinary conversation. They had the complete experience of knowing each other person. of feeling each other person from inside themselves, and knowing that everything was as it is in a very exact way. And there's almost a kind of clarity that appeared everywhere for him. and a kind of pure sound that appeared. And he lasted for a few moments and went away. And later, nobody ever discussed it. Later, he... In other circumstances, two of the other persons, one much later, said they'd had the same experience.

[61:48]

So at that moment, somehow they as a sangha generated what we'd call a root mind or a somatic mind. It didn't take any special ingredients. Having tea is the British do. And kind of probably joking and criticizing each other a little. And suddenly this other dimension settled. And we could say Sangha is to know this other dimension. As Ulrike might be able to recall this experience of Maha Sangha.

[62:52]

Even though I am experiencing the surface of this situation now, I have the inner knowing and knowledge of this Maha Sangha. Okay. Now what I'd like to do is As I said, I wasn't going to use Buddhist terms, but I'll write down a whole lot of Buddhist terms. You see, everything happens in opposites. But I still will try to be free of these terms. One is alaya vijnana. Another is Tathagatagarbha.

[64:11]

Another is Tathagata. Another is Dharmakaya. Now there is Buddha nature. Now there is Dostra. Now there is Datu. Now there is Dharma. That's enough probably.

[65:21]

Now, these aren't so hard to understand. I'll explain. But they're all ways to... What things that happen in Buddhism... is they began to see that you couldn't describe the fish without describing the sea. No pun intended. Okay, as an architect knows that some rooms will lead to conviviality and some don't. Some rooms, everybody, maybe it's uncomfortable, crowded, but you have great conversations. Other rooms... There's enough room, but you can't even have a real conversation. So there was some recognition like this that the context is inseparable from the situation. So you couldn't really look at how we relate to each other without looking at what kind of world we were in, what kind of mind we're in.

[66:49]

Okay, so it became essential if we're going to describe Buddha nature, or describe our Sangha nature or Sangha body, we had to describe what kind of world we live in. And that then brought us in directly, how do we perceive? What kind of perception allows us to know Sangha? What kind of perception allowed W.H. Auden to have this experience of Maha Sangha? So, now, the laya-vijjana simply means everything there is that's in you.

[68:13]

Everything that you've experienced. Not just unconscious and conscious, but conscious and unconscious and non-conscious. Yes, all those things which have happened to you but haven't had any consequence in your consciousness. We could think of unconscious as those things which you are not conscious of but have a consequence for consciousness. So you might have a legal situation, an illegal situation, and a non-legal situation. It's not illegal, but it's also not legal. It doesn't fall into the category of legal or illegal.

[69:25]

So many things happen to us which don't fall into the category of conscious and unconscious. So Alaya Vijayana has this very big idea of everything that has been part of your experience even if you haven't experienced it. It's really your world. Now that also includes the stars. At some point they realized that Buddha nature is synonymous with this. Your Buddha nature is synonymous with all of your experience. And how does then all of your experience function to be the nature of a Buddha?

[70:30]

These are the questions they ask themselves. And then these other things come up. And then these other points appear. These are just aspects of looking at it. And what Christoph and Ulrike said brings that to the point. You can't really define Sangha. how we are in this school of fish, unless we also define what the water is. So the problem of Sangha is also the problem of what the water is. Perhaps after lunch we could speak about that. Is that somewhat clearer? These are funny, unfamiliar words to you, perhaps, but that's all they're trying to do.

[71:45]

They're words which attempted to answer this question. Or attempted to find some relationship to the question, even if it doesn't answer it. Right on time, 12.30. But let's be a little late and sit for a moment. Thank you.

[73:08]

bringing your attention to your breathing, has many thorough and far-reaching consequences. But it's also a practice to realize a root mind. It is also a practice to preserve this root mind, this samadhi mind. Thank you very much, everyone.

[75:43]

Pleasure to be with you. Swim with this Sangha school. So maybe this afternoon we'll also have to describe the Sangha water. Oh, okay. Okay, have a good lunch. And I see you at three. Bye. I want to say good morning because it looks like you all just woke up. So what I'm emphasizing here is that the path is a process of living an insight.

[77:36]

of living through insights. If everything, every perception is an interpretation As you said earlier this morning over here, that adding or subtracting, not adding or subtracting, is adding. Yes, but that's true, but there's no choice. You're always adding. If you're alive, you're adding. Any state where there wasn't adding or subtracting, you'd be dead. So not adding and not subtracting is a form of adding and subtracting.

[79:03]

But it makes a difference what you add and subtract. But it depends on what you add and what you subtract. So as I said, you know, this is a mystery. At every level, if you look closely, it's a mystery. Now, one of the, I think, wisdoms of Buddhism is to not make theories about the mystery.

[80:06]

In other words, how can I put it, to not make explanations for what to not make explanations where you can't make consistently verifiable explanations. Now, I would say that that's the root of why Buddhism says there's no God. Or Buddhism says there's lots of gods, but they don't matter. Or Buddhism would say that maybe there are things that function in our life equivalent to God.

[81:11]

And you can allow that to happen. But to then say there is such a thing as a God, or to make an evolved explanation of it, is probably in the end an error. But, you know, I don't want to take anything away from any of you. And if God works as a way for you to live, please enjoy it. There's other reasons why Buddhism is non-theological. And that's probably more important that it's non-theological than that it does or does not believe in God.

[82:48]

But things that aren't easily explainable happen to us. And we should be open to noticing those things. But not with an attempt to explain it. And these things happen or have more power in us when they're not explained but accepted. But as soon as you draw conclusions about it, see meaning in signs, you often get into kind of a deluded or crazy type world. And again, there's this phrase, great function, which means the ability to function outside explanations.

[83:54]

To let the world function through you. Now, it's thought in Buddhism that some views are more productive than others. Now science is certainly about the most exciting thing happening these days. And as a friend of mine says, the only news is science. Everything else you read in the newspaper magazines is some version of what's happened in the past.

[85:23]

But things occur in science which no one has ever heard of before. Things that are truly news to us human beings. Just our cellular phones are news. Fairly unthinkable not too long ago. But the problem with science for us is that its sheer power of newness makes us accept its descriptions as really the final description, or what should be our description.

[86:45]

So, I want to come back to context. And like this room. And we think of ourselves in a room and a container. And although this is not exactly science to think this way, still I think we think of it as scientific. But we're in this room. But let's try to think of this space as not something that allows objects to be. But let's think of it more actually truly scientifically as something the objects are creating.

[87:58]

Whether it's us or the walls. So what I'm getting at here is I would like us to think of the space we're in as animate space. This is again something I've been trying to find a way to speak about recently. So what is this animate space? Well, it's full of feelings, emotions. Memory, et cetera. As I came out of the hotel today, there was a woman sitting on a bench.

[89:01]

And I looked at her. And what I saw was a person who once was young. And her reality was she once was young. She didn't have much reality as a middle-aged woman. She seemed to be, at my quick glance, filled with remorse that she was no longer young. She seemed to think that her life once happened. My guess is people gave her the sensation it happened, but it didn't really happen. If her life had happened when she was young, it would still be happening.

[90:02]

Anyway, whether this is right or not, this is what I saw. And whether it's right or wrong, it's my seeing and her feeling. We're all in some kind of view like that. So we're in this animate space. which is formed by our views, and it's our conception of this context, and it's also formed by our memory-based perception of this context.

[91:04]

As I say, that we're primarily in a memory space. Forget about the space of physics. What we're really seeing is our memory folded out on everybody. If perception is interpretation, there's no interpretation without memory. So I'm not only seeing my own mind when I see you, because it's my mind that's seeing, I'm seeing also all the associations, colors, etc., feelings that are drawn up from memory.

[92:12]

Sounds good. So that's a laya vijjana too. This unfolding and unfolding of an interlayered consciousness. Today I'm just trying to create some fairly simple ingredients for our discussion.

[93:20]

But we share some basics in looking at things. There are no... There's only, what could I say, interdepending and interpenetrating. Everything that is here is interdependent and interpenetrating. Now, that takes some kind of insight. Without some insight, you won't see that. Our habit is to see entities.

[94:37]

And there's no either or. There's only both and. And there's actually better, both and whole. Whole? Whole. Whole. Yeah. Okay, so there's, what do I mean? There's not... Either Norbert or I. Yeah, there's both Norbert and I. And there's Norbert and I. And there's Norbert and I and some whole list that's part of, that's here.

[95:44]

So Buddhism is trying to look at how wholeness affects us. How each part has a separateness. And how each part is a relationship. So it's both and is interdependent. And wholeness is interpenetrated. Now these are just basic ideas that a practicing Buddhist works with all the time. You just don't think in terms of entities. You think in terms of both or all and. Okay. So we have a some kind of space, let's call it space here, animate space, and how do we give it some order?

[97:30]

In other words, here we have this water in which we're swimming. Now, Sukhiroshi said to me once, dragons don't live in pure water. And I remember, this was quite a revelation to me. Dragons represent not bad reptiles, So I'm traveling.

[98:24]

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