So we have, as usual, a topic. And yesterday, during the prologue day, I decided to make the topic mountain practice and city practice. And as I see it, this is not a simple subject and can't be answered in some sort of way that has been answered in the past in the tradition. Perhaps we can start out with a basic view of Buddhism, the two truths.

[01:07]

A teaching that's been emphasized for nearly 2,000 years. And it's good, I find it's good to start with, you know, the most basic views and then develop them. Ralph is arriving with a box bigger than he is. I don't think it's a coffin, but it's, you know... Some people are so depressed, they walk around with their coffin. Just in case... Yeah, and so, was I correct?

[02:28]

Oh. Oh. Well, that's good. Because we don't know who it was for. And the two truths stem from the simple experience of a meditator. That the kind of person you are or how you feel, how you identify yourself in zazen, is often different than how we identify ourselves, feel about ourselves, when we're not sitting sasa. Hi, Ralph. The greater degree to which this is possible when somebody has a feel for meditation or tries it a few times,

[03:51]

This may be a great relief, like a chance to go on vacation every time you cross your legs. Das kann eine große Erleichterung sein, so ein Gefühl, dass du jedes Mal im Urlaub bist, wenn du deine Beine überkreuzt. But for others it may be, oh, jeez, I barely make my usual self work, I don't need another one. Aber für andere könnte das so sein, dass sie denken, ich kann ja kaum mein normales Selbst zum Funktionieren bringen, und jetzt kann ich nicht noch ein anderes dazugebrauchen. And so there may be some fear of what happens inside that. And it's really amusing. It's just a posture. How can a posture be dangerous? Well, your posture is also connected, as I said yesterday, to your right brain and left brain. And I spoke about how when we put our Buddha's robe on, this little one, this convenient one, we put it here.

[05:19]

We put it there because it's at the top of the spine. And hidden in your body is a different body. A body that's articulated through a different kind of energy than your usual body. And probably it represents, it's impartial, as I said yesterday. A shift from a left brain emphasis, the more language side, to a right brain emphasis. The more perhaps experientially spatial side of our body.

[06:43]

Yeah, life, live life. And when you do have an experience, your experience of your immediate situation is more spatial than chronological. At times, sort of, just going along nicely, suddenly it flows down and spreads into the space and even disappears. So suddenly in that influences your body. and your thinking and so forth. Oh sorry, can you say it again?

[07:44]

That influences your body and your thinking and so forth. So it's rather interesting, kind of exciting that right here in our body and our situation, Our two bodies, or maybe more. Yeah, I mean, and it's an old idea. I mean, in Europe, the king had two bodies, the divine body, where he was like the pope, infallible, and another body, which was his usual functioning body. This is an old idea. In the early times, the king had two bodies. The holy body, which is also connected to the fact that the pope has a body that is infallible, and then the ordinary earthly body. So the divine right of kings is based on actually the assumption that there are actually two somewhat distinct bodies.

[08:58]

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I'd be interested, you know, from me coming from, you know, looking at the world yogically. I would be interested, you know, just out of my own, out of curiosity and also to know our Western culture better. Was this just a convenient political myth? Or back in the Middle Ages, was it rooted somehow in actual things one did? and felt, which gave you a sense of you now were functioning in a body for the good of everyone and not for your personal something.

[10:14]

I mean, my guess is that, and I have a book called The King's Two Bodies or something like that for instance, My guess is contemporary historians would look at it as political myth and not as a yogic reality. If Yvonne Illich was still alive, I wish she were, I could ask him. He'd probably have about an hour at least to speak to me about it. But there's a, in other words, I'm saying that there's a basic intuition that we can function in a way that is almost like we had two bodies.

[11:20]

The unison of doppelgänger. Something like that. Even Sukhi Rishi in this section of the Ten-Minded Beginner's Mind that I think most of you who registered at least would have a copy. Yeah, I would have a copy of that section. And then he says, you know, when I'm in Los Altos, he was giving this lecture in the book in Los Altos. He says, the person who's giving this lecture is soon going to go to San Francisco and it'll be a different eye, a different person will be in San Francisco than the person you see now.

[13:03]

And again, we of course notice, all of us notice probably, we're maybe a different kind of person at the office than we are at home. Or our spouse is different to strangers than they are to within the family. Okay, so there are anyway these differences, obvious, fairly obvious difference. Now, what I call, it's an idea more than just Nagarjuna's, but he particularly developed this idea of the two truths. And just to review, so that we're again all on the so-called same page, at least in the same seminar.

[14:19]

This is rooted in the kind of difference we experience between meditation and ordinary mind. And I decided yesterday to say Buddha mind and usual mind. Buddha mind and ordinary mind. Okay. Now I used Buddha mind again, not because you're each a Buddha, though that's... a good idea. But I don't really have a name for this mind in contrast to ordinary mind.

[15:29]

So by using Buddha mind I'm making Buddha mind more ordinary actually, more usual. So let's say that you have some taste of Buddha mind through practice. Now, what if we analyze Buddha mind or just notice its presence and functioning? It does see the world more spatially and in a sense and through that more calmly. Things are more in place, feel like they're where they belong.

[16:55]

And things are less compared to what they were in the past, what they might be in the future, etc. And I think one of the tests is you may find if you practice meditation that you make a... on the same topic you'll make a different decision in meditation than you will not in meditation. If the pattern is consistent, that you make one kind of decision when you meditate and another in ordinary circumstances, then in Buddhism we'd say it's a different body, a different embodiment, maybe that's clearer. Because English, particularly English, is loaded with nouns,

[18:03]

And body suggests some kind of static thing. And you think, how can a body be two bodies? How can this glass be two glasses? Well, I don't know. There's one over there and one here. Yeah, but if we think of, if I put tea in this, and we think of it as an activity and not as a static object, If we define this glass through its functioning, which is more how yogic view, then this can be a water glass or a tea glass.

[19:34]

Is it the same glass? Well, yes, if you think there's some kind of permanent object out there called a glass that exists in platonic space waiting to be fulfilled in our immediate activity, in our immediate situation. Yeah. Pull this out of platonic space. Anyway. And it turned into an ordinary old glass. Okay. So this glass can be embodied as a tea glass or it can be embodied as a water glass. So maybe I should say that there's a different embodiment of the same ingredients for the meditator than the embodiment of the same ingredients through ordinary life.

[21:05]

Now Buddhism is all about, do you want to develop that distinction? And how do you develop that distinction? And as, you know, some of you were at Niko's ordination yesterday, a few days ago, as a monk at Yonassau. So now he's got regular clothes on, plus a raksu. As I do. And his hair's on its way out. Yeah, but you have a good head for... having a shaved head.

[22:17]

Some people don't and they get strange bumps and you know things. So I usually only try to ordain people who have good heads. Get a bad head, I say, no, you better be a lay person. Like these two guys. These don't represent Nicole and myself. Or all the other translators I've had, which I started to mention. So, Nico, Nico or myself, we have to explore in our life, what does it mean to say, I'm going to have this body that is somehow related to this, the actual feeling in meditation of this chakra.

[23:51]

And when this feeling becomes more usual, common... It's very interesting. You can be in a situation and suddenly this starts to itch or tickle or feel like it's open. And you realize that something in the situation, I mean, often you can't intend to do it. But often it just happens and you realize something in the situation is reflecting Buddha mind. Or generating Buddha mind. The people that you're with, if you're with people, persons, suddenly you feel differently toward them and definitely more connected with them.

[25:27]

Okay, so again, I'm trying to say that we have our Los Altos person, our San Francisco person, our office person, our meditation person, etc., What I'm trying to say here is that we have this Los Altos person and this San Francisco person or our office personality and our meditation person or personality. Roland, I still see you. When I first came into the seminar yesterday morning, he said, let's party. And moments later, he was deep in sasen. Now, there's a famous koan about kute, he holds up one finger. There is your famous koan about Butey who holds up one finger.

[26:41]

When you hold up one finger, it's always different. Mainly because the background is always different. And the background is part of the finger. So I thought maybe that's what you were doing, Roland. And I thought you might have done that, Roland. So how do we, if we feel this difference and we look at what characterizes this difference One thing is you notice that you see things more spatially and less chronologically, as I mentioned.

[27:43]

And if you look carefully, you also tend to see things as activities rather than entities. Yeah, but it's kind of difficult to notice things as... I mean, to sustain the noticing of things as activities. Yeah. Yeah. Because as soon as we describe what's happening to ourselves, we use nouns. Yeah. We have concepts of things as objects.

[28:44]

And concepts are prior to perception. So the concepts you hold shape your perceptions. That's just a truging study, nothing to do with Buddhism. You said that fast. Yeah, because I said more than what you said. She's improving, improving me. Okay. It's not... I can use some improvements, so thank you. So it's helpful to have somebody point out that, yes, you've noticed things as activity, but your concepts are like little prisons which have imprisoned activity into entities.

[30:05]

So the differences that arise through meditation flow into noticing the world a different way. But the worlds are already conceptually formed. So the flow of difference from meditation gets stopped. So then you need some teaching. A simple teaching like try to see things as activities and not as entities.

[31:07]

And it's a big difference. It's a really big difference. And I think maybe I should give an example of the difference. But before I do that, what the context in which I'm saying these things is monastic life, let's call it the mountain path, Now, we can also discuss why I'm identifying monastic and mountain.

[32:09]

Partly just so I can keep it simple. But I don't want to keep it entirely simple, so we can come back to that maybe. If it's too simple, you won't believe it later. On the back of your mind, you'll be thinking about it and you'll say, oh, there, I know, that's wrong. And then... Oh no, but he said, that's what I hope. So I have to speak now to your future debates with yourself, trying to establish ordinary mind as best. The question is, can we realize again the world as entities,

[33:19]

I mean the world as activity, activities arising in spatial immediacy. Can we realize that better in a monastery than we can in a city? können wir das in einem Kloster besser verwirklichen oder verstehen als in einer Stadt. Almost for sure. Da bin ich mir fast sicher. Because it helps if everyone else is doing the same thing, the other five or ten people who are with you in the monastery. Weil es hilft, wenn alle das Gleiche tun, die anderen fünf oder zehn Leute, die im Kloster noch bei dir sind, wenn die das auch machen. If you know that everything is actually impermanent, changing and momentary... Um... Um...

[34:43]

As soon as you're with others who don't see that way, you're going to see things as implicitly permanent. So we need some kind of way to see. discover this also in our ordinary life if we're going to really have a lay sangha mostly practices in urban contexts. So I'm trying to give you a kind of picture of the problems and the practices involved. But this isn't just an imaginary problem. Because again, as I said yesterday, the lay sangha in Europe

[36:12]

has created and supports a monastic residential sangha called Johanneshof in Europe. But there are significant differences between these two. And how do we make it work? Because there's no question, as I've repeatedly said, that the lay sangha has matured, even those who don't go to Yonassar matures through the presence of Yonassar. And I think the future of Buddhism in the West is a lay Sangha with a monastic component, how's that going to actually function and continue?

[37:45]

Now let me give you a simple example of the difference between seeing things as entities and seeing things as activities. And as I often or usually do, I use the example of a tree. Now, the using of an example is also how you practice. In other words, you can't shift if you have a habit of seeing things as implicitly permanent. You can't simply shift to seeing things as impermanent and actually unique at each moment.

[39:01]

Okay, so let me try to give you an example. And just in advanced so-called advanced Buddhism, let's call it that, is to take an example and really understand it, experience it thoroughly. And that spreads then to other things. And you have to get a physical feel for the difference, not an intellectual understanding. And as I say, you then have to incubate that physical feel in the activity of your life.

[40:07]

You have to incubate the physical field. Okay, so let's take a real simple example. We have the noun tree. Let's turn it into an activity. So let's call it treeing. Okay, so now you look at a tree and you really make a habit of always seeing treeing. If I'm right now seeing out that window, I'm not seeing a tree, I'm seeing tree. And there's a lot of, some leaves are going this way, and some leaves up here are going this way, and some leaves are still, etc., and some are waving to me.

[41:26]

So if I see treeing, already that tree is unique. If I look at this thing out here, it's treeing differently. And so I'm experiencing the activity of a tree, not its stasis or entity-ness. and I then experience the activity of a tree and not so much its state, its stasis or its entity. Okay, so I, you know, when I see the activity of a tree, I see that there's also insects and birds. The tree is the locus of activity. So the bark is a kind of home to insects and branches, home to birds or perches for birds.

[42:32]

Perches is where you sit. And then if I look carefully at the activity of the movement of the leaves, I see in the movement of the leaves there's actually stillness. Yeah, if they fall off, it's fall. They fall down to the ground. And if they stay on the tree, they keep returning to the stillness of the trunk. Like a wave, as I always say, is trying to return to stillness. The shape of the wave is its effort to return to stillness. So I feel the stillness of the tree as well as the movement of the tree.

[44:01]

And the movement and the stillness are closely related. And I start feeling, when I really feel that, my body responds to that. I find that the trunk of the tree is something like my own trunk. We call it in English the trunk of the body. It's like my own trunk. Mein eigener Stamm. Do you say that in German? No. Yeah, we say Körperstamm. Yeah, okay. Yeah, doctors.

[45:02]

Oh, thank you, doctor. Okay. So you can even start feeling the kind of roots that are holding the stillness of the trunk. Okay. And if you feel the activity of the trees and the insects and the birds and the movement and all that, it's actually a space. the activity is occurring in a space. It's defining a space, making a space. And the tree makes that space and needs that space. And that makes me feel my own space. So the presence and space of the tree calls forth my own space and presence.

[46:18]

And that's very different than seeing the tree as just a tree. If I get in the habit of seeing the activity of the tree, I immediately feel the presence of the tree. And a presence, an experienced presence. A presence that calls forth the activity and presence of the tree in me. And as soon as I feel the presence of the tree and my own presence, Those presences are clearly connected. So, you know, not just feel this occasionally or have some kind of sense of this now and then.

[47:28]

You really get used to feeling that when you look at a tree. And then you also, when you see a person, you may immediately feel the presence of the person and your own presence awaken through that. And the presence of another person doesn't fit into any categories or concepts. So you're in the midst of the presence of each person and the presence of all of you at once. And that difference arises by first understanding that things are activities and not entities.

[48:51]

And then practicing that, enacting that. Enacting that until it's a new habit, as I say, that you inhabit. Yeah, yeah. And it begins to be how you. All appearances are appearances, first of all, through presence. Through presence. And then you bring concepts into it. Okay, so let's have a break.

[49:49]

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