I recently came in touch with something that made me think it may have something to do with the four propositions. And so that was so spatial, different spatial experiences. First in the orioki, the feeling of being in the middle of appearances. also a simultaneity of everything. And what this was, was a kind of spatial experience. Also during the Aoyoki, I felt as though I was in the midst of appearances.

[01:06]

I went out and went down the path, and suddenly it was as if It's like if I were to notice how everything around me is expressed. and I went then outside and walked up the path and it was as though everything around me became a kind of expression, expressed. And a little to me, yes, in my direction, and so fast a little almost as though it was speaking something. And then I stopped, and it was as though something strange, something foreign entered me, something new, but somehow also new.

[02:30]

strange, foreign. And I then, I just watched and I lay down, because I simply wanted to see the sky. And this may sound romantic, but there actually was no feeling of this being romantic at all. Nothing wrong with a little romance. Nothing wrong with a little romance. And then I looked and the silence and everything. And then I suddenly thought, in a few days I'll be back in Vienna and everything will be so loud. And then I, you know, I still observed things and there was, it was so silent and then I thought, oh yeah, and in a few days I'll be back in Vienna and everything will be really noisy again.

[04:02]

And then it was somehow so clear And somehow it was very clear that even though I am in Vienna, I am also here. And then what came up was something like, what is this anyway, what's lying there? And it became so fragile all of a sudden. And then the text from the koan kind of occurred to me, there's no difference between meeting and true friendship, there's no difference between meeting and not meeting.

[05:25]

Okay, thank you. Both and. Well, let's start with her. And what Krista was just saying, I have had a similar experience in Taisho, during Keshav. While you were translating? Yes, I live while I'm translating. Oh really? Okay. While you were talking about the neither-nor. Yeah, and I was also living.

[06:29]

Yeah. This doesn't exist. But you can't also say that it doesn't exist. It was like the things were playing the flute. It was like the things were playing the flute. Like you said, like things were communicating with each other. Mm-hmm. It was like a really heart-rending dialogue. Mm-hmm. And a little bit like a love affair. With non-existence? Well...

[07:30]

It's the safest kind of love affair. More like the whole universe between the whole universe and the room in which I appear. It's the universe. The whole universe and the room in which the universe appears. The space. Space, yeah. Okay. Period. Period. I don't think there's any period. Yeah, Chandrakirti or someone said, Neither existence nor non-existence. His freedom.

[08:49]

Yes, Dirk? Because I think, through your explanation, it became much more conscious, much more present, to play the role of form and emptiness. And I only read it before, but did not perceive it. But I already know experiences that I have had, that I see in my mind, that I have actually already applied that there. And your experience is very current. I have an older one, she might be a little funny, but I think she also shows what freedom is. This koan is a lot of fun for me, and I become much more aware of the dialogue or the play between form and emptiness.

[09:55]

I've read about it before, but I've never really made it my own or something. Now, there's an experience that may be a little funny. It's an experience that I've had a while ago. There's one thing I have to say in advance that judges often are rather difficult persons because they are used to having the last word. So I really like Taisho and Dokusan where I don't have the last word. And I had this one colleague and I had to work with her and every time she entered the room I was suffering physically. Because she was about to get the last word? And I didn't know at the time that it was actually a bit like that with the four positions, but I realized that it is so unpleasant only on one reality level.

[11:27]

It is, it is not, it is both and it is neither. And that gave me the freedom to choose the reality level in which it is asked here. And I didn't know at the time that this was about the four impositions, but I did figure this out in a way that I realized that she's only this pain in the neck on one area of reality. And she is, and she's also not. She's a pain somewhere else sometimes. both and, and she's neither nor, and that in this there's a freedom that allowed me to... Yeah, that's good. To live with her. To work with her. Yeah. Not live with her. Yeah. She said live with her. I thought, well, that was quick. From pain in the neck to, you know... Okay.

[12:34]

Well, I don't like to get the last word. I feel always better if other people like what's happening right now. But I like to get the most words. I'm just joking. I'm stuck with the most words. Stephanie? You haven't said anything yet. Oh, spotlight. Um... I guess I could say one thing that I've found very, or many things I've found helpful, but particularly this idea of moving into more of a spatial field. And I remember during one of the many periods of zazen, but one in particular, I kept feeling some patience for the douan to ring in the bell.

[13:59]

And I kind of dropped into realizing that I was sort of really existing in a sort of temporal way, in a very tight frame. So when I was able to move more to a spatial awareness, the impatience dissipated a lot. And also enabled me to get more of a sense of the continuum. So rather than everything being kind of in a timeline, these entities that exist in this timeline, But during the talk today, our discussion group were discussing memories.

[15:10]

So then I started wondering perhaps this continuum can also exist through time as well as through space. No, I haven't quite got that yet. Well, this special feeling must really fit with your tai chi practice. Tara? I would like to clarify something for myself and that may be rather banal or even dumb. I experience the world as entity because I learned this as a concept to perceive the world this way.

[16:43]

And when a while ago I began to practice with seeing it as an activity, And ever since many things appear to me as an activity and it's then completely clear that this is an activity. It is a concept, I would say it is a new concept with which I look at the world and so I experience it differently than before. This is a concept and now it is as though I'm experiencing through this concept the world differently than I did before. And so in some sense I discarded the entity and jumped at activity.

[17:54]

And what became so clear to me today is that Both and and neither nor. It is both and because ... It is both and because both is a concept and how can I know which concept is the truer one or something and then what's left somehow is neither nor. I don't think there's any definition that would call that banal. But actually, this is so logical, it's so clear.

[19:10]

Yes. That's good, isn't it? I mean, the basic process of practice is concepts. But then you begin to see you live in concepts. And then you begin to feel the edges of concepts or how concepts limit your experience. Und dann beginnst du die Ränder der Konzepte zu sehen und zu sehen, wie die Konzepte deine Erfahrung begrenzen. And then you begin to work with antidotal concepts. Und dann beginnst du mit Konzepten als Gegenmittel zu arbeiten. That are antidotes to the concepts you already have. Die also Gegenmittel zu den Konzepten sind, die du schon hast.

[20:11]

Sort of you fight fire with fire. So you use concepts to free yourself from concepts. And that's much of what the koans are about. And then the next step is to be free from concepts, both. And to be free from the antidote concepts. Okay, someone else. Yes. At the moment, I can't really relate my practice to your Teixo adjustment. Throughout this entire time I've tried to enliven phenomena, to make them alive or to try to see transients. And with what you said just now, I somehow don't know how that can be practiced together.

[21:28]

This today somehow is more like seeing the mind that sees this. Today's Tesha or today's Rakhine? I don't know if I understood the Teisho correctly. It sounds good. Oh, it sounds what you say. It sounds okay to me. So we have a concept of permanence. Or even if you're a bit smart, observant, you have a concept of impermanence but you live with an implicit sense of permanence. But then you develop a concept of transience.

[22:33]

And then you find a way to practice that transience, feeling of transience, which frees you from the concept of permanence. Then you see the concept of transience is somehow limiting. And the concept of transience only makes sense in relationship to the concept of permanence. And then you say, let's get rid of both. That's basically the pattern of practice. So what is there not to understand? You understand very well. Yes.

[23:52]

This fits with a question that I had in the small group already. I said there already that this week there were a few knots that are in my head, no? K, not N. K, yeah, knots, yeah. Knots, not, not, knots, like negatives, associations. I didn't understand either. The question goes something like this. When we grow up, when we are adults, Or as soon as we are adults there are always concepts.

[25:05]

and even if we have a phase in which we just live in experience but then still the concepts are in the background it's like one of these background-foreground phenomena. as soon as I step out of this pure experience I put that into the categories of a concept of what has just happened. And even what I experience in this phase is influenced by the concept that I held when I entered this phase.

[26:37]

So that there's a permanent dialogue between concept and experience. A continuous dialogue. Yeah. Yeah, that's what he meant. Yeah. So, Entschuldigung, das heißt... So that means that in this sense there can't be a freedom from concepts because this template or something always runs in the background. Yes, philosophically that's the case. But experientially it's not the case. I mean, the concept that there are no concepts is a concept. So, but the concept that there are no concepts affects us very differently than the concept that there are concepts.

[27:45]

Or just concepts. Okay. So there's three positions. There's only concepts that are not recognized as concepts but considered to be the way the world is. Could everyone hear the gentleman? Okay, so that's considered in Yogacara Buddhism, imagination. Then you know that the concepts are concepts and not reality itself. And that's called the relative world. And then you know freedom from concepts, and that's called the absolute world, the fundamental world.

[29:09]

But practically speaking, all three are present. As you say, if you go through the door of a concept into concept free, or something like that, let's say, The door you went through influences the non-door you experience. It's just the way it is. Okay. All right. But if the dynamic of your existence... and the definitional dynamic of your existence, let's even say if you have a non-definitional definition, And yet concepts are in the background somewhere.

[30:22]

That's a very, very different situation when concepts are defining your life. And the mature practitioner, the concepts are more and more in the background. And there may be occasional experiences which are sometimes realization and enlightenment experiences. When you do really feel concept-free, and often in those experiences, you re-enter concepts, because eventually you re-enter concepts or you're going to get hungry. Yeah, but you often enter through a different door than you went in.

[31:39]

Then we call that an enlightenment experience. Sometimes I say, you know, we're not black and white, only Hai and Zhang are black and white. We're always a spectrum. So I say, if you're in the process of picking up your luggage, that's one state of mind. If you're in a process of putting down your luggage, you've still got the luggage, but you're putting it down now, that's a different state of mind. So when we're moving on the spectrum, we're moving toward less concepts.

[32:42]

That's a different dynamic than moving toward more concepts. Just like you can really notice when you're loaded with self-referential thinking, you're anxious, nervous, hurt. Whatever. And when you have very little self-referential thinking. There may be still some, but that's very different than having a lot of self-referential thinking. And often, I mean, if you're very compulsive and unable to get free of self-referential thinking, you're probably crazy.

[33:44]

Sanity is maybe measured by the degree to which you're free from self-referential thinking. Okay. Yes, Nico. Roshi, yesterday in the lecture you used this antinomy of entity thinking and non-entity thinking. And I'm trying to get a feeling for this territory of non-entity thinking. But it seems to me to be a contradiction in itself.

[34:46]

or my idea of what thinking is, which is that it necessarily plays in the realm of concepts and words and ideas or terms. So maybe my understanding doesn't reach far enough or something, but I'm trying to get a feeling for what this could be, this non-entity thinking. But if you would speak about non-entity awareness, that I would say is a territory that I'm familiar with, but non-entity thinking is something I don't understand. So let's not use non-entity then for now. Let's contrast entity thinking with activity thinking. Let's put the thinking of entities in contrast with the thinking of activities.

[36:07]

That's more... more... more... ...experienceable. More accessible. Okay. So, when you do... When I notice the tree is treeing, that's thinking. Okay, but there's some differences. There's thinking, which thinking leads to thinking. And that's called, usually, if you want to be negative about it, monkey mind. Or borrowed consciousness. So when you're in borrowed consciousness, it's usually thinking leads to thinking leads to thinking about thinking and so forth. Okay. But if you think, if you know and you think the activity of things,

[37:09]

the thinking activity leads to activity, not to more thinking. Or it may lead to more observations, like, oh, there's insects on the tree. But there's a difference between a mental formation which we call observation and a mental formation we call thinking. So all mental formations are not thinking. Okay. but when you do treeing do you think treeing or do you feel the tree you start out thinking as a practice you start out thinking treeing because it's an antidote to the tree so you have the concept I see a tree after practice and wisdom you're in the five dharmas you add right discrimination right knowledge

[38:53]

I don't know where to start the translation now. This was all English. Sorry. You bad boy. You know German so well. Now we get a... At last. At last. Now we get a treat. Thank you. Okay, so there's the appearance of tree, right?

[40:37]

So, once the concept of tree appears, at least in the beginning practice and developing the practice, you counteract it with the concept of treeing. And then you use that word treeing as the platform, the jumping off point, into observing the tree without thinking about it. Okay. Can that be clear? Right. Okay. So what you've done is you're simply following this pattern.

[41:43]

You've stopped something appears and you name it and your metamindfulness is subtle enough now you can really feel the naming start the name on the airplane so you stop before you start discriminating about it And you give it a wisdom name as an antidote to this name. And the wisdom name is tree. And treeing is the result of right knowledge. Which leads you into the activity of the tree.

[42:52]

And if you really feel that, eventually you are led to the stillness and activity of the tree and then the field or the space of the tree. And the space of the tree is suchness. Isn't it simple? All you have to do is learn to use these things. And learn to bring them into your activity. Bring them into your activity until... You don't even have to say treeing. What you do is experience the suchness of the tree. Yeah, as Myokin Roshi says, he studied philosophy in the university as well as music. And later, after he started practicing, he went back to the text that he studied in philosophy.

[44:14]

And they were much clearer because he practiced. So we're taking the Techelema and practicing. And the result is far beyond most philosophical views of the Tetralemma, which is a kind of mind game. And I think most philosophers would say that the four propositions include all the viewpoints. but they don't really follow the fourth proposition which is none of the above which is neither nor even of the propositions and that's called an aporetic territory or something

[45:19]

Where you are in the experience of indeterminacy. Which is where modern physics has brought us too. Yes. Uncertainty. [...] I'm not sending you home. I'm actually going to ask you to stay. Except he said, well, he can stay, but I need a drive. No, we're hoping to send you home with a full stomach. And one hand empty and one hand still a little bit wondering what to do.

[46:37]

Now that I'm up here, what next? Yes, Manuel. You talked about the silence of the tree. But when I talk about the tree, You spoke about the stillness of the tree, but when I apply treeing, then it's not still at all. There are birds and all these things. So what's meant when you say stillness of the tree? What is meant when you see a wave? If you study, again, the shape of the wave, the shape is formed from stillness and the only time it doesn't is when water evaporates into the air But the physics of the geometry, I don't know what, of the shape of the wave is clearly determined by every molecule wants to go back to stillness.

[47:58]

So in the activity of the wave you can feel the stillness because it's actually there. So it's both and. So when you see a tree the tree leaves don't fly off because they're returning to stillness. Now in practice, you can see in people that when you're standing in front of something, You can see often their agitation is based on wanting to be still. They're agitated partly because they're agitated. Something may be agitating them, but even that agitation is they'd like to return to stillness.

[49:15]

So the bodhisattva practice is to be in front of a person or be with a person and help them return to stillness. So my stillness interferes with the stillness of the person I'm with. Interferes or help. Yeah. Yeah. Changes. Yeah. Well, Dogen says arrival hinders arrival. The very act of arriving interferes with arriving. That's the way the world is. You can't stick it into one concept. You can't stick it into one concept, but you can be...

[50:19]

and free it from concepts. Now, one way to try to practice this feeling the stillness of another person is with your breath and body. Or feel each person that you meet is always in a process of disintegration and integration. And most people are hopefully mostly in the process of integration. Some people are mostly in the process of disintegration. And this may sound a little funny to say, but I have found that when I'm with a person who's really in the process of disintegration,

[51:40]

Das ist vielleicht was Merkwürdiges, was ich sage, aber ich habe herausgefunden, dass wenn ich mit einer Person Zeit verbringe, die wirklich im Prozess der Desintegration ist, dann kann ich das riechen. Also Leute, die wirklich unter Schizophrenie leiden, die haben einen ganz unangenehmen Geruch. Okay. So, another way to experience the stillness or integration of another person is that the idea of the third eye has some meaning. And it's one of the areas that becomes active through practice. And you imagine you're looking at the person through the third eye. But you're seeing them without, inside or outside, with the third eye.

[52:58]

And my opinion is, it's actually happening, but it requires an imagination before you actually begin to feel it. And our Buddhas here, for instance, and Bodhisattvas, are not objects of worship. And even it's kind of like the outer form. But really, they're good figures if they awaken the Sambhogakaya body. So when you offer incense at the altar, The reason you take the incense and you put it like this is you connect the third eye and the Buddha with your eye with a little spot of flame.

[54:03]

And this is made out of wood fitted together And this figure, which is made of wood, reminds and awakens your own Sambhogakaya body. As if you look at the wonderful female Avalokiteshvara, Kuan Yin, on the left side of the altar. The chakras are all in her posture and her ornaments and her dress. So the altar, the figures are not there to worship, the figures are there to awaken you. How is it looking through the third eye without inside or outside?

[55:12]

Better do it. Do you think that I'm that articulate? I failed. Rather than that. Can I speak English? If you prefer. Speaking about entities and activities, I felt different models. And I felt different memories. And I felt they didn't mingle. They didn't mingle. No, I can't go from the one to the other. That's true. That's my opinion. It's confusing me. We are different people with different histories at different levels.

[56:13]

And among those different people, One of them is a Buddha. With the accumulated history of a Buddha which you haven't put together. Okay. Maybe that's a good place to stop. Okay.

[57:11]

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