I heard you had a rather animated, noisy discussion yesterday afternoon. And of course, there's no way you could repeat all of it to me. Yeah, and we're ending a little around noon or one o'clock, so... even if there is not time. But I'd still like to hear something about what came up for you. And I heard one question was, is the one who's not busy something we generate or is it something that already exists?

[01:04]

Is that some question people have? So maybe, you know, I could... That's an important question, but right now I'll just say, I'll just ask, does anybody want, have something you'd like to bring up? Please, have something. Okay, yes. I've been dealing with the image of the tree I've been interested in this image you gave us of the tree, that the tree is simply where it is and sometimes there are more trees growing and sometimes there are less trees growing.

[02:15]

at this question about essence or Buddha nature or something like that and maybe I simply like the image of thinking of a tree that grows in an environment and thinking that it's not an entity. I like actually exploring further that image. How is it not one Well, you said enough. I don't think I have to add anything. But the basic question is, how is duration established? If we live on the knife edge of the past disappearing and the future appearing, why does the present have any duration at all?

[03:48]

Well, the duration of the present is in our senses and in the way we scan the world. And we have something to say, something... We're a participant in this duration. And our participation in the duration has something to do with the experience of time. Like a child's time is really different. Their experience of duration is very different than adults.

[05:04]

But in meditation or in Sashin, sometimes we enter into the kind of duration which is commonly childhood, a child's time. So the basic idea in a yogic culture is that time ripens. It's not just the children, the kids playing around here, actually living in a different time than us. It's not... just some kind of experience and the clock time is real. The units of experience in a moment or something like that are much greater. And with our tendency to generalize our experience we're not in the details of our experience.

[06:14]

Well, it's not just children. Each one of you is in a different time. And part of the practice of mindful attention or mindfulness is to be able to know the time of each person you meet. And feel the ripening in each of us. I wasn't going to say anything. But the location of the tree is actually an activity. The tree is always relocating itself, reestablishing itself.

[07:30]

Okay, someone else. Yes. I noticed some change since I was here for Sashin. In you or in the place? In me. When I come in the Zen-do, it seems as if the body remembers the intensity. It's immediately the feeling of having arrived Just there, just this, just seeing. And with all these justs, you might think it's narrow.

[08:46]

Limited, but it's the opposite. It feels deep and wide and without limitations. Well, you should come back. No. Yeah, just this, that practice widens the spaces of the world. Someone else Yeah In addition to the question that came up yesterday about the one who is not busy, is this someone who is always there and just needs awareness, or is this just the awareness that makes it there?

[10:02]

Is it inherent or not inherent? I ask myself the question, what about breathing? From my conceptual thinking I can tell breathing is always there, at least as long as I am alive. But I'm not always aware of my breathing. So is breathing, can I go that far that I tell breathing is just there when I'm aware? Is it not there when I'm not aware? I cannot tell breathing is inherent and I have to sort of... generally the mind in which breathing appears. And then can I tell, well, then breathing is there. Can I go that far and say, when there is no mind in which breathing appears, can I tell, well, then there is no breathing. How far can I go in that?

[11:04]

Yeah, Deutsch, Peter. After yesterday I was asked in the group that I am busy, is that something in us that is always there and we have to think about it and we have to create it and then let it be there, or do we create it and it is not there? and I would like to ask myself the question, how is it with breathing? I know from my thinking that as long as I live I breathe, so one could also say that breathing is always there, at least as long as I live, but there is also a spirit where the breath appears, or I am not always conscious of my breathing, and then I can really go so far and say that the breath is only there, when I consciously breathe and otherwise I have no breath.

[12:08]

How can I go about such an experience or think about it? Sri Kriyoshi was asked, you may probably know the story, was asked, if a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, is there any sound? You probably know this story. Suzuki Rashi was once asked how it is when a tree falls in the forest and no one is there and hears it, whether there is still a sound. And Suzuki Rashi said, it doesn't matter. So much for that problem. That's your way of looking at it. It's a good way to explore it, I think. I wouldn't say the breath is always there. I would say it's usually there. And of course it's there in different ways.

[13:29]

But we who practice know that there's a big difference when we're aware of the breath and when we're not aware of the breath. And the breath is the main way to weave mind and body together. And take our attention away from... Identifying with thought and bring our attention into identifying through the body and the world. Yeah, so it makes a big difference. We can say the to some extent, the one who's not busy, whatever we generally mean by that, is present, but it makes a difference for sure when we notice it.

[14:57]

Yeah, now the difference here is that... As I said, I think it's a good way to explore the two. But the physical breath and the mental, bodily attention to the breath is really in the realm of our activity. But this one who is not busy is a concept.

[16:00]

It's an experience and it's also a concept. And it's a concept which carries a lot of teachings. So when you know the one who's not busy, you also enter into a way of knowing many teachings. Then I'll try to make, before we end, I'll try to make some partial sense of that. Someone else. Yes. I remember that many years ago you talked about the unperturbable mind. Unperturbable mind. Un and in, yeah. French and German.

[17:03]

I was wondering... if that quality is also in the one who is not busy. It came to my mind, maybe it's the same, I don't know. Deutsch, bitte. Well, we could say the one who is not busy relates, is a way of... integrating knowing the one who's not busy. Are you sure? What? You said the one who's not busy is a way of integrating.

[18:07]

No, no, I started and I stopped and I'm starting over again. Knowing the one who's not busy is practically a way of integrating our mind and our activity. Imperturbable mind, although obviously it's the same territory, is a much more powerful mode of mind and being which is inseparable from our activity but unable to be disturbed by our activity. And it's called, another word for it is the iron being.

[19:12]

That doesn't mean you're ironing. I like ironing too, you know. She doesn't believe it, but it's all right. Okay. Your practice has to be much more developed for this imperturbable mind to be present. But eventually you find There's a state of mind, a flow of mind, a continuum of mind that is the same in every situation, but it doesn't interfere with the differentiation of each situation.

[20:17]

It's the same in each situation. But it doesn't interfere with the differentiation of each situation. Okay. Someone else. Oh, good. If I get to talk all the time, I expect you to. Not all the time, but... So, I think maybe it's unavoidable that you mention once more the double moon. Because since we talked so much yesterday about the... the mind that's busy and the mind that's not busy.

[21:38]

And then it sort of is clear that there's a double norm, right? Or I conclude from that. But from my own experience, I think it's something that's in between the two that's kind of the fun part of it somehow. So when it actually happens that you get that gap that within the sort of narrowness of your own busyness, the world kind of gets wider and sort of slows down and things get more bubbly and alive. It's that in-between of those two. It's neither nor or it's not only that one or the other one. It's something in-between. Maybe that's interesting. Deutschman. After we talked so much yesterday about the busy spirit and the spirit that is not busy, it is somehow inevitable, at least for me, that I think there is this double moon. And yet, when I have the experience, within the restriction of business that I made, when it opens up and I feel this other spirit,

[22:47]

where everything suddenly stops or is slow and it feels much blubberier and more alive that it is this game between the two because I am not just the one or the other only that this interplay between the two is exciting Well, the double moon is partly, as is often typical in Zen stories, a monkey wrench. How do you know that? How do you know that? A monkey wrench is a regular big wrench, but the term is used when you throw it in the machinery, like when you're a labor activist and you don't like the Ford Motor Company's things, you throw a monkey wrench in the machine and no one's looking.

[24:03]

That's where it comes from. It's a trap almost. It's a trap, a kind of trap. So it's something that's there to make you think, to make you doubt. As long as you doubt, you're not really clear. So from the point of view of the one who is busy, maybe we can say there's two things. But if my breath right now is in my words and thinking, There's no double moon.

[25:05]

There's not two things. If my mind is going somewhere and I'm talking out of one part of my mind and my breath doing something else, then, yeah, there's, you know, many phases of the moon. Now that's looking at it from an experiential point of view. But there's often also philosophical aspects to this monkey wrench. Which is the idea of a basis of reality, a ground, a reality body, as the koan says. If there's some reality ground, you don't have emptiness. So it's also Daowu is testing or fooling around with.

[26:35]

Of course these koans are almost certainly composed later. They're not necessarily exactly what was said. They're composed as teaching devices. I think they're mostly Sung Dynasty creations projected back into the Tang Dynasty protagonists. It doesn't make them less true. It makes them more true in a fundamental sense. Okay. Someone else. We talked about it yesterday, that it might be possible for some of us, or maybe for all of us, that you can feel this spirit that is not conditioned in a simple activity, for example, like plowing the farm.

[27:57]

We've talked about yesterday that for some of us, or maybe all of us, it's possible to feel the one who's not busy when being engaged in some kind of simplistic activity like sweeping. But is that also possible when you have to do your tax declaration? No. But it's possible when you die. But it's possible when you die. Maybe you don't have that expression in Germany. In America we say there's only two things you have to do, pay taxes and die. And I think it's even more true in Germany than America. Okay. Yeah, but if you practice it in things like sweetening,

[29:03]

When I lived in monasteries in Japan, the thing that drives you nuts is you sweep nothing. You sweep the same place you swept yesterday and there's nothing there. You sweep the same place you swept yesterday and there's nothing there. But you get used to it actually. The one who's not busy because he's not got a damn thing to do. But what you... No, what you do is when you... is you take your broom and you hold it. This is the custom. Take your broom, you hold it. And then you draw a line down your front like this. And you feel the broom in that line and in your backbone. And then you sweep with the feeling of it's extending from the backbone.

[30:30]

And such practices help you. Once you get a feeling of it, such simple practices help you extend it to more complex situations. And you find in very complicated situations, like you're nearly in the midst of a car accident, something that can be a tremendous calmness and clarity. And now there's a common sports term, in the zone. And now there is this general expression of sport in the zone.

[31:57]

I don't know if it's also in German. No, no, no. In the zone, okay. In the zone. And tennis players, for example, others too, but tennis players will talk about suddenly they're in a space where they can feel the ball, where it's going to go. It comes very slowly to them. They swing very slowly. That's another kind of time, and that's called in the zone. But the term was probably created by Michael Murphy when he studied, as a meditator, sports. Part of the concept of the one who's not busy... If we take the... the educational process that's going on when you are, say, a tennis player.

[33:27]

At a certain point, the demands of the game shift you into the zone. And part of the emphasis in this koan And not just calling it have a calm abiding mind. Whenever I say the term calm abiding mind, which is a technical term, I can't forget the Berlin lecture when I was mistranslated. And Nico knew I was going to say this before I even thought about it. Can't I be original? Anyway, I was giving this lecture and I was speaking about calm, abiding mind.

[34:43]

It was a pretty big lecture. There were, I don't know, maybe 200 or 300 people. Everybody started looking funnier and funnier. And it was the time of one of those early computer games called Pac-Man. Do you remember Pac-Man? Anyway, so she was trans... She, he, he... I can visualize, see the room, but... I think it was a man trans... It was a man translating, yeah? And he was translating it, karma-biting mind. And everybody had this image of this little karma-biting mind. So I don't say in this koan, it doesn't say calm abiding mind.

[36:01]

See, I only tell stories like this at Christmas time and New Year's anymore. Because you should have a few amusing things, you know. That's a serious practice. This seminar has become pretty serious about how we practice. So to say calm abiding mind would just be to designate a kind of mind. But this particular image has a different effect. Like the game of tennis can educate you into the zone, What this koan is suggesting is that when you taste or feel the one who's not busy, the one who's not busy can sort of take hold of you and show you how to continue it.

[37:29]

No, we should have a break soon. So let me say something about whether the one who's not busy is created or generated. I mean, inherent or generated. Of course this is Buddhism, so it has to be generated. And also, that's completely my experience. But we have to be cautious about, so I think one thing, we have to be cautious about very convincing metaphors.

[38:37]

For example, the ocean waves and the still water. And the water is always somehow inherently still. Even when it's waves in a rough storm, these outside influences of the storm, it still wants to be still. Otherwise it would fly off into clouds, which it does. But that convincing metaphor that water is somehow inherent, even inherently still, even when it's active, is parallel to the view of many Buddhist schools that the mind is inherently still and pure and we add things to it, like storms, etc.

[40:00]

Desires, ignorance. And if we take away desire and afflictions and so forth, the mind will return to its inherent stillness and purity. I would say it's a kind of popular Buddhism. And it works up to a point. But it's not the way we actually exist. So let's just go back to the metaphor of the water. I mean, the water is two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The water itself is a construct.

[41:19]

And likewise, we, of course, you're born and there's water on the planet before you were born. Yeah, they think there's water on Mars now. Anyway, but Sophia is always asking me, okay, but how did the first water get there? This morning we went back to the Big Bang and I said, so how did the Big Bang get there? Most of these questions I just have to say, you know, no one knows. I'm sorry. Yeah. I mean, it's easier to believe in God than the Big Bang. Yeah. Okay. Um... But there's more evidence for the Big Bang.

[42:39]

Excuse me, I hope I'm not offending anybody. Okay, so... So there's water before we were born. And there's parents before we were born. We have this, what is the face? One of the sayings in Zen is, what is the face before we were born? So we don't start with zero. You start with some genetic disposition. And you start with... maybe even being spanked to breathe. So the one who's not busy is something you, the potential is there, to some extent it's there, but the development of it so it's the way you exist from moment to moment is generated. And this relates to a misunderstanding of enlightenment.

[44:02]

Suddenly an enlightened experience makes you know everything. But enlightenment experience can make you able to know many things differently and seemingly more accurately. Yeah. So we get a taste of... we get a taste of that quality, sometimes in particular circumstances, that we could call the one who's not busy.

[45:24]

But as a practice, that taste is a starting point. You mature and develop this experience. And the many small enlightenment experiences we have, and sometimes big ones, also can be and need to be matured and developed. So let's have a break. Thank you very much.

[45:59]

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