or the movement toward openness or emptiness. And there are different ways of saying nearly the same thing. So, for instance, I spoke about the inner smile. Now, again, I'm trying in Buddhist practice to make the so-called spiritual world tangible. So let's use the smile as an example. When you smile, you may also smile from the divided world. But when you smile, even from the divided world, partly the undivided world smiles. So a smile awakens the undivided world. So sometimes you'll smile perhaps like a baby in a way that arises for no reason from the undivided world.

[01:21]

You know, there is no reason why just being alive isn't a joy. Except we have a lot of ideas that it's not. Okay, so as if the undivided world can just rise into a smile, or into a coolness on your eyes, then it means this spiritual stuff is tangible. It's manifesting as a feeling or as a smile. So if you smile, it may arise from the undivided world, or if you smile, it may make the undivided world arise.

[02:34]

So if you've traveled in Asia, like Thailand, you'll see people smile all the time. And they're smiling as a Buddhist practice. So this, there's a saying of a, somebody says, Dung Shan says, I've heard about the teaching of the insentient. Or we could say how the whole world is a sutra, a scripture. Or in this koan we were looking at recently in Holland.

[03:38]

The whole world is the student's or the adept's eye. Those are all ways of saying I don't hear the teaching of the world as scripture. I don't hear the teaching of the insentient. The teaching of the insentient. And his teacher says to him, although you do not hear it, Do not hinder that which hears it. So, do you see what I mean? It's asking you to get out of the way of wholeness.

[04:41]

And Zazen practice is an attempt to find that negotiation which allows you to get out of the way of wholeness. And when you really feel that, this is called entering the way. You could even say it's like entering a zone, as they say in tennis. I don't know the expression in German in tennis. Well, zone, an area, a zone, yeah. Sometimes you might be writing or painting or trying to work on something that you're doing. And suddenly it starts coming easily. And that happens when you're not interfering with it.

[05:45]

And in tennis they have this term which you enter a zone when you can't seem to do anything wrong. And I've known a couple of the top tennis players in the world. And they say that it's how much you practice and your basic talent. But the third quality that not everyone has, and it's not related to how much you practice exactly your talent, but this ability to zone or enter a zone. When you're not doing the tennis anymore. But those are just experiences that people have which are close to this kind of territory of this movement toward wholeness.

[06:57]

And it often comes to you through concentration. So in zazen you're also trying to while you're trying to do this negotiation of not interfering with yourself of practicing with what comes up when it comes up following a thought to its source of following a feeling where it takes you And maybe even pushing it a little bit. But then also relaxing when it occurs to you to relax. I think it was Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was the American transcendentalist, and with William James who wrote the Varieties of Religious Experience and others in that period quite influenced by Asia by the Upanishads and stuff too who were actually continuing for Europe

[08:22]

What had been lost in the European culture at the time is a kind of intellectual tolerance and experimentation. And the great sort of wars between Protestants and Catholics in Europe led to this certain tradition of tolerance to go to America. And then back. And so Europe, in that sense, America is very much a part of the European intellectual tradition. Now here's Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a preacher. Who left the church at one point. He wrote on his door post. Whim. W-H-I-M. Whim. Anybody know how to translate it?

[09:43]

Whimp. It means a whimp. Why did you do something? I did it on a whimp. I did it just because I thought of it. I did it just because spontaneously I wanted to. Anyway, what it means, whim means, it's a word that sounds superficial. Why'd you walk down the lake this afternoon when you're supposed to be studying? I did it on a whim. But if someone said to you why did you go to college? If you said I did it on a whim You'd either sound very foolish or extremely sophisticated. Yeah, sophistic, yeah. But here he wrote this down as a kind of, in the end, what his sense of life came to, which is to be responsive to whim.

[11:06]

Not be so serious. But not being so serious allows this movement toward wholeness to arise. This word has perplexed a lot of serious intellectual critics of Emerson. Okay, yeah, something else? Yes. Maybe say something. about negotiation in meditation with the feeling of continuity of time.

[12:10]

Is there a time? I mean, not handling and doing something with it in a soft way, but in what direction? What is your experience? My experience now is that I cut time to pieces. When you do Zazen or in general? In Zazen. Uh-huh. Well, time is the... We've been practicing together for some time, and as you know, time is the primary definition of continuity for the self and for being itself.

[13:23]

Okay, and as I've often quoted, I believe it's Immanuel Kant saying, the continuity and integrity of time is the, how's it go? Continuity and integrity of self. Over time, the most fundamental... Yeah, go ahead, can you do it in German? Over time, yeah. That's not true in Buddhism. In Asian culture and in Buddhism, the experience of continuity is spatial, not temporal. So you tend to reside in a feeling of space as continuity, not in a feeling of time as continuity.

[14:35]

Now, this is Manjushri. Manju in Japanese. And it's the bodhisattva of discriminating awareness. And You could call him the butcher of time. Because he's the Bodhisattva, he and she. Well, she felt a little shy. Is... is cutting the cuts. Normally we divide the world.

[15:36]

The bodhisattva is using the sword to cut the cuts, to cut the dividing. To end the dividing. And when you end the dividing, well, we'll come to that later. Okay, so one of the things you experience in zazen Sometimes 40 minutes can seem like 5 minutes. And sometimes 40 minutes can seem like 2 or 3 hours. From the point of view of Buddhism, then it's 2 or 3 hours or it's 5 minutes. Now, there's no such thing as time.

[16:40]

It's only a spatial sequence and our experience of the sequence. And things, if they're going to exist in space, then they have to exist in time because it takes time to get across the space. So there's no such thing as space. Space are two windows on a dimension that we don't know. It's a mystery. And we can call it and measure it as space. And we can call it time.

[17:41]

But actually, time and space are the same thing. It's just different ways of looking at the same thing. Okay. So when you're... When you're sitting, we could say that you're often in practice, as your zazen practice gets better, you're moving from sequential being, a sequential identity, to a simultaneous identity. That's why you can't count to ten in zazen. Because everything is happening simultaneously and simultaneous identity hasn't learned how to count.

[18:42]

Only sequential identity has learned how to count. So when you shift to simultaneous identity you actually start cutting time up into pieces or you don't have a continuity of time anymore. When you shift to simultaneous, you start cutting. Now, it's actually a change in the way you get your bearings. For example, as I've used this example a number of times, if you're shopping in a store, and you are doing everything sequentially and so forth, and waiting for your change, suddenly if you start to shift just because you're standing there waiting into zazen mind, you can suddenly lose the sequentiality of perception.

[19:59]

You can even nearly fall over. And you kind of don't know where you are for a minute at all. And I mention it because some people have these experiences when they start zazen and think they're going crazy. And it's not unlikely, I suppose, that a person with tremendous anxiety or something like that could have an experience like that and get completely mixed up. But the more you have this practice of having your seat, you're also beginning to discover the power of being, of just being, which arises from an experience of space and is depleted by an experience of sequentiality and time.

[21:23]

That's a much more complicated answer, I think, than you wanted, maybe. But, yeah, the sense of time is quite different. And sometimes when zazen feels like five minutes, Actually, tremendous much more has happened than in any other five minutes. Because it's happening in a kind of field consciousness rather than a sequential consciousness. And that you can have a feel for, but you can't grasp. Yeah, okay. I'll try to give some short answers. Everything. You want to say that in German? Well, perhaps it would be good for practice, for the sake of practice, to translate all things into each thing.

[22:52]

Into all things, into each thing you meet. And all things summed up in each thing you meet. Mm-hmm. There's, again, a tremendous energy and power in that that arises from the situation all the time. But when you have, anyway, you see. Okay. Something else? Yeah. My question is, is there something that is not a construct, and is mind also a construct? And from my feelings, when I get into the sentence, all is a construct, then it starts to get like, to become a liquid, it all is in some sense floating.

[24:44]

If I get up with this image of the construct, this is Yeah, I think I'll swim over to see you. It's a feeling that I can't function. Well, you just don't know how to function yet. No, that's the way it is. It's all floating. I mean... And that experience of liquid or of floating is not exactly the way it is. But it's the way we start to experience things when we give each thing its own freedom. And it's partly a feeling that arises from the contrast of trying usually to hold everything in place.

[26:00]

You can function. It'll be all right. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a little disconcerting. I mean, it literally says in the beginning phrases, basic teachings of the Prajnaparamita 8000 line sutra. When you can hear this, which you just said, and not be in distress, you are entering the stream of bodhisattva practice. But it's very basic to first feel distress about it.

[27:12]

Yeah. It's a little disconcerting, like the experience of chaos. I mean, you don't know what to do with it. Yeah, but there's no such thing as chaos. It looks like chaos when you try to hold it still. But chaos theory, even chaos theory, is immediately a self-organizing system. Mm-hmm. So it depends whether you're trying to organize things from yourself or you're trying to organize things from your big self.

[28:14]

Now, selflessness in Buddhism or not being selfish doesn't mean you're sacrificing yourself. It means you're transforming or deepening yourself and then joining that self to others in the world. Or we could say it another way. It's not sacrificing yourself. It's recognizing that it's letting small self recognize big self. And big self, which is the world. Sakyurashi used to say that

[29:15]

Self covers everything. So you don't sacrifice yourself. You articulate and manifest yourself in the conventional world. And you know this, and at the same time, or sequentially, you know this big self or big mind which covers everything. Now, in the beginning of practice, you have tastes of it. Feelings of it. As presence, as a little different feeling the way your breath is and things.

[30:35]

So, if you know only conventional reality and you take it as real, you don't have these experiences much or you don't notice them. If you practice, you start noticing or having experiences of the undivided world. And then they begin to happen fairly often. And then you begin to be able to sustain them. And then that practice begins to transform your world. And then it begins to happen not sequentially but simultaneously with everything you're doing. And not interfering with conventional reality. in fact enhancing conventional reality and you still have to live in conventional reality and mature yourself within conventional reality as at the same time you're maturing your continuum in absolute space or the undivided world

[31:46]

So we could say that you, on the one hand, are maturing yourself as story. And as time. And as you practice, you're also being to mature your continuum. And as space. Now, I just laid practice out for you. It happens just like I said. And each of you can do it. And you can have the faith, confidence, trust that it's possible. You need a certain amount of patience and the ability to come into a kind of faith and confidence and concentration

[33:04]

And your practice will mature. See, when you do that, you're increasing your capacity for this way of being. And as you increase your capacity, these experiences we call enlightenment are received more deeply. So much of practice is to create the conditions for the possibility of enlightenment and also create the capacity to receive the experience And the capacity to live it or manifest it.

[34:17]

Something else? Yeah. How can you heal somebody's anger or pain, for instance, and joy at the same time? You want to say that in German? Well, first I can just say you can do it. It's possible. It's the main thing you have to know that it's possible. The rest will come.

[35:17]

I'm trying to think of a way to answer your question practically to give you another feeling for it. Perhaps we can say that you can't feel mental suffering and mental joy at the same time. Now, when you're practicing Buddhism and when you're listening to me talk or you're listening to some teacher talk you're also trying to learn to listen with your body. And I'm trying to speak to you so that much of what I'm saying doesn't get exactly into your mental way of thinking, but gets into your body.

[36:41]

So I don't want to speak in a way that you completely understand what I'm saying. I hope I'm succeeding in that. Because I want your body to feel it. And strangely, if you understand it too well, your body won't feel it. Now, this is also called Duranic memory. And I've talked about Doronic memory. Now, we do live in a certain continuity. And you can't function without that continuity. And one continuity is yourself as a story from birth to however old you are.

[37:44]

You have another continuity in a kind of stopped time. You have a kind of continuity in non-conceptual awareness. And you have experiences in that kind of way. Now, what you're trying to do is, if your continuity is established only conceptually, From a Buddhist point of view, you would live in a world that's not the space of being. So you're learning another vocabulary, which is also another continuity. Which is also another kind of memory.

[39:18]

But it's not a conceptual memory. It's the memory of the body of kind of fields, F-I-E-L-D-S, and of feeling fields, sense fields. Like the mood of a certain day or this feeling of autumn weather this morning. And at that sort of level that you feel autumn coming, that's the level that you learn the teaching. And the more your body begins to know this, The more your body feels wholeness, the more your body feels joy, Because one of the things that happens when you begin to feel this wholeness or completeness all the time, a kind of joy arises.

[40:25]

So to make a kind of simple picture of this, We could say that a bodhisattva's body is feeling spontaneous joy while it's mentally identifying with another person and feeling their suffering but it's more at the mental level. And because your body is filled with a kind of buoyancy Mental suffering does not make you sick. You're not going to get ulcers or other kinds of physical problems that manifest from mental suffering. So the suffering remains mental.

[41:34]

It can be real suffering, but your body can be joyful at the same time. So I think that's pretty accurate. Maybe the bodhisattvas feel a kind of fundamental joy, but they can be quite identified with or have mental suffering. Or you can have physical suffering like somebody sticking a knife in you and you can be quite calm. Because your mind can find its own wholeness. As Ulrike did this morning when she spilled coffee all over herself. Okay. Yeah. Is it possible for the biggest idiot in the world Is it really possible to achieve compassion for the biggest idiot?

[42:57]

No. Now, you wanted me to say yes and you didn't want me to say yes, right? Du wolltest, dass ich ja sage, gleichzeitig aber auch nicht. Actually, it's a lot easier to feel compassion for the biggest idiot than a small idiot who lives with you. Or who lives next door. A real idiot we could feel a lot of compassion for. I mean, there are actually people I don't feel any compassion for.

[44:03]

I mean, people I bear some enmity for. And in one sense, I don't care. I mean, I'm not going to shoot them, so it's all right. But, you know, it's interesting. I watch the feeling, you know, in the sense that you can watch the self-organizing mental factors dimension of the three come up. In a way, it is a self-organizing system. I can see how these mental factors develop when the three come up. I mean, these are people I consider quite damaging people to be on the planet. But I keep practicing with this.

[45:05]

I mean, I feel the presence of it. I don't try to change it. But slowly I'm actually beginning to feel little moments of compassion for them. It surprises me, actually. But I'm, again, not making any special effort. But in general, what we're talking about is an immediate initial reaction that we have for the world. And I'm sure if I saw any of these people that I'm talking about, I would have an immediate, my immediate reaction would be one of compassion and affection. Since I started thinking about it, I said, oh, shit.

[46:07]

So we're talking about a way in which no, your small self can't always feel compassion. But your big self can. And it's not something you can force or anything. And if you come closer to knowing this interiorized space So you feel more complete and whole all the time. It's a lot... Things just affect you differently. You know, as I've said, if you hear some... laughter somewhere from a house in the distance when you're taking a walk and you're feeling a little lonely and rejected and the laughter is happening up there in the house on the hill

[47:20]

And you think they're having fun somewhere. And you even feel worse. But the more you have this experience of interiorized space, the laughter happens in you. It's actually an experience of feeling filled. It's like awareness reaches to every cell of your body. Or we can say you wake up in awakeness. And that experience of waking up and then waking up inside of waking up, you begin to feel quite, whoo, you know? I don't know. I'm being kind of silly, but I mean what I say.

[48:31]

Yeah. Yeah. The same way as a good feeling can reach and fill me, also a negative can as hatred. How do I deal with it? But when you say, I would rather be filled with a good feeling than a bad feeling, this means the communicative power of wholeness is speaking to you. And you're calling the bad feeling bad feeling because it's uncomfortable.

[49:34]

Because it's not whole. Now, if you try to compete with it or combat it with other partial feelings, And you're in a kind of psychological war of trying to be good or bad or getting rid of this. But you're very naming it bad and good. means the feeling of wholeness, now not the power of positive thinking, but the feeling of wholeness will, if you can let it, begin to absorb this other feeling. And usually if you can find the other half of a bad feeling, without getting rid of the bad feeling, just find the other half of it, something starts to happen.

[50:40]

Suzuki Roshi used to say, everybody, any thief steals for his mother. I used to think, oh, come on. But I realize now it's kind of true. Yes. I'm still a little bit irritated about the distinction between mental feelings and fundamental feelings. You mentioned mental suffering and fundamental joy. What is mental suffering, for example? Somebody else want to answer that for me? Want to say it in German? Can you say it again in German?

[51:55]

I would like to talk about the fact that the Bodhisattva, for example, can receive mental suffering from someone else and at the same time feel a fundamental joy. Without the mental suffering from someone else, he can take away this fundamental joy that he feels within himself. Yeah, why does it irritate you? Yeah, it's a problem. I mean, when I was saying it, I didn't like it too much. But I don't know, you see, I don't have words to cope with all this. English has about 600,000 words. But it's not enough to deal with Buddhism.

[52:57]

Partly because Buddhist words are put together differently. No, if we discussed... Maybe mental, it's a little irritating because mental implies it's a construct and in that sense self-created and the self doesn't like to hear that too much. Okay. You want to say that? Maybe with the word mental suffering you have a bit of difficulty, because the mind is already in it, or the form that it is a construct, and that it is somehow self-generated, this suffering, and that the self just doesn't like to hear it, that the suffering of the self is somehow what you create yourself, and that there is a certain restlessness.

[54:03]

Yeah, okay. Okay. Well, let me speak to his thing first about mental suffering.

[55:10]

Now, I think I'm trying to answer your questions. And I'm also trying in the answers not to give a final or right answer exactly. but to share with you a way of thinking about it and try to develop a kind of vocabulary with you to think about it now when I said for instance I mean say that you're sitting having coffee somewhere you're in a cafe somewhere having a strawberry tart and a cappuccino. And someone comes up and says to you, you know, I just heard from your employer and you're going to be fired tomorrow.

[56:18]

And you think... That's mental suffering. Because it originates from a concept. It spreads into your whole body and can make you sick and your feelings and your emotions and everything. So maybe I should have said originating as a concept. That's different than somebody pressing a knife into your back. But if you have this sense of If you don't have a single location where you reside, you can say, oh, I'll think about that tomorrow.

[57:26]

Right now I've finished my strawberry. I'll think about that when I can do something about it. But right now I'm going to have my strawberry carrot and my cappuccino. That's actually possible. Because you're not residing in your thoughts. You're residing somewhere else, maybe in your heart chakra. And... So you know all the ramifications of losing your job, but you can put it aside and allow yourself to continue what you were doing. Okay. Now, the second of what you asked has to do with this practice of sealing. So I think we should come to that after the break.

[58:40]

And I think then we'll try to sort of finish today. And then do whatever we do this evening. Okay, so let's see, it's... 4.40, so let's say 5 o'clock we come back. I'm testing your translation ability. Goody-two-shoes means somebody like a, usually applies to children, who usually keeps their shoes clean and everything is nice, you know. Too nice. Anyway, because I'm talking about joy and happiness and so on. Yeah. And it sounds weird because we do have this sense of psychological theory that says that suffering and joy come in equal unit, equal quantities.

[60:05]

Or that life is actually more suffering than joy and it's a veil of tears and so forth. And if you think about it much, you will start to cry. But it's not understood that way in Buddhism. And it's not understood in the simple sense that we have, like, you know, the simple sense we might have of healing. The word healing means to make whole in English. And the word health means wholeness in English. So, but healing is generally meant to mean like if you cut heels, it's gone.

[61:12]

But Buddhism doesn't understand that... Psychological, mental, emotional wounds heal. Of course, to some extent they heal. But if something big happens to you, personally or through another person, and you lose a spouse or a child, say, this doesn't heal.

[62:14]

The person doesn't come back. So you forget about it maybe, but it doesn't heal. So wholeness in Buddhism would mean the ability to let that suffering continue without getting rid of it. But you don't always have to live in it. So the word wisdom can be understood to mean the ability to live in no location. Or the ability to move the location of where you reside. And that's one of the meanings, again, of chakras.

[63:20]

You can reside in your chakra. Or you can reside in your breath. Or you can reside in space. Or in time. And the ability to do that and move where you locate yourself, that ability is a definition of wisdom. So there may be an ocean of suffering in you, but there's also maybe a sky full of joy, maybe. And sometimes you may go into the water or the swamp, And sometimes you're sitting on the lotus. The roots are still down in the mud. But you can decide whether you want to be in the roots or the stem or sitting up on the lotus leaf looking like a frog.

[64:23]

Or you can decide to be the water. At first you don't decide. You actually find yourself sometimes in the stem and sometimes in the leaf. That wouldn't be wisdom. That would be good luck. Wisdom is the ability to actually decide. feel and decide which place or let yourself live in which place. Excuse me, how would anybody decide to be in the roots then? Because it feels like that's where one should be sometimes. And it's a kind of self-organizing system again. It's not you doing it. So sometimes that's where you are. In some ways you don't have that much to say about it. But again, it's a kind of negotiation.

[65:59]

If it's absolutely necessary, you can change it. Usually you let the change come about gently. Somewhere between letting it happen and encouraging it. Am I conveying the feeling of how you begin this negotiation with the many parts of yourself? Mm-hmm. Now what I'd like to do is sort of finish what we've been talking about to some extent today. And then I'd like us to sit a little bit and then we will end.

[67:00]

No, I can't. Tomorrow we have to talk about equanimity and other dimensions of this whole thing. And have a little more sense of the practice involved. But I'll try to at least relate to what we've talked about so far. It's also assumed in Buddhism that if there's a natural state, that natural state is a joyful state of joyfulness in being itself.

[68:14]

But it's not a joy that's in the language of ordinary thinking. Like joy in contrast to suffering. Or something that's better than something else. It starts out as a kind of acceptance and it has to be... an acceptance of suffering. So in much of practice, you keep going into your suffering. If your legs are hurting when you're sitting and you're not damaging your legs, Or if you have some terrible disease, you know, you have to keep going.

[69:20]

It's much better, I think, in my experience, is to go into that suffering, accept it, and find how to live in it. See if you can reside in it without running away from it. And the more you see how you're constructing it in your interiorized space, you find ways to reside in it. Ulrike this morning said she did feel kind of awed this morning. And out of sorts. But when she just stayed in feeling out of sorts, it was kind of a nice feeling. I'm not talking about a prize at the end of the rainbow.

[70:35]

I'm talking about just accepting how you are each moment. Receiving how you are each moment, that may be deeper than accepting. Receiving the late afternoon of an October day and letting September day Well, October will be here. We have expressions like, even in September, you feel October. So you have this feeling of autumn coming in your own body. Autumn isn't out there.

[71:36]

Autumn is here. Each of you has your own Atum. What did you say? Atum is breath. Oh. It's both true. Both true. Thank you. OK. Yeah. Does that mean that being in the autumn is actually not a fact, but a process? Yes. There is no autumn in me or outside of me, but there is something in movement.

[72:43]

Yes. You want to say that in German? Yes, but it's not just like that. Ja, aber es ist nicht nur so. Because our experience is like stop, [...] stop. So it's autumn, [...] winter, winter, winter. And the word dharma means to hold or keep. So everything's changing. But dharma means the units which we as human beings experience as something that's present for a moment.

[73:47]

Now somebody asks me if I use this for chanting. And usually I don't. But sometimes I do. And one of the mantras I like is, it goes... Like that. Like that. And Arapachana is a word for Manjushri. And the mantra Arapachana is syllable by syllable understood to mean something like entrance into the unborn moment or into the original moment of the succession of moments that go boom, [...] boom.

[75:08]

And to be purified by that. And that's, this is the Bodhisattva discriminating wisdom. So this is a way of perceiving the world in each undivided moment, not the divided moment. The succession of undivided moments. So for a moment you construct autumn. And for a moment the world constructs autumn. We call it autumn. But actually it's the first leaves falling. It's a certain chill in the wind. It's a certain promise of winter. It's a certain smell of the grass which is still green but changing. It's a certain way sounds are carried on colder air.

[76:20]

And when we feel any one of those things, we say, oh, autumn. So for a moment you construct autumn. And you feel autumn. But the next moment something else is being constructed. Okay? It's a good friend I used to hike with, this guy. I had my backpack and I had two of these, one of Avalokiteshvara and one of Manjushri. They're heavy. But when you get to a campsite, it's great.

[77:25]

You can set them up and then the campfire, they're kind of gold and they flash away while you're sitting in the dark. I suppose that means I'm not a true outdoorsman. Okay, I started out saying last night and this morning, this sense of the uniqueness of each of you just now. And pointing out that that very uniqueness is shared by each of us. We share difference, but difference is different. But we share uniqueness. And there's something very similar and equal about uniqueness.

[78:42]

So in that very uniqueness we find our equality with others. And so this absolute acceptance and receiving of this uniqueness and the actual experience of this is very bonding with everything you see. in its uniqueness. Now let me say something about sealing. There's, of course, many kinds of suffering. As I described mental suffering that arises from things you think or imagine or, you know, etc.

[79:53]

And then there's the suffering that arises from a bond you have with someone. Or the connection you feel with someone. Now, as I said earlier, and I've described it various times, that you are beginning to create, you are in fact creating a construct in you all the time. Now, I'm sorry some of you have to hear this so many times because I went through this in Sashin in Japan and so forth. Okay, but if I'm looking at you, And my body, my proprioceptive body is actually feeling you too.

[80:58]

I'm not just seeing you. My ayatanas and vijnanas, my sense fields are creating a nose, mouth, ear, etc. version of you. And I allow each of my vijnanas to operate separately. Because I've learned to move my sense of identity to each Vijnana. To each sense field. So they tend to operate independently. And they also operate together to produce mind and consciousness and awareness. Much as your stomach and kidney and lungs and so work separately. And together.

[81:58]

Okay, so what I see of you is myself seeing you and putting you together in my sense fields. But it's not just a static image, you're reinforcing that all the time. So if I don't interfere with it, I'm receiving this all the time. This image is, you're living in me. It sounds quite intimate, and it is in fact quite intimate. In fact, practice creates a kind of intimacy that causes a lot of problems. Because through practice you can feel very close with each other, I can feel very close to you, and then I leave you. I go away on Sunday or Monday. And Ulrike notices it, because we start driving somewhere, and I have this strange heart sickness after every seminar.

[83:04]

And sometimes I say, it took me a while to identify, because I feel so strange. It's kind of wonderful and funny at the same time, I'd say to Ulrike. Sort of like a toothache in my chest. Okay. So the more I allow that image of you to be constructed, I'm establishing a bond with you. And the more you feel that and allow it to happen to you, it's establishing a bond in you too. It's actually a kind of bridge we can act on. And one of the problems since we don't understand these things too well, aren't familiar with them, we get the bridges all confused.

[84:24]

And the bridge between parent and child is different from between child and parent. And the bridge between spouses is different. And the bridge between teacher and apprentice is different. And we often confuse them. Okay. Now, if, to just use another example to give you a feeling for this, if the clearer this construct of you within me has become, the more it will begin to have its own life. And as I said, ten years from now, if that's been clear, when I see you, I won't be surprised because you will have aged in me.

[85:34]

And if I haven't done that, If it's less vivid, when I see you, I'll be surprised at why you look 10 years older. And I think it was Beate who said, oh yes, you can meet somebody you haven't seen for years and pick up a conversation right away as if there had been no interruption. And with friends you can do that. Now, sometimes we see a stranger on the street, a proverbial face in the crowd. And it can bring us up short with a kind of awareness.

[86:35]

A certain beauty or mystery. or a certain presence. And that person at that moment is a teacher. It makes you recognize your own power. and the ability to recognize another's power you can recognize your own if you're always putting down everybody else's power and their beauty and their strength then you put down your own so you might also in a similar way just see somebody for a moment not an old friend and be so bonded with them that you really suffer Now, if you're able to allow this kind of bonding to occur, or this direct entrance into you, probably,

[87:36]

You suffer more if you don't know how to move your location of where you reside. All I can say is you... The more... Well, first of all, if you can move where you locate yourself, say, out of your conceptual thought into your breath... So it means you can move from this stone in the stream to that stone in the stream. But once you really can move from this stone to that stone, you can stop in the air between the stones. And this is the teaching of the Heart Sutra, to reside nowhere.

[88:59]

Or it's why it says the Dharma body of the Buddha is like space. And manifests in response to human beings. Okay. So, this is the first sense, is the more you have this sense of not residing through being attached to something, you feel everything, but you can't exactly call it suffering anymore. Now, another thing is this sense of, which is a kind of step in this direction of the Dharmakaya body, is this sense of sealing. And even though you've heard this, some of you before, let me run through this.

[90:05]

If you, after the seminar, start talking to somebody on the street and you say, well, we did the seminar and we talked about joy and suffering and blah, blah, blah. And the Dharma body is like space and... I mean... Oh yeah, that sounds very interesting. I hope it didn't cost you anything. So, and you'll be leaking if you do that. Okay. So one of the first things you need to do is learn not to leak. And you need a sort of vivid experience of it first, then you begin to get the feel of it. Now, when I'm speaking with you, I'm... Finding out what to say through an experience of not leaking.

[91:27]

If I start feeling I'm leaking, like somehow my energy is being depleted by what I'm saying, I sort of shift how I'm speaking. So that sense of not leaking in body, speech and mind, or not leaking through your activity, your speaking, your thinking and how you are physically, Can be called right speech and right activity and so forth. Or complete speech and complete activity. Okay, once you begin to get a sense of how not to leak, And this is a very, very important practice.

[92:46]

You then begin to not leak. Then you begin to find out if you're nourished by what you're saying. In other words, it's one thing not to lose my energy while I'm speaking with you, say, but what about gaining energy while I speak with you? Now, I can... You are really powerful out there. I don't know how many of you are there, but 40 or so. You are 40 dynamos. And I can let you play into me. But if I let all 40 of you come back out of me, it'll be too much. So I sort of let a little bit in and I let occasionally some of it come back out.

[93:47]

But I'm getting it from you. I'm just a vehicle of it. So in this sense, while I'm speaking, I'm being nourished by you. And that's another guide I use in what to say. If I feel nourished by this, anyway, you've got it, then I can follow something. Okay, so the ability to begin to feel non-leaking and nourishing Nourishment on your body, speech and mind seals you. So you can suffer with someone or suffer in a situation, but your basic energy isn't depleted.

[94:47]

It doesn't destroy you or make you sick or make you feel depleted. Now, there's suffering which attacks our heart. When a bond is disturbed. Or we perceive people through this way of perceiving. When disillusionment sends in or your basic world view is destroyed. That's another kind of suffering that hits you usually in the stomach. And in each of these, you can reside in those places where this suffering reaches you, and you can reside in a larger field.

[95:54]

Now, even if you're with somebody who's terminally ill, they still have this play of joy and suffering in them. So haben Sie immer noch dieses Spiel von Freude und Leiden in sich. And you can be open to both. Man kann für beides offen sein.

[96:27]

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