growing up, down, sideways. And she... In a fundamental sense, she doesn't know what it means to grow up. But she trusts this growing up. And again, I think there's some difference if I Marie Louise and I, and all of us who relate to her, relate to her with a feeling for the darkness she's growing into. And growing into this darkness... Each moment she brings light into this darkness.

[01:08]

But she herself shouldn't be fooled by the light she brings into the darkness as she grows up. is the whole of her life. Until she's only seeing part of being. Yeah, it's a lot similar to the discussion we had yesterday about the midwife and the doctor and the mother and the The midwife has a mind, the woman has a mind. The baby has a mind.

[02:18]

And so forth. But none of these minds really cover the whole territory. Yeah, will everything be all right? Is it a question? Yeah, everyone there is asking, will everything be all right? Because the darkness of one whole being can't be penetrated. The one whole, the darkness of one whole being Eines ganzen Seins. And that in just a few months, I mean nine or less, created a whole new human being.

[03:19]

Not just a general human being, a very particular human being. Whose particularity is part of its lack of predictability. And DNA explains various things, but it really doesn't explain this amazing creation of a new being. I'm just speaking about these basic things to give us a feeling for this the darkness of one whole being. But is it true we can't penetrate this one whole being, this darkness?

[04:29]

We already are in fact this one whole being. But this Chinese idea of one skin... But if you have the feeling that each thing you feel is part of one whole being... which is what is meant by saying each thing, everything is Buddha nature. So if each thing is Buddha nature, Perhaps if we treated each thing as having Buddha nature, we might come closer to reaching into this one whole being.

[05:57]

Being able to act within this one whole being. Each separate part of your body. cells, neurons, and so forth. In a way, it only does its own particular job. But in doing its own particular job, it somehow is participating in creating one whole being. So you have lots of seemingly obvious remarks,

[07:14]

like fire belongs under the pot and water belongs in the pot. This is a profound statement. And you'd make a mess if you tried to do something else. and water is in the pot. So, Sam Dogen would say something like, for fire to try to be water is some kind of mistake. And some people understand this is a kind of hierarchical feudalism in Dogen's 13th century mentality. And he would say high things belong in a high place and low things belong in a low place.

[08:35]

And that's certainly true if you have a child this tall in the kitchen. We can't get things high enough now since she's half acrobat. But instead of trying to give some kind of sociological understanding of this, let's try to look at the feeling. We don't want to trim a crane's legs and add it to a duck's. Und wir wollen einem Kranich nicht die Füße verkürzen und sie eine Ente dazugeben, also eine Ente anbringen. Let it be long, let it be short. Stop cutting and patching. Hört auf abzuschneiden und zu flicken.

[09:37]

Now, again, this kind of statement, if you just look at it as a philosophical statement, that's kind of absurd. But if you save it for when you need it, There might come a time when one of the most extraordinary things that can happen to you is you look at things and you say, let it be long. Let it be short. A particular mind needs this statement at a particular time. Or to feel. When you notice your habits, Stop cutting and patching.

[10:51]

Now this is the basic practice to notice differentiation without comparison. It's like you're looking into the light of the world and seeing the darkness. Now this isn't the kind of idea of darkness as something dark or bad or evil. This is the darkness of not knowing. So how do you look past the light into the darkness. One way is the practice of seeing impermanence. Pursuing returning, pursuing the falling flowers, as we talked about in the other seminar.

[12:10]

To notice the impermanence of everything. Wow, everything, the more you notice it, All you see is continuous change. And time itself, there's no continuity of time itself. This moment, but this moment doesn't support past or future. But it keeps flowering into an unknown future. So practicing, finding some way to bring yourself into

[13:14]

the feel of impermanence. The habit of that, you begin to touch this one whole being. Now this can't be explained as an idea. It's just something you do. You do it out of compassion or love or a feeling of the need to feel things just as they are. Kind of finally a boredom with thinking about ourself. comparing ourselves or being self-conscious, thinking about how we're doing.

[14:48]

All those don't disappear entirely, but they become quite minor. It feels a little ooky when we think about this. We feel better with things just as they are. Just as they are, everything is disappearing. And we enact that, it's hard to translate enact, I know, but we enact that, letting each thing go. So that's in a way not just looking at things as they appear in the light, but looking at each thing as it's also touched by the darkness of not knowing.

[15:59]

from the point of it appearing as part of one whole being. And likewise we can do that the sense that's expressed in the duck's legs, in the crane's legs. We see everything as different and particular, but we value its particularity without comparison. Yeah, so we're not cutting and patching. Yeah. If you see and value each thing's particularity, each person, each object, each situation, find the value in each situation rather than

[17:27]

comparing it, it could be better or worse. To look into the absolute value of each situation, it's something like Anton's remark, yesterday of not being able to hold all these things but letting them go they appear. So as it says also in this little part of the koan I gave you, let high things be high, let low things be low, they'll level themselves.

[18:40]

And it also says, water levels things. And water has no, what's it say, water levels things, water has no definite Nothing you can lean on. Oh yeah, nothing you can depend on. What this means is that you don't, as we say, fill the valleys and level the mountains. But really seeing the absolute particularity of each thing, of each situation and... entering into the particularity of each situation without comparison.

[20:00]

You're treating each thing as equal. As I said yesterday too, you're respecting each thing. When you respect each thing, somehow the respect returns to you. You find you're touched by one whole being. Because the aspect of differentiation, which is always equal, Also has the taste of one all being or the taste of darkness, the darkness of one all being in light. And in this way we begin to feel part of one whole being.

[21:10]

And we begin to be able to act through the darkness of this one whole being. And then in that situation we can say, Not knowing is most intimate. The not knowing that reaches into the darkness of one whole being. We can call this the wisdom of not knowing. Thank you very much. Evil is our purpose, to cast a spell on every being and every creature.

[22:32]

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