The samadhi of wisdom gone beyond wisdom perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty. They each have a being but In that being they're empty. Empty partly because the boundaries disappear. And through that perception was saved from all suffering. And then he exclaims with a kind of ecstasy, O Shariputra, Form does not differ from emptiness. And this means, don't think about this, just enter this state of mind, feel this state of mind.

[01:02]

That's what the O means, like in a poem. O... See, just kind of let go into this as a mantra. O Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. The same is true for feelings. Perceptions. Impulses. Consciousness. All the rest of the five skandhas. Oh, Shariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. Maybe tomorrow I'll try to give you a sense of the practice of dharmas.

[02:05]

O Śāriputra, all dharmas also are marked with emptiness. They do not appear. They don't disappear. They're not tainted. Not pure. They don't increase and they don't decrease. Therefore in emptiness, no form. No feelings. So here I'm pointing out how we make this distinction. You have form and you have feelings. So we've taken the usual way we perceive things and as our language, at least in English, we divide it up into emotions and feelings and thoughts.

[03:10]

And this early Sanskrit of the dynamics of self divides it up into these five skandhas. So here's our experience, and we divide it up into form, feelings, perceptions, etc. And then we find we have a kind of, we accumulate karma in each of these realms. And that accumulated karma gives us a kind of self in each of these realms. And then to move it to another level, a more deeper level, these distinctions themselves are only temporary or provisional. These are provisional distinctions and in a deeper sense they are empty and don't exist.

[04:17]

So we take all these distinctions that we have we have all this undistinguished undifferentiated experience that we have. Language and our parents and our culture teach us to differentiate it in various ways. Buddhism says, okay, but differentiate it this way, different than your language and culture says. And this will free you from suffering. And then you can be free of all those distinctions that you just created. So, So, therefore in emptiness there is no form, no feeling, no perception, no impulses, no consciousness.

[05:22]

Now that's the five skandhas. And there's no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. No color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind. No realm of eyes until no realm of mind consciousness. And this means you apply that no realm to no realm of eyes, no realm of ears, no realm of nose, and so forth. So now remember when you were sitting, I said, don't hear the sounds, hear hearing. And that's a basic experience and gate of meditation practice.

[06:33]

Do you remember me saying that? That's the realm of hearing separate from hearing. So you have something, you have an object of perception and perception and the eye, So you have A and B and then AB. And then you have the realm of which objects can appear or disappear. And it says all that, once you learn to experience all that, that also is empty. And it goes on, as you can see. And then, because of all that, no ignorance and etc., there's nothing to attain. And when there's really nothing to attain, you've attained enlightenment.

[07:46]

And so the bodhisattva depends not on feelings and emotions and things, because we need something to depend on. Instead of depending on self or a new car, You now depend on this samadhi of wisdom which has gone beyond wisdom. So it's now yourself and it's substituted for the small self. And when the fundamental self, out of which all of your experience arises, is prajnaparamita, then you're the suchness of enlightenment, and you're a Buddha. That's it. And you can imagine if you've gotten that far, your mind is no hindrance.

[09:04]

And without any hindrance, you've got no fears anymore. And far apart from all perverted views, you dwell in nirvana. This is a short story. You can see him with his legs stretched out on the Nirvana floor. And in all the worlds of past, present and future. Anyone who's a Buddha depends on this Prajnaparamita as self. and thus attains unsurpassed, complete, perfect wow. Okay.

[10:05]

Therefore know the prajnaparamita is the great transcendent mantra. Now it's a mantra because knowing all this You can turn the whole thing, which this is, into a mantra and repeat it. So if you can take this teaching and turn it into a bright jewel and repeat it, then it's the great bright mantra which is able to relieve all suffering. and is true, not false. So, if you love everyone, proclaim this mantra.

[11:07]

Proclaim the mantra that says, gate, gate, paragate. Parasamgate. Bodhi Svaha. So gate means gone. Paragate is gone beyond. And parasamgate is completely gone beyond. You're completely out there. And bodhi is enlightenment. And so Vaha is a feminine evocative. Meaning you've disappeared in this great feminine womb of enlightenment. This is pretty heavy stuff. But it takes a little experience to know how to read it.

[12:20]

But I think you've gotten the feeling of it. That's probably almost time for dinner. Let's see. Yeah, it's a little late. I'm sorry. So tomorrow we'll try to chant it. Morgen werden wir dann versuchen, das zu singen. Because I think some of you would like to. Denn ich denke, einige von euch wollten das gerne. And... Do we have a Mokugyo here? No. What? Does anybody have a Mokugyo you could string? I could. So we'll chant it tomorrow. We'll... Sort of King Kong.

[13:25]

Now it's King Kong. Gone beyond King Kong. The insights from King Kong, but King Kong in ours. So I hope that wasn't too technical and dry. Looking at the sutra. But I'd like to, since that was the announced topic, give you a feeling at least for how to read something like this and how to practice with it. Because all of these teachings are metallogues. Not analogues. And then metallogue is a word which means, Gregory Bateson uses it, which means it is what it is.

[14:26]

In other words, if I say hello to you, that's a metallogue. If I say, um, How are you? That's not a metalogue. Because how are you is a question and it's about something. Hello is just hello. So a, for instance, If a discussion about philosophy is a metalogue, the discussion itself would be philosophy. It wouldn't just be about philosophy, it in itself would be the development of philosophy. So this teaching about coursing in Prajnaparamita, should realize coursing in Prajnaparamita as you're reading it.

[15:34]

So as you're reading it, you have the feeling of, yes, really, no feeling, no perception. That's why it has things like, Oh, Shariputra and Svaha. Because it means, if you're really practicing this, you have the realization of it as you're reading it. And that's why it's a mantra. So if you study it well, or can look at it without a comparative mind, you can get some feeling, some taste of it at least. So I'd like us just in whatever posture you're in to sit for a few minutes.

[16:41]

Is quite original in that there's no traditional model for jetting in and spending a short time with people and jetting out. Yes, but I figure as long as the jet fuel lasts, we might as well put it in service of the Dharma. When it runs out, my life will be much calmer. So I think we should use it up as fast as possible. And often when I go after the seminar is over for the day, People make comments to me that I find quite useful.

[18:04]

Corbeata wants to disappear now again. Since she's my host, I have been talking with her after the seminar. And several things came up in our conversations and that people bring up to her. To what extent, for example, is my approach to practice through intelligence, and to what extent is my approach to practice through practice? And I think that's a useful question for all of us, because on the one hand, the West tends to be quite intellectual,

[19:09]

and to believe in their thought forms. On the other hand, there's a kind of, in America especially, an anti-intellectual feeling. And in the alternate culture, in America and Europe, Trying to free itself from the two brain-based culture of the West. There's an emphasis on, as we said yesterday, wearing sandals. And distrusting any religious teaching that uses the intellect.

[20:23]

And all I can tell you is Buddhism definitely uses the intellect. Doesn't mean there aren't simple ways of practice. But those simple ways of practice are also open to manipulation. Particularly in a culture which doesn't have any tradition of Buddhism and know what course it should be on. And the artist said one thing. She liked my story about the hot bathtub faucet. Because she said one of the things, sort of the new age, I call it newage. I'm rather fond of the new age, but still.

[21:28]

Anyway, one of the things that new age ideas is you can always trust the body, the body's always right. I didn't say that, but... I'm sorry. She's so much more articulate than me. I don't know what's going on. She may tell you anything. I'm glad a few of you know English. I apologize. No, no. She's fun to translate with. Anyway, but for instance, in shamatha vipassana meditation techniques,

[22:33]

It says the body concentrates the mind and the mind concentrates the body and the body responds to the mind and the mind responds to the body. What's the importance of this? This is different than the body's always right. As my arm didn't pay attention to my, my arm got it wrong, whether it's hot or cold. But my arm knew faster than my brain that it was hot. and resisted hitting it a second time, but my brain said, oh, it's okay.

[23:41]

So my arm learned in a way which I would not say is just an instinctive reaction. It's an intelligent reaction, a learned reaction which compares information. It reminds me for some reason. Dogen said, if you want to learn wisdom, learn it like space. So I'll just put that out there for now. And Suzuki Roshi said, my teacher, said, living your life without zazen is like winding a clock without setting the hands. Zazen. So that the hands go around and you never know what time it is.

[24:51]

Okay. So the sense of this is that intelligence is actually a field activity. In other words, there are several kinds of intelligences and the That field the intelligence create is intelligence and it is, what can I say, not higher intelligence, only more mature intelligence. And it's the ground of wisdom. So my arm, my body has its own intelligence. And it's knowing the world.

[25:52]

And my thoughts and perceptions have their own intelligence. And the two together are, as I was saying yesterday, in a kind of dialogue. And then when you add the intelligence or identity of feelings And all the associations connected with the form world, you have a field intelligence. Okay. And they've done, let's see, I think it's... They've done, they use, as any of you who read scientific magazines or medical magazines would know, they use computer models now to simulate both the immune system and the way the, I think, brain, the nervous system tends to learn something.

[27:00]

And one thing it seems is that it doesn't proceed by logic. It proceeds by reinforcement, which is quite different than logic. So if you try to make computers, as this Francisco, this friend of mine in Paris, is also working on artificial intelligence, And other people are. But he and others have a more Buddhist model of intelligence. So if you make a computer that operates by logic, In the end, it's still quite a simple operation.

[28:26]

It just goes fast. But when it operates by reinforcement, you have information coming in from many sources occurring at different levels. In the nervous system. And it keeps, as I understand the way they think it works, it keeps processing this information at the simultaneous levels. And the different levels reinforce each other. And each time the things that are more reinforced by each level, the other things drop away. Until finally the most reinforced perception is the one you choose. And the computer modeling is very useful for these scientists.

[29:27]

Because it allows you to try out things in a model form and then try it out biologically in an experiment. Now, whether I've got the science quite right or not is not my point. It's that our system works rather like I just described. So when you can begin to consciously experience yourself at different levels of consciousness, This is a kind of wider sense of consciousness. I've made the distinction in other seminars between awareness and consciousness. and I suppose I should make it here which is awareness is what keeps you from wetting your bed at night

[31:06]

Consciousness doesn't keep you from wetting your bed. Or if I step down off this platform... It's consciousness that lets me miss the microphone and so forth. But if I start to trip, And I catch the microphone and don't knock the bell over and don't hit you. It's awareness that does that, not consciousness. Consciousness isn't fast enough to do that. So awareness is always present, and it functions intelligently, but not through conceptual thought. Or not through at least comparative thought.

[32:19]

Even that's not quite right, but you've got the idea. So, I've kind of laid these distinctions out for you.

[33:23]

And when you become more adept at it or skillful at it, As like in Vipassana, you can actually use the body to, first you learn that the body responds to the mind and the mind responds to the body. And then you begin to be able to use the body to calm the mind or concentrate the mind and vice versa. And this in itself is a subtle problem. Because when you do it, you don't learn much. For example, I can teach you, show you various ways of breathing, paying attention to the inhale, of the exhale to finding your consciousness at the turn of the inhale and exhale and the turn of the exhale and inhale

[34:32]

To doing this practice through the right nostril and then out through the left nostril. And feeling a motion through your body or the breath coming through your anus. It feels like that. Or moving your breath the opposite, through your left nostril and out to the right. Or through both at once and out. Or very slowly, or with a short inhale and a fast... and a long exhale. And I just gave you those instructions. But, and it's useful to try them out.

[35:49]

However, it's more interesting and you learn more when that kind of breathing happens on its own. In other words, when you've been sitting long enough to just sit fairly calmly and develop what's called calm abiding mind, and Gunther, our friend and translator of yesterday, In Berlin translated calm abiding mind for about 20 minutes he translated calm abiding mind as karma biting mind. And as I kept saying, when you establish karma biting mind and use karma biting mind to study karma biting mind,

[37:07]

People's faces getting stranger. And finally we got it straight. But I thought this was quite good, karma-biting moment. It's like one of those computer games, you know, where they... It just goes right through your system, chewing up karma, you know. I see some... So calm abiding mind is the sense of it is you establish calm abiding mind and after you establish calm abiding mind

[38:20]

Then you investigate yourself with calm abiding mind. And you investigate calm abiding mind itself with calm abiding mind. Okay. So when you can sit with some comfort and ease, And calm abiding mind arises. You're more likely to kind of naturally notice your breathing. Without being distracted by your thinking. And then you'll notice that sometimes, without your doing it, your breath is coming in through your left nostril and out through your right.

[39:41]

And after a while, it may switch. And you can begin to see what state of mind and thoughts and feelings go with the differences. This is very kind of scientific actually. And you're the test tube. And the more you can have this kind of feeling, You are just living in a much more complex intelligence, awareness, body, mind field. And finally, you're close to what Dogen means, if you want to learn wisdom, learn it like space. And you're not so subject then to being pushed around by your emotions or your thoughts.

[40:52]

And another thing that happens and why it's good to sleep a lesson Sleep a little less than you need if you're practicing. A little less than you need when you're practicing. Because a 40-minute period a day is a substitute for an hour to two hours of sleep. So if you're used to sleeping seven and a half or eight hours sleep, if you meditate every day, for example, you usually get along with six and a half for six or seven hours.

[41:54]

and then whatever your pattern is that's established after you establish meditating then it's good to sleep a little less than that 15 minutes, half an hour because you want to push the ego and unconscious functions of dreamtime into your meditation. So the kind of dreamtime you need, those associations begin to happen in your meditation. And that will happen after about a year of radio noise. This will take place after a year of radio noises.

[43:06]

I call it radio noise because there's so much, there's all kinds of associations without any pattern that occur in the first year or two. See, I'm talking about practice here pretty seriously. What I'm saying is that instead of several years of psychoanalysis, or other means to study yourself, you can study yourself very thoroughly and reparent yourself in one, two, or three, or four years. And change the whole way, and not just rearrange things, but actually change yourself. So practice doesn't just rearrange the parts into a more harmonious whole.

[44:10]

It actually changes what the parts are. And then you rearrange the new parts. And then this can be a scary process. But if you get used to sitting comfortably and well, it's not so scary. Because you begin to depend on, as it says, prajnaparamita. You begin to just depend on the posture in the practice. So when you can begin to shift unconscious materials into appearing like lucid dreams in your meditation,

[45:11]

Then your zazen will clear up when those associations then start appearing during the day in your normal consciousness. Then a kind of awareness one has that keeps one from wetting the bed at night becomes a kind of awareness that you consciously abide in during the night and day. Okay. Now this is, what I'm telling you about is much more than most Zen teachers teach most students. Quite simple. Right. That's true.

[46:26]

He's a much better teacher than me. But I'm also trying to do something somewhat different. First of all, when we did that book, Chino Sensei, or Chino Roshi now, felt we shouldn't do, and my feeling too, was we shouldn't do such a book. It's so simple, it's not representative of his teaching. Those were lectures given to late middle-aged housewives and a few husbands south of... south of... San Francisco once a week who were not initiates and not very informed about Buddhism but We were being, in San Francisco, we were being very purist in saying we won't tape any of his lectures because it should all be oral.

[47:55]

But down there in Los Altos, they just thought he was great, so they taped him. And in those days, little tape recorders were just appearing. Because in general, still then, you had those big reels. So taping was more of a deal than it is now. But Sukhriya, she gave the text to me that Marion Derby had initially transcribed. Suzuki Roshi gave me the text that was originally transcribed by Marion Derby from the cassettes.

[49:05]

And Trudy and I, Trudy is listed as the editor, edited the text as much as possible so that you could see the ideas that informed the surface of the text under, like looking at a lake and seeing the stone and this thing. So in one sense it's like a clear lake, in the other sense you can see if you look what's underneath the water. Just meant that we had to understand clearly the concept of each sentence. For instance, if I'm lecturing like now with you and having Ulrike's translating, sometimes I'll see that the translator is having trouble. As I realize I said the words, But I didn't make the concept that glues the words together clear.

[50:17]

So she can't translate just the words because she doesn't know how they glue together. So I have to stop and rephrase it in English so the concept that glues the words together is clear. Then she can translate. Okay, but still the question arises, why am I making it complicated? And partly I don't think I'm making it complicated. And partly, I know I am. And partly, I do think it's because I'll get better as a teacher, I hope, if I stay alive. But still, what I'm trying to do is similar to an architect talking to an architect.

[51:29]

Not an architect talking to customers. In other words, an architect can present a building to customers. We're going to have a tower of such and such, you know. And there'll be a plaza or a mall. And the elevators will be outside in clear shafts or something. And it sounds wonderful. Oh, yeah, good. I'm ready to take the elevator and see the sights. But if you talk to another architect, he says, how are you going to support all that? And you have no room for all the plumbing and wiring that's associated with such and such because the walls are too thin.

[52:47]

So to another architect or to electricians and plumbers, And the contractor. How do you know all these words? Can I tell a funny story right now? I have a friend who is probably the best... He knows Japanese better than any other living Caucasian, probably. He knows Japanese better than any other living Caucasian, probably. He even knows Japanese better than his Japanese wife, who is...

[53:47]

very intelligent Japanese woman. He picks up village dialects in a few days while it takes her a couple weeks. And he entered Tokyo University taking the exams in Japanese and competing against Japanese and getting admission as a Westerner. Most Japanese can't even get into Tokyo University. Anyway, he knows Japanese very well. He used to make money going into bars because they'd say to him, you speak Japanese quite well. He'd say, oh, no. This is totally just a story. No point that I see you.

[55:00]

Maybe later I'll see some point. Anyway, so they'd say, do you know any character, any kanji, any characters? He'd say, all of you. Not very many. They'd say, do you know this one? Japanese love to test Westerners. You can use chopsticks? Really, people used to come up to me and say, you can use chopsticks? My standard answer was, Well, two is not so hard, but you should try three. Anyway, so, but he knows a tremendous amount of characters, right?

[56:06]

So after a while, and he'd say, well, do you know this one? And they'd say, yes. And he'd say, they play. So then he'd say, let's bet on it. I bet I can think of one you... You can't think of one I don't know, and I can think of one you don't know. So the whole bar would get involved with this. And everyone would put down, you know, one 10,000 note after another. It was cheap, about $40. You had a stack of notes, you know. and they would put one or two and he'd guess and then he'd do one or two and they'd guess and the pot would get bigger so he'd finally say for the final test and then they would do some character that was quite difficult Then he would know it.

[57:14]

And then he'd do something like a 32-stroke character that meant a syphilitic Buddhist nun. I understand that. And they'd all, you know, kind of... Get dictionaries out. You're right. And you'll take all the money until I... But what made me think of the story I'll tell you now, if they'd just picked a common, say, plumbing term, they could have won right away. Because there's no way a foreigner would know things like, you know, a fixture under the sink for, you know... So, that's why it surprises me you know some of these words.

[58:30]

Anyway, if you're talking to the contractor, the plumber, the electrician and the architect himself or herself, you have to talk to them in a way that they can build the building. And I don't want to treat you as customers. And I'm not here enough to treat you as customers. I've got to leave you with bricks and pipe and... So that you can construct your own Buddhism. And I think in the West this is particularly important, as I was saying to some of you last night. Because we're in a culture that doesn't support practice. As I think. Someone brought up yesterday.

[59:54]

You brought up yesterday. And so we need to be able to make practice work for us. We need to see it in a more fundamental way than is necessary in Asia. For example, my noticing and analyzing what happened when my arm hit the faucet. It's a typical way of thinking in Buddhism. And you can see then the role intelligence plays in practice. Or to be more exact, we could say analytic, observational, non-comparative intelligence.

[61:00]

And that's also a skill you learn. For example, again, if I teach you or tell you about these various breathing practices, if you do them yourself, you won't learn that much. You'll have an effect from it, but that's good. But when you can come to the point that through calm abiding mind, you can let your breathing do itself, and observe your breathing without interfering with its doing itself then you can learn more so one of the major stages in practice let's just start let's just list a couple stages

[62:13]

One is the decision to sit or the decision to practice which you've come to both out of the sense of the feeling you get when you sit Or the feeling you get from a teacher. Or a friend who practices. Or the sense you get by applying intellect to the world. A combination of those makes you come to a decision to sit. And then at some point you have to really make that decision. And that's really what ordination and so forth is about. You come to a decision that this may not be the best way to practice, but it's the best way I know.

[63:42]

I'm no longer a shopper in the religious mall. I'm tired of shopping. This hat is going to be good enough. So you make the decision just to do it and to have faith in the doing of it, even though you don't know if the faith is entirely deserved. An existential leap like that is necessary. Without the promise of paradise or reincarnation. Maybe a little bit. Maybe a little bit. But even then you can't pay too much attention to that.

[64:49]

So you stop chakra. So that may be the first stage. And the second stage is, well, there are many stages of radio mind and all this stuff I've been talking about. But a clear step is when you cannot invite your thoughts to tea. When you can come to samadhi states and sometimes, like again, the moon peering in and out of the clouds. So sometimes in your meditation, you will, for some reason, enter samadhi. But as soon as you notice you've entered samadhi, you lose samadhi. So that's one stage. A very important next stage is that when you can enter samadhi and observe samadhi without disturbing samadhi.

[66:16]

Most practice... The practice that's going to affect you most occurs after you can enter samadhi without... and also observe samadhi. Then I suppose there's a next step, not such a big step when you can produce samadhi pretty much as you wish but out of willingness and subtlety, not out of will. Then the next big step is when samadhi is present all the time with you as a kind of background mind.

[67:35]

Now I'm only discussing samadhi in a very simple sense. There are many, many samadhis. In many ways, Samadhi is understood, in Buddhism particularly, different from Hinduism. So I think that's enough right now. What would be an English word for Samadhi? There isn't any. Samadhi. I mean, that's why I've used Samadhi. Because it's never been important in our culture. So we've never had a word for it. It happens to people, but we've never named it. Anyway, this is a good example of... On the one hand, Buddhism seems to emphasize... get free of names, get free of language, etc.

[68:49]

But it's nice to have the name Samadhi so you can pay attention to it before you get rid of the name. Because we can name Samadhi We can name samadhi and then we can use samadhi to get rid of names. So language actually plays a much more important role naming and using intelligence to develop your practice. but intelligence should lead practice like wave leading wave we say and practice should lead intelligence as wave leads wave and wave follows wave And really, practice is all that really counts.

[70:17]

If you can't actually know these things with your... whatever it is, to just know it, thinking it out, is silliness, actually. Well, there's one other thing I'd like to speak with you about. But I think we've been sitting long enough. So, there's that moral problem going by again. This is something we talked about yesterday. So it's about 11.10, so let's meet at 11.30. And while I think of it, I like in the beginning of each section of the day as language pointing out or naming and dividing.

[71:21]

and that you have some participation or control over this process because when you start using language not just to communicate with your friends But you use language to communicate with yourself, your language can become more detailed and begin to notice a topography of experience that's more subtle than language. Great civilizational languages like German and English tend to generalize And European languages in general tend to gravitate toward being nouns.

[73:11]

But in Chinese, for instance, the word units tend to gravitate toward being verbs. Those kind of differences are big differences. And I think among so-called primitive people, they have more, often more specific languages, more specific words for more specific experiences than we do. Because the language is more like the language of a marriage where two people know each other well and you can develop words for specific experiences only you share.

[74:12]

The more language has to cover, the more people's experience language has to cover, the more generalized it gets. So Buddhist language, of course, the language of Sangha, is a kind of coded language because it's for people who have a particular range of experience. So if I say to you, concentrate on your breath, You'll have a different experience than if I say concentrate, say, on your heartbeat.

[75:19]

First we have to distinguish breaths and distinguish heartbeat. And I would guess that, though I'm not a linguist, I would guess that all major language groups more or less identify people the same way, identify the basic territory for human beings the same way. Thank you for translating. Thank you. So, I think most languages probably make distinctions between mind and body and thoughts and feelings and thoughts, thoughts and feelings and emotions. But when you get into territory in between those categories, different languages point out different things. And when you get into territory of combinations of these things, they become quite different.

[76:29]

I think that one of the major distinctions between Buddhist culture and Western culture, is the distinction, well, let me first say that the culture we live in is created. And you can create it. And in fact, you are. I remember reading about a South African poet who was exiled in effect, self-exiled to Paris.

[77:32]

Because he was one of the two or three, I believe, major poets in Afrikaner language. And it's a quite primitive language as being a combination of Dutch and English, I believe. So the poets writing poems in Afrikaner are creating the language. They're creating words and concepts which don't exist in Afrikaner yet, and their poems will extend the language. As Shakespeare did for English. Shakespeare's genius is not just that he wrote great plays and poems, but that he transformed, this one man, whoever he was, transformed English into the English we speak today, really.

[78:53]

So this Afrikaner poet, although he wouldn't go back and live in South Africa because of the government, and he'd been imprisoned quite a bit, And so for political reasons he didn't want to write in Afrikaner anymore. But he missed the excitement of creating in a language in which the possibilities of creation are at an initial stage. So what you decide to do, and if you really experience that and know it, influences your friend's way of thinking and their influence there.

[80:10]

I mean, in general, I think in Buddhism there's a saying that if one person practices This is just an ordinary person. He influences 200 people. Being parents and cousins and friends and the barkeeper and so on. So... But this has to be something that you come to with your own authority, not just mushy. Okay. So, the distinction I've pointed out often is Plato and the Greeks. emphasize this as an insufficient replica of an ideal form.

[81:19]

There's an it that reigns. There's a realm of ideal forms of which this is not perfect. The perfect stick wouldn't have these little bumps and stuff. But in the Asian world, the stick is perfect. It's fine just as it is. Your perception of it is perfect or imperfect. Your perception is the insufficient replica, not the stick. You can see that both are true. But where is the cultural genius and attention applied? Well, in Asian cultures, it's in this line, not in this. So all the skills of clarifying your perception, studying your perception, developing your perception are part of a culture which emphasizes this.

[82:39]

So our culture builds the Parthenon. Unser Kulturbild baut also das Parthenon auf. Which is meant to last forever. Das eigentlich für ewig dauern soll. And I think the Third Reich, didn't they try to build buildings that would last for a thousand years or something like that? Und haben sie damals nicht versucht, also Gebäude zu erstellen, die tausende von Jahren überdauern? And then the new government tore most of them down because they didn't want them to last a thousand years? Und dann die jeweils neuen Regierungen haben sie immer wieder abgerissen, weil sie nicht wollten, dass sie so lange überstehen. And the Parthenon looks beautiful sitting up on the hill. And we tend to build buildings that look great when they're new. And because they're supposed to last forever, they age and look lousy. And our philosophers keep trying to establish truth. As if there's truth that can be established.

[83:50]

And we're in a transitional period now with like Freud establishing psychology. which is not the truth, it's an activity, a process, a way of understanding, and needs to be passed on. It can't be established all at once. And I think that's why the break with Jung was so powerful and painful for Freud. Because Freud saw psychology as replacing philosophy. And he needed people like Jung to pass it on. And he felt Jung betrayed him by being interested in stuff like this.

[84:52]

Rumi, the Sufi poet, Rumi, the Sufi poet, says, there are many mysteries hinted at in my poems. He says, in my poems there are many mysteries hinted at. What if you understand one of them? Okay, so I guess what I'm saying to you, if you have an experimental state of mind, an adventurous state of mind, you begin noticing and playing or studying your own perception. Because this is the basic field of Buddhism.

[85:57]

Buddhism doesn't emphasize, this is lasting forever. Or this is lasting forever. We're both going to... In a few years I'll be coming to lecture you and drooling down like this. But Buddhism emphasizes this as being real. Because this is where karma is created. And it's karma that's passed on. Not this. This isn't passed on. My use of it's passed on. My liking it's passed on. My decision to teach someone else how to use it is passed on. And this is quite ungraspable.

[87:14]

It in fact is empty. So on one hand it's what's real and it's also empty. It is quite simple, isn't it? But that comes from a difference in what you emphasize. Both are true. That's real and this is real. But Buddhist culture emphasizes this as being more fundamental. Okay, so what I'm trying to get at is the distinction I brought up yesterday of body, speech and mind. This sense of division is interesting me this weekend for some reason. So I'm forcing it on you. At least I hope you're somewhat interested and it's useful. So probably all language cultures would recognize body, speech and mind. But not all cultures would give them equal weight.

[88:33]

And not all cultures would see their relationship the same. Hi. Well, that's good. Actually, this is America. I don't have to know. Okay. So, as probably is well known to you, body is viewed by many people in the West as something just carries the smart brain around. As a kind of troublesome platform that you have to exercise to keep healthy.

[89:34]

Okay. But in Buddhism, body, speech and mind are called the three mysteries. They're not only given a strong emphasis, they're given this sense of being, you know, something more than, well, something with the quality of a dimension of mystery. Mysterium. It's even more mysterious than Mysterium. Mysterium. It sounds like you go to one of those carnivals and you enter the Mysterium.

[90:35]

So... Ghost trend. Yeah. So... If you give equal weight to body, speech and mind, in other words, you can notice that from the simple example I gave of the hot bath. And paying attention to that. For example, another experience I had working in a warehouse, A book warehouse, in fact, so I could get access to books. There was a stack of, this is pre-Xerox, so a stack of about 65 pieces of paper stapled together. And some of them had some graphs in it.

[91:53]

So some of them had 65 pages and some 66, 67, all the way up to 69. I, for some reason, I don't remember what, had to sort them into piles of 60 pages, 65 pages.

[92:14]

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