You're all hired. The head shaving will be in half an hour. You didn't know what you're getting yourself into. And tonight we'll pass out the robes. You can go home and surprise your mother. You can chant this without becoming nuns or monks. But there is this practice just of saying it. So let's try it in the home language here, German.

[01:02]

Richard, can you give me the words for vomit, emptiness, emptiness as well? Shiki, shiki. Just shiki, shiki? Shiki. Yeah, shiki. And mu is emptiness. And sh. Yeah, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. So, yeah, there's a famous koan which does a... Does a cow have a Buddha nature? And Jojo said, moo. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Maha Prajnaparamita Herat Sutra.

[02:23]

Maha Prajnaparamita Herat Sutra. We are free from our own time and were freed from all suffering. Oh, Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. Come, this world is empty, emptiness is really form. The ice-cold fields, the snow, the waves, [...] There is no form, no perception, no perception, no impulse, no consciousness, no eye, no eye, no body, no spirit, no woman, no man, no look, no taste. No touch, no response, no pressure, enough to reach the realm of consciousness, and we will wipe out, until old age and death, we will wipe out, no suffering, no origin, no end, no end.

[03:34]

We can still reach it, because there is nothing to reach. We leave it, and it is something that can only be achieved with the help of the Spirit, because without it, there is no fear. It is a kind of deception, because it warns us. I don't know why that sounds so nice. Yes. Why not?

[04:53]

I confess everything is emptiness. It feels as if different languages are located different places in the body. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you can't do, at least in English, and I haven't tried it in German, but we used to chant in English, you know. But that's not English. It completely goes against the rhythm of English. So I stopped doing it. So we just say, .

[05:53]

And Sanskrit is also a language more like English and German in that you can't chant it easily the way you can Japanese and Chinese. But you can get, so that you can chant the English more like this feeling I talked about in the harp. In other words, as you're chanting, if you have this feeling here that you brought up, put here. It influences my English and it influences the way others hear each other's English.

[07:01]

But I don't know, I mean, in Sechins we were chanting it in German. And how, you know, does anybody want to say anything about chanting it in German? Who has had some experience doing it? Möchte jemand etwas dazu sagen, der Erfahrung hat, es auf Deutsch zu rezitieren? Yes, Eric? The difficulty in German is that you don't add some meaning to the Japanese one, because it's just sound. And if you chant it in German, you tend to think about it, and that's what's the difference. Yeah. And it's also different in, I mean, it can be more wide, You can be white, but when you come to check in Egypt town in Germany, you tend to be black. No church, good boy. I'm sorry.

[08:01]

No church, no good boy. We should add that. The no church, no good boy, have sutra. Erich sagte, dass die Schwierigkeit manchmal, das auf Deutsch zu chanten, ist, dass man so in Gedanken gerät und anfängt, darüber nachzudenken, was natürlich mit dem Japanischen nicht möglich ist. And the other hand I found, I find sometimes in Sesshin, when I chanted in German, that certain sentences become a kind of flavor or radiance almost and open up in a certain way that are quite overwhelming sometimes. My experience with Seixin is sometimes, when I recite it in German, that certain sentences unexpectedly get a certain taste or exposure and somehow open up to me, which is very surprising. There's a tradition of the Christian monks of singing.

[09:10]

They have a little, there's a kind of melody, a little one. But this feels a little more harmonious to the German speak. This does, or they're chanting? They're chanting. Yeah. Because it feels like the word has a kind of like, and we make it jack, jack, jack, jack. Yeah, you want to say that in German? Well, there's the... Wait, yeah, well... Excuse me? Which language is this? I was talking in chins.

[10:11]

There is the most basic way of chanting in Buddhism is just a kind of monosyllable coming from the Hara. Kanji, zai, bo, sa, zu, gyo, jin. And then moving that into letting the external sound kind of lose its edges and you move into a kind of overtone chanting. In which your body starts to resonate and you can feel, you can move into different bones which start to vibrate. And going back to what Eric said, I think really you have to really learn it by heart, not by mind.

[11:29]

And just get it so that you don't think about it while you're reading it. And when you stop thinking about it, as Ulrike suggests, I guess, different combinations of words will start linking together and work in you. Now there's a second kind of chanting, which is... not so different, but instead of being just monosyllabic and from the hara, you can move it into different chakras. And that's done for different Dharanis and When we chant, you notice, usually when we do the echo, our voice is a little higher.

[12:44]

Actually, it's a little different kind of chanting when you do the echo, the in-between parts. Now, these two kinds of Buddhist chanting go back to something that now you can get in CDs, a kind of root chanting, which is a shamanic chanting called Tuva, T-U-V-A. And it's still done by Mongolian herdsmen, people like that. And it's almost like kids playing with their voice. You know, kids got to go... Well, they've developed that so they can really do it, and then it turns into these overtones and stuff, a little bit like Mikhail Vetter does, too.

[13:53]

And this chanting in chords too, as Tibetans do, is related to this kind of chanting. As the Tuva folk do too. That's what these Tuvas do too. And this is also a kind of medicine sound which is meant to heal you and heal others. And if you want to, you can actually play with it. Sometimes you'll have to lie down on your back and see if you can relax yourself and find the location of the sound in your throat when you just go like... You find that point and then you move it around in your throat.

[14:55]

It's actually a way of curing cold and things like that. So the root of this chanting goes back to a kind of physiological medicine sound. And there's a third kind of chanting, which is more musical, not exactly Gregorian, but more musical. This is called Tendai Shomyo in Japanese and Chinese. And as far as I know, it goes back to the way the Upanishads were chanted in India, even before Buddha. And it's, again, working with the sound, not the words.

[15:57]

It's like the sound, the words are almost not, are almost unimportant. You work the sounds inside the words. And I can't do it, but I can't sing at all, in fact. I'm sorry. But what you do is, it's sort of... we're having to learn some of it at Crestone for a full moon ceremony we do okay

[17:02]

I would like to ask a question. Often people say, well, Buddhism claims that the world of phenomena doesn't exist because they say everything is empty. And I then don't quite know what to say, and I try to talk around it. But it's really not so easy to explain the difference whether something doesn't exist or my perception of it doesn't exist, because I know that this tree out there exists. After all these years? I mean, exist in a way may be different than how I believe it exists, but how can I kind of straighten that out? Sometimes people say about Buddhism that Buddhism claims that the reality does not exist out there.

[18:22]

And somehow through the practice of Buddhism one knows that the perception of things as they are, how one perceives them that they do not exist, but the claim that nothing exists is something too far-fetched for me. Well, certainly the most difficult and perplexing topic in Buddhism is emptiness. And this is the sutra that has most presented emptiness to the world. And we can say, in fact, that the Prajnaparamita literature replaced Buddha with emptiness. And the center of Mahayana Buddhism is really emptiness, not the Buddha. So Ulrike seems to be asking me to say something about emptiness.

[19:40]

And since this is so difficult, I want to go home. So what I think we ought to do is practicing emptiness, is I think this evening we should have a lazy eve. I don't think we should meet again tonight unless you really want to. Because I think you should have an empty evening. Since I feel a little badly that such a nice afternoon got wasted, you know, sitting around here talking about emptiness.

[20:47]

But we'll see. And right now what I'd like to do is chant it in Japanese once more. Then we'll have a short break. And then we will sort of see if we can talk a little bit about what Ulrike brought up. Okay. Well, an intellectual understanding of the idea of emptiness is not so hard to come by. It's tied up in the idea of, for example, that everything here depends on space. That nothing could exist without space. And what is space? Emptiness. Or looking at atoms and molecules.

[22:06]

Even at that level, atoms and molecules are mostly space. And the atoms themselves, you can't, they're just movement. So you can grasp it that way, but so what? What's the usefulness of it for you to try to grasp it or experience it? And what is the usefulness or how can you make it accessible so that you can also experience it? And it arises also from just saying, just really recognizing that everything changes. And practicing with, as Ulrike said, the tree out there exists.

[23:12]

But that tree does not exist. An activity called treeing exists. And the tree is an activity. Maybe our language tends to make everything into nouns. But nothing is a noun, everything is a verb. And if you just practice with that, seeing everything as an activity, as a verb, Already you'll find yourself in a slightly different world.

[24:14]

Now, see what I mean, the I really don't want to try to explain or teach emptiness in a way that's just a kind of something you're not going to be able to follow up on because you're not practicing Buddhism. I'd like to find a way for you that this is a powerful and useful vision or idea or image that works in you as a person. And I think the most I can give you is this overall picture of the Heart Sutra and this teaching.

[25:39]

And then various possibilities in which you can focus your activity in ways that Our elixir. I wish I had a little vial of liquid elixir, or the original idea of it was a powder. And I could pour a little bit into your language or into your mind. If you all tip your head to the left, I'll put a little in your ear. So I don't know if it's possible to do that, but you take a phrase like, practicing with seeing things as verbs is helpful.

[27:04]

Or practicing with the idea of non-duality. And that means you start out just with wondering, what does non-duality mean? Now, when we're talking in this way, and it's, I think, the only way we can talk, because we're not practicing together on a regular basis, we pretty much have to stick to the first of the eightfold path, Which is views. Views and intentions. Because your views of the world are there in a more basic way even than your psychology. And your views predispose your psychology.

[28:24]

And they're affected by your psychology. They interact. And we're talking about very basic views here. Imagining being able to put yourself into the care of beings as a whole. Or the most common example I give of a necessary view-changing mantra that I almost always speak about is to see that space connects as well as separates. Now sometimes I try to find new ways to teach about these things.

[29:37]

But often I use the same examples over and over again. And this is not because I've run out of possibilities of saying it in other ways. which is sometimes the case but less often than you think but it's because I want to build up a vocabulary with you an experiential vocabulary with you so we can really talk about these things So one of the most basic things you can work with is Space Connects. We assume space separates, but actually space also can connect.

[30:52]

And if you have that idea and you install it in yourself and wear it, at some point you may feel it. And when you feel that space connects, you already are practicing emptiness. So this is, again, I think they're using the word invest or invest yourself in this phrase or wear this phrase.

[31:56]

Space connects, will go a long ways to turning and putting a new seed seed view in your body vat. Now, these turning phrases or mantras, the mantric view changing alchemical seeds are also called gates. Now what we're talking about here again also is when we're talking about views, We're talking about a way of forming reality that we can say is one of your functioning identities.

[33:18]

Because there's being and there's becoming. And in this sense we're talking more about becoming, watching the moment of becoming. Because when you're watching the moment of becoming, you are watching emptiness. You're watching that moment, for example, in which yin and yang arise. And when you have a realization of emptiness, yin and yang arise and then fold or absorb back into that source from which they arose.

[34:20]

When you have an experience of emptiness, this yin and yang that arise, then are absorbed back into the source. So it's not just that when you look at the tree, you see the tree treeing. And you see it not only as an activity, You also see it as an interactivity because you see that it's also a realm of a habitat for insects. It freshens the air. It's actually an air machine. And it draws clouds.

[35:36]

And it brings water up out of the earth. And there's no end to that interactivity of that tree. This isn't just a lesson in ecology. It's a lesson on how we all exist. So instead of seeing it as a noun, you see it as an activity and an interactivity. And the more you have the habit and can bring this into your thinking in a fundamental way, as Heidegger speaks about inception, the thought that's at the beginning of every thought,

[36:37]

You begin to fructify, in other words, to make fruitful. Everything you do, it's like you're watering a plant or nourishing your own thinking. So the more your views are permeated, not by nouns, but by verbs and by interactivity, you are beginning to actually fertilize your thinking with emptiness. And then every time you speak, your speaking is incubating your identity.

[37:52]

So here body, speech, and mind become the three jewels of incubation. Because in your mind and in your speech and in your body, you're incubating your Buddha nature. And you're incubating it by really taking the trouble to water your thinking with emptiness. To see that the tree can't be grasped as a simple entity. One meaning of emptiness is it's free of entity-ness. That the tree, yes, is organizing, but it's organizing from the earth and from the air and the insect and animal realms.

[39:07]

So one deep idea of identity in Buddhism is to be at the place in which you form the world. So there's various kinds of identity. So in Buddhism, the sense is the first and primordial identity Your original face or original mind is to find a way to live at this forming moment. Now, we talked about one of them. One of them is being able to move your sense of physical location to this embryonic point below your navel.

[40:28]

Now we talk about the practices or foundations of mindfulness. And mindfulness is a wonderful, fortuitous translation of Satipatthana into English. But it still has the sense of a mind or mental activity and an observer. So you're mindful of the body, mindful of feelings and so forth. But I've often said when I've taught this that it's not to be Englished that way. It's much better to English it as mindfulness of the mind.

[41:31]

knowing the mind through the mind and bodyfulness of the body knowing the body through the body without a mental observer now The main practice of that is moving your sense of physical location into this spot of transmutation, this embryonic point. Now, this is fairly commonplace as the teaching of the Hara and so forth, which Graf von Durkheim spent a great deal of time on. But it's actually remarkable, I think, for us to recognize that you can locate yourself in a forming point in your body.

[43:11]

A point where you can feel the world taking form before personality and psychology are operating. Again, it doesn't mean that there aren't rules, physiological and psychological rules, about how your world will form itself. But who you are is not just late in that process as the receiver of it, Who you are is also being present at that forming moment. Now mindfulness essentially means the same thing. In a simple sense, it's bringing attention to just what you're doing. I look at this Buddha.

[44:34]

I bring my attention to it. But really, as I've been saying, time has no dimension. It's either past or future. A second after 12 or a second before 12. But we experience a duration. And that duration is made up of your immediate, the potency of your immediate perceptions. All the associations that arise from stored memory and all the anticipations of predictability we have. Und alle Vorahnungen und die Fähigkeiten, Dinge vorherzusagen, die wir haben.

[45:47]

And predictability, an assumed anticipation or predictability, is part of the present moment. Und jetzt diese Annahmen und Vorausahnungen, die wir haben, sind immer Teil des gegenwärtigen Moments. And if in the middle of that moment of duration, und jetzt inmitten dieses Moment des Andauerns, It worked. I suddenly cut through the anticipation. You're confronted with the fact that there's no predictability, actually. There's no predictability, actually. So mindfulness practice is watching that moment of formation Like there's a clear pool of Sri Aurobindo's primordial silence and something arises in your perceptual field and you

[47:16]

depending on the ability to which you can shine your light on what appears. Linji Rinzai, the famous Zen master, says, shine your light on everything that appears and trust that process. Because the very process of doing it, something happens. So one part of mindfulness practice, which is your present, When you are present, this present moment, you are staring being in the face. What you see at this present moment is self. This deeper than self is being, is becoming itself.

[48:36]

So you see becoming. And that moment of becoming is you're shining your light on the object that appears in your sense field. And there are many associations that come in different levels of consciousness, immediate, secondary, borrowed and so forth. And there's expectation and anticipation and that's being constituted all the time. That's a moment actually when you're forming yourself where the world is taking form in you and in your interactions with things. And that moment can nourish you or deplete you. And that moment is also called a Dharma. A moment of formation that's held for a moment is exactly what the word Dharma means. And that Dharma is empty. This has appeared in your sense field.

[50:09]

There's been anticipation, memories, but it's gone. It's gone, and it's gone, and it appears, and it appears. You can't grasp it, actually. I can grasp this. But if the world disappeared and I burned up, this might still be here but it wouldn't be a dharma it would be a dharma when it arises in my sense fields and I through the practice of mindfulness shine my light on it and I see the associations pouring in the clear pool And I see the patterns of anticipation forming in the clear pool.

[51:14]

And I take joy in this arising. And I feel nourished by it. And I look more carefully. All I see is the clear pool. This is the practice of emptiness. This is locating your original mind before the world takes form. Locating yourself body-fullness-ly mindfulnessly, in the forming world. And this is a kind of identity, your Buddha nature. And this Buddha nature is interacting with your person nature. And the more you develop or are able to reside in this Buddha nature, or primordial mind or original mind, or forming the world at the moment of forming,

[52:33]

the more this nurtures your person identity, your person nature and historical nature. So this activity, this interactivity, is the teaching of the Heart Sutra. And the teaching of the Heart Sutra is how to reach this forming point. When there are eyes, ears, nose, sound, color, But when you return to that forming point there's no eyes. No color. No sound. So this is your pre-identity identity.

[53:54]

But it's a way of being present in the forming world. So that's one way of teaching about emptiness. Maybe we could sit for a few minutes, take a deep breath on this. Since we're not going to meet this evening, I'd like to, before dinner continues at 6.30, Continue this a few more minutes to show you this, to make clearer the sense of a gate, a seed gate actually.

[55:14]

Now, if some of you want to meet this evening together yourselves and develop some questions, And ask each other questions, explore how you feel about this. And you can find me, you can come to my room and get me. I'm happy to join the discussion. But I'll leave that up to your self-organizing ability. And even if you don't find me, you can... Even if you don't find me, you might find Ulrike. Or Martin or someone.

[56:14]

But you also, if you don't find me, it'll still fertilize tomorrow's discussion. Because your experience of this is 90% of what we're doing. Okay, now here's the sense of seed gate. How in the midst of your activity do you discover being shining forth? How do you embed yourself in the complexity of the present? We tend to brush the present off. It's something you get through as fast as possible to some goal you want.

[57:35]

But the present is actually all the complexity you have. And the present is always waiting for you to ask it to teach you. And part of practice is opening yourself to a kind of grace. What you do when you're practicing is, maybe we could say you're incubating grace. I'm not a Christian, but I suspect that the feeling is somewhat similar to what is meant in Christianity by grace. Or a sense of being blessed by the present. Now, I've been practicing 30 years or more.

[58:50]

I should say 5 or 10, then you'd take practice more seriously. 30 years and I still look like this. But you know, I'm actually 84. See how vital I am at 84? But I can't pretend to be an advertisement for Buddha nature. But as much as I've been practicing, I still am discovering how to listen to myself.

[59:52]

I'm always discovering new ways of noticing something that's almost not noticeable. Because I'm not looking in the right place. I'm always trying to reorganize things according to my body image or my usual way of being. But when I Stop that reorganizing. Or don't do it unless it's really necessary. That kind of softness goes through my limbs. And I can feel a kind of fruitfulness appearing. in my way of thinking, a fluidness, things work smoothly.

[61:13]

And instead of just seeing you, I feel 10 or 12 surfaces being touched by you. So there's a kind of grace or blessing going on through this meditation practice. And through finding, identifying yourself at the moment of the world taking form, And how to come into this kind of point, each of us has it on our own, because no one can do it but you. Although you can get a feeling for it from others.

[62:15]

That's what a mantra is. Or a turning phrase. These are gates which are also seeds. Now this sutra is based on what's called three seed gates. The signless, the wishless, and emptiness. Now we've talked about the emptiness gate. And Christina mentioned the signless gate. It's wonderful you used, oh, you want to say that in German? Okay.

[63:15]

It's wonderful you used the image of the house. Because one of the early meanings of this word taiji, the source of yin and yang, is no ridge pole. Yeah, no fist balker. It means you've taken the house down.

[64:38]

Now, part of this is there's a positive side of vowing to invest words. But it's important to recognize that all thinking is a form of vowing. When you think something, there's a predictability of vowing this is real. When you name something, you're vowing. That's a tree, it will remain a tree. Or you might say, oh, that's Martin. That's almost a way of dismissing Martin. Oh, that's Martin. But Martin isn't... Martin is a whole world.

[65:47]

He's not encased in this word Martin. So I shouldn't vow that Martin is Martin. In certain states of mind, I need to know that he's Martin. But if I really look at Martin, I have no name. I don't know what he is. There's an unpredictability there. First of all, he's not only Martin, he's his three good friends. I can see his three good friends appearing and we're sitting on both sides. Because the four of your identities are all mixed up. I mean mixed together.

[66:49]

Maybe occasionally mixed up. And my identity is mixed up with Ulrike's. And with Peter and Ruth and Hilda. And with Martin too. So if I really look at Martin like looking at the tree, the names disappear. And when I really look at Martin or any of you without any names, without any following, I don't know. You know? This is the gate of the signless. So you can begin to peel the names off things. And even though it may make you feel very raw and vulnerable, If you're located strongly in this embryonic point, where the world is forming, then you can be quite open to this signless world.

[68:14]

And the more you're open to that, it's not only a gate into emptiness, it's also a seed which again begins to fertilize your activity, your thinking. So that's the signless gate. And wishless gate is quite simple. It's like practicing non-duality. What can this word mean? When I see you, you're outside me. You're over there. But if I stop ideas of there and here, I'm beginning to practice the wishless.

[69:24]

And if I can see that I tend to think in categories, it's good or bad, it affects me or it doesn't affect me. This person is not interesting. This person is interesting. You begin to practice seeing if you can let the walls of this prison of either or drop away. Doesn't mean you don't have likes and dislikes again. They're necessary. Or you might eat some terrible food. But it's also possible sometimes to practice with a state of mind where you just notice, oh, here comes rushing in a like, here comes rushing in a dislike.

[70:51]

And you nip them both in the bud. And that's the practice of the gate of wishlessness. Again, you're moving yourself back into the world as it forms. This is not only a gate, but also a seed. Every time you do it, you're incubating a seed, which can transform your life. which can put you at the edge of enlightenment or can enlighten you and can awaken your Buddha nature.

[71:54]

And enlightenment, you don't have to sort of, although you hear this, still most of us are waiting around for a really good experience. I know it's beyond all that, but really I know it's actually a really good experience. The biggest kind of being candy And sometimes it is. If you've been poor and homeless and somebody gives you a palace, yes. You think, great, what a palace. This is... You didn't say, my God. No. That's mostly what you mean when you say, woo.

[73:11]

Mein Gott, we've slipped into another religion. But if you just have a house, And you step out of your house. It may not be such a big deal. But you'll notice over the years a growing sense of freedom and ease. You've just stepped into your yard. Or you've stepped into emptiness. And when you've stepped back into your house, it's the same house, but it's so easy to live there. This is also enlightenment. Thank you very much. So I will see some of you maybe this evening.

[74:28]

And I'll see more of you tomorrow morning for Zazen. At 7.45. And even more of you I hope at 10 o'clock. Thank you very much. Thank you, Martin, for inviting me. I'd like to know where any of this leads for you. Or what ideas or questions come up. Maybe some of you who haven't spoken so much could give me something. In the Heart Sutra and the Prajnaparamita literature, there's no such thing as a dumb question.

[75:35]

And maybe those who haven't said much yet could give me something, a hint. And in the entire Prajna Paramita literature there is nothing that is a stupid question. Yes. When I came here, I was full of questions, but during yesterday and during meditation, the questions sort of dissolved and weren't so important anymore. Yeah, good. But do you remember any of them just before they dissolved? What I didn't quite understand and get is what you meant, that all the anticipations we have for the future happen in the presence.

[77:10]

Yes. Well, not all the anticipations we have for the future happen in the present. But let's just take Ulrike's tree out there that she thinks exists. When you look at it, you expect it to be there the next moment. But in fact, the balloon may crash on it in just a moment. And you would be quite surprised to see the balloon come down.

[78:13]

As the local farmers are often during breakfast when these things land. So your anticipation that the tree is going to be there is interfered with when the balloon comes down. So I meant at a very fundamental level, the present moment is constituted of three dynamics. Actually, you can divide it into six or seven things, but three are the main, I would say. The one is the potency of your perception. The second is the associations that come with that, allow you to decide what it is or name it, etc.

[79:33]

Memories and so forth. And your anticipation that something will happen with this or that it will continue in existence. Now, the reason I present these ingredients, these three main dynamics, is that we think the present is just this room or this stuff, right, that you're seeing. But you're constructing the present on each moment. I mean, in the simple Yogacara sense, when I'm looking at you, you're there, but of course I'm seeing my perception of you.

[80:39]

And that perception of you is affected by associations and by anticipations or predictability. And the more you see that, the more you participate in an active present, not a passive present. Even to know that and to hear that, if you really hear me saying that or hear our discussion, will change subtly over time how you are in the present. At least that's my experience and that's what I believe.

[81:48]

Even if you don't develop yogic skills to slow it down so you can really see it in slow motion, still it will affect you. Now, when I looked at this sutra before I came here, I had certain questions, somewhat unformed questions, present in my looking at this sutra, which have influenced how I've done the seminar.

[82:53]

But I might tell you that, what those were, though it's nothing, no big deal. But I'd like to wait till I hear more questions from you. The questions you bring to your practice and your life deeply influence your life. Often you don't have a sense of coming to an answer explicitly, except you begin to live the answer. Okay. This is just what I'm talking about is kind of deep common sense maybe.

[84:12]

It's not even Buddhism. Yeah. It is quite simple. So because of this discussion, sometimes on an open level, there is of course no support. The question I have in this context is, what is the connection in Zen between intellect and all these simple things?

[85:13]

Like what happens to me here, sometimes I don't understand a single word, and I have no access to the discussion. And yet, on the other hand, like the tree, I mean, it's just such a simple matter, and it all feels real simple and easy. So... Can you point out a little bit about this? I'm always afraid someone will say that. Yeah. Of course you're right. I don't know what to say exactly. Sometimes these issues become important if there's a crisis or challenge in our life to how we think and feel. But Buddhism definitely is a kind of philosophy

[86:16]

It's not intellectual, I would say, but it's philosophical. What I mean by it's not intellectual is it's not... Buddhism does not believe that you can work anything out in your thinking, much. But certain kinds of ideas we have influence how we perceive. And so it's a good idea in Buddhist practice to look at the ideas that influence the way you think.

[87:31]

So you think to transform or examine your basic ideas, but Once you do that, you act through meditation and through mindfulness, just your daily life. I mean, again, the simple example is seeing that you take for granted that space separates. And you try on the feeling space connects. And that takes a certain, I have to say that conceptually to get it across. It can be shown to without speaking, but it can only be shown when you actually live with people or with people alive.

[88:44]

Of course, I don't think anything I'm saying is difficult. But I think it takes a familiarity with thinking things through, which most of us don't do much. And I found that if I'm going to teach Buddhism in the West, I have to think things through. So then I feel I should share that with you to show you how I got to where what I'm presenting. And if it's too much for you, as it is for me sometimes, just pick up a few things from it.

[90:02]

That's good enough. You know, you can't translate from really translate, particularly from a different civilization, one word into another. So I actually have to not translate or using Heidegger's word transport, I have to remap the meaning in our language. And all translation is transformation or interpretation. So the only way I can actually get myself close to and you close to is to remap it so you get a feeling for it in your own terms.

[91:20]

But thank you for your question. And if you're If we're in a sesshin, then I talk much less or crest down even less. But in this situation, I use this as a time to explore things, partly because I don't think you want to meditate all day, or only some of you do. So I have to fill a time with something, so I... In Sashin, I talk much less, also where we live, in Preston. But in an occasion like this, I think, on the one hand, you don't want to meditate all day, and what else should I do with the time? So I talk. And I think if I just sat here and gazed at you, you'd all get a little nervous.

[92:22]

And I think if I sat here all the time and just stared at you, you'd probably get a little nervous. So if I keep banging my jaw together, I can gaze at you surreptitiously. Because I feel I'm actually, my actual experience is there's a kind of sea of view here that you've made a common and i'm sort of swimming in it or bathing in it it's very nice i like it

[93:00]

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