I remember you saying before that there is not one sort of ground mind, the basic mind. What can you say to the term emptiness? Hi. Is there a ground substance from emptiness, a ground energy from emptiness? Yeah, I would say those things, but I wouldn't say ... If you want to use the word ground, you'd have to say a groundless ground. I think if, in some ways I want to continue, to see if I can continue, what I started last year here actually in in Muenchen, Muenchen.

[01:23]

A number of things for some reason that I've been trying to find ways to speak about. A couple of things, there are more than one, started here in Muenchen last year. All because of crime. Or because there's just happened that way, but also seems to have been drawn out of... drawn from the, you know, people that were here. I think, can we open a window? Is there a window open? Suddenly it's become kind of muggier. Okay. Maybe a window in the back, Yosef, would be good.

[02:27]

Thank you. That's probably enough. So if I do, if I can, I probably this weekend need to speak about emptiness. In some experiential or Because if our topic is Buddha nature, then we do have to speak about emptiness. Of course, speaking about it is already something funny, but we have to do that. But I did say we don't have one basic mind. We have, as I said before lunch, we have a choice of what mind we want to live the world through. How are we going to choose that mind?

[04:10]

That's where we left off. What are the alternatives? What are our choices? Now certainly we want a mind that in some way reflects how we actually exist and how the world actually exists. So in that sense emptiness has to be part of it. But does somebody else want to say yes? Could you please clarify the word emptiness, what it means? Is it emptiness of form and substance, or is it simply total emptiness? Because I cannot see any place in the relative world of opposites where emptiness really exists. Yeah, well, emptiness has a ... Okay, well I don't want to get, as I said, I want to wait a little bit to try to speak about it.

[05:18]

But still, I'll say a little bit. I mean, it doesn't mean nothingness, emptiness, but it means perhaps no-thingness. Oh, yes. Emptiness is really... means the full appreciation of impermanence. It of course has power as a concept within our practice.

[06:42]

But the real power of it is our experience of it. And just one other thing, I mean, Technically, the word shunyata means no boundaries. It means a fullness without boundaries. Technisch nochmal gesprochen heißt ja shunyata, der Begriff, keine Grenzen, also Fülle ohne Grenzen. Okay, that's enough said for now. Okay, someone else? Okay. I used the word this weekend, this last weekend in Johanneshof, of paratactic.

[07:56]

And it means to parataxis or paratactic, it means just to set things side by side without any relationship between them. If you said, it's... It's muggy today and the room is white. And there's no real connection between those two. They're just there. And Chinese tends to be a rather, compared to English and German, a paratactic language. Words are just beside each other and it's not clear whether they're a noun or a verb or You have to decide when you translate how the words are going to relate to each other.

[09:04]

There's a man named Bertrand who often lives with us at Crestone and Johanneshof. And he's written some books about the Dalai Lama and other things. And we were talking the other day And I brought up by chance a famous movie called, one of the first documentaries called, The Man of Aram, I think it's called. It's a wonderful poetic movie. Since I mention it, I'll just say it's a wonderful poetic movie about some people who lived on an island off the coast of Ireland. And although it turns out it was a documentary, it also was completely staged.

[10:27]

But in any case, this man, Bertrand, turns out he had written his PhD thesis at Harvard on a Russian documentary maker and also with some reference to Eisenstein. I can't remember just now the Russian man's name. But it reminded me that I'd very carefully watched Eisenstein's movies when I was young. I saw many of them. I think I've seen all of them, but I know about several times. You don't have to go faster than me.

[11:38]

Try not to overtake. You can overtake. That would be fun. And particularly Ivan the Terrible I watched. I don't know, some of you may have seen it. I watched it in a trance-like state. I don't know how many times I saw it, but quite a lot. And for me, I don't know, maybe it's just my age and I didn't know much about films or something, but it had a paratactic quality. I mean that I didn't have any sense of where the film was going even after seeing it several times.

[12:46]

Eisenstein made every image so unbelievably clear and yet simultaneously related to everything else in the film. Images on the wall behind somebody who's talking and things like that. So I just sat there and each thing, whatever it was, was there and then the next thing was there. And I thought of it also coming here on the train with those two identical 80-year-old twins.

[13:51]

I mentioned, you were here this morning, Joseph? The two of you, I think, weren't here. But there were these two old ladies with ultra-white hair. Old now to me means 15 or 20 years at least older than me. So maybe they were 80 or something. They were old anyway. Elegant faces. And dressed exactly alike. I mean, one had a brown purse, one had a black purse. Other than that, I... And I wondered what twins have to say to each other. If I said to them, say, oh, you have a nice blue sweater on. And the other one says, oh, yes, your blue sweater is very nice, too.

[15:03]

I mean, what can I talk about? Anyway, somehow this made me think about how we talk to each other, talk to ourselves. And there was a stream, for a long period of time, there was a stream running right along the tracks And the stream, of course, is the same and different all the time. Lighter, grass, you know. So I had a kind of... I just... playing around with this sense of paratactic or what I'm calling a particular kind of mind. And coming from Zurich, of course, you were in Switzerland and Austria and Germany.

[16:07]

But I wasn't thinking... Yeah, you got your geography mixed up. Yeah. Austria. That's the kind of mistake Americans make. Aussies. Yeah, so I... Just the stream and then the stream. And I wasn't thinking, am I in Germany or Austria or Switzerland? This reminded me again of watching the movie Ivan the Terrible. And there was, for me at least, I haven't seen the movie in many years now, but there was a tremendous... as I said, clarity.

[17:15]

It's as if Eisenstein was able to make each image have a... somehow fully clear. But then you could say, but the world isn't like that. This is an artificial thing for a movie maker to do to make the world clear. The world is also... fuzzy and dark and etc. Well, but there's plenty of darkness in Ivan the Terrible, but he makes it very clear. And I found I had some kind of experience in watching that movie that anticipated my Zen practice.

[18:20]

Because I found allowing my mind, the mind, a mind, this mind, to be completely engaged with each successive scene, clarified my mind. And after the movie, I saw the world differently. Or more clearly. In more depth and preciseness. And it was related somehow to just letting things be side by side.

[19:33]

And if there were connections, I didn't think the connections. I didn't think the connections. Yeah, so this is, what are we talking about? What am I talking about? I'm talking about the way the mind works. And I would say that Eisenstein, out of his genius, talent, hit upon or used a way the mind works. Or in his own clarity as an artist, he was able to awaken a potential in the viewers' minds of a potential of clarity.

[20:43]

Unmodified clarity. And one of the things that happens when you practice quite a bit And as Eric said this morning, and you allow each thing to just appear, the more you can do that, let's say without thinking it, things begin to have a tremendous preciseness.

[21:44]

I don't even have to say brightness, the shine. It's somehow related to to not having the mind engaged in past, present, future thinking. It's almost like a kind of, I mean, jogging, mental jogging. I don't know why I said jogging. But, you know, you go out and exercise, you don't think, and you feel better afterwards than a lot of people do. Maybe jogging isn't such a good image. We could say it's yoga postures of the mind. Eisenstein gave my mind a certain kind of yoga postures. But practice too, if you can... allow the appearance of each thing to be the posture of your mind.

[23:02]

Which is something like this word paratactic. And it's also like the Japanese word soku-rei. Which again, as I've translated, means detached, but actually means detached yet not separated from. Now, what is this mind that is detached yet not separated from? It sounds, yeah, it sounds obviously contradictory. But, yeah, it's actually in practice it's not contradictory. You and everything seems in place. Very particular and separate.

[24:19]

Or maybe separate, particular and independent. And yet connected. Okay. Now in such a mind, how does karma function? How does memory function? And how does the world function in us in such a mind? These are the kind of questions that the concept of Buddha nature Which is very particularly a Chinese and not Indian concept.

[25:24]

Well, not entirely, but as a kind of concept at the center of Buddhist practice that is Chinese. So the concept arises through an experience of oneself in the world that is related to what I've just been speaking about. So, okay. So what do we mean by having a nature?

[26:26]

Now, Dogen said, we don't have Buddha nature, we are Buddha nature. Because there's no possessor, one that possesses this nature. Now I want to leave the questions that are raised by what I said. I want to leave it because I presented a kind of topography of the mind. And how do we then, if there is this topography of the mind, if you do have a choice about what mind you live the world through, do you need some experience of what the choices are?

[27:29]

So at present I've presented so far the sense of You could just have a mind which lets things sit side by side without a syntactical connection. Like when words are names, they just can sit side by side and don't have to be part of a sentence. You know, after lunch I walked along the line of conservatory or greenhouses. And there was a very sweet smelling bush of lilacs.

[28:51]

And I was transported. Transported? Yeah. Whatever that means. Carried away. And I of course thought of the opening of one of Walt Whitman's most famous poems. When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed, We're challenging our translator. When lilacs last in the door yards bloomed, als flieder zuletzt... Door yard.

[29:54]

Door, well, door and yard, yard around the door. Als im Garten, in dem Garteneingang blühte. Yeah. And if you're interested in literature, that's a kind of background to... I don't know why I'm talking about all this stuff, but being here in Munich... I don't know why I'm talking about all this stuff, but being here in Munich... I don't know why I'm talking about all this stuff, but being here in Munich... But last year when I was here, I gave a lecture in pale... paler shade of grey. And... I saw a sign which said Starnberger See. Is that how you say it? yeah like that that's untranslatable yeah and uh of course I saw the word and I was immediately put into T.S.

[31:04]

Eliot's poem The Wasteland where he says April is the cruelest month breeding lilacs out of dead land etc you don't have to translate and um He says, we were at the Archduke's at the Starnberger See, and I always wondered where it was. And suddenly it was there, right in front of me, as I was on the way to Peel. Well, I don't know. Again, I'm getting carried away here. But the... The background of this poem of T.S. Eliot's is somehow also this Civil War poem of Walt Whitman's. Anyways, I saw the lilacs and I thought, when lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed, And in this line, which stays in your mind like a gate phrase, the words, those words

[32:10]

have a syntactical relation to each other, or they flow horizontally. But they also have a vertical relationship with no relationship to the word beside it. Because the lilacs last. They stay. The smell stays. And also, when they last bloomed in the dooryard, So a line of a poem like that lets you stay in each word and not go to the next word. It lets you rest in one word and go back to the first word.

[33:37]

So here I'm speaking about memory and T.S. Eliot and all that stuff. But I'm also speaking about how does memory function in our own appreciation of what appears. In our own appreciation of how memory appears. How memory gathers. Maybe... Oh, I guess Andres. What?

[34:37]

The draft. Yeah, I know it's a draft. That's what we wanted for a little while. That's what I wanted. So are we talking about just going more slowly in our apprehension of things? Should we? Am I speaking about just going more slowly? Yes, it's a different pace. But it's a pace that calls forth the world in a different way. When you feel the verticality of the words as well as the horizontality of the words.

[35:45]

And I started speaking about this this last weekend in... And I used the example of the Japanese name we have for Johanneshof, which is Genrinji. Der also Genrinji ist. And it means, you might guess, Black Forest Temple. Und ihr könnt es vielleicht raten, es heißt Schwarzwald Tempel. Couldn't be much simpler. Könnte nicht einfacher sein. We are in the Black Forest Temple. Hier sind wir im Schwarzwald Tempel. But, you know, words hide the thinking that went into the words. Black. In... Japanese and Chinese, this kanji, this character, gen means actually dark, darkness.

[36:59]

And it means actually reddish black. And as darkness or black, it's come to mean the source, like the night sky from which dawn appears. So it's a So it's called sometimes the source of the 10,000 things. And what is the source of the 10,000 things? The idea of mother, of female. So gen means not just dark, it also means mysterious female. And Rin means not just forest, it means the Sangha.

[38:18]

What happens when things stand beside each other? So Marie-Louise was translating for me. And I'd just come from a meeting with her of all the kindergarten mothers and fathers. And I'm sitting there with these people and I'm older than the parents' grandparents. And my little three-year-old daughter thinks I'm just a normal father so far. But I was a pretty odd duck. in this circumstance with all these parents. But they were tolerant. But Marie-Louise said, I'm glad, because they don't know what's going on in Johanneshof exactly.

[39:19]

But Marie-Louise said, I'm very glad you didn't tell them you were from the mysterious female Sangha temple. But that's the sense of the verticality of words which are hidden in just black forest temple. And these words have a verticality in our own experience. It's not in the dictionary. And the verticality of a word is closer to how the world actually exists. And the verticality of a word is closer to how the world actually exists. Yeah, now again, am I talking about Buddha nature?

[40:28]

What am I talking about? I don't know. We're going to have to find out. So I want to say one more thing, I think, probably, before we take a break. Okay. Again, I'm trying to give an example of the topography of mind. If you have a choice of minds, And here I'm continuing somewhat from last weekend and somewhat from last year here. Okay. I can look at any one of you and find you very particular and I can perhaps know your name Yeah, and I can think about your name and what I know about you.

[41:46]

If I shift to feeling all of you all at once, so if I look at you and I just feel you, feel the group of us, I can't think about the group of us. I can only feel the group of us, the space of us. So I can go back and forth from the particular person, each person, to feeling the all-at-onceness of us. And again, I can't think the all-at-onceness, I can only feel it. So when you notice this, or when you note this, if you're practicing and you're mindful, you may sense that this is actually a different mind.

[43:15]

These are two minds. They're two minds because they differently organize how we perceive and how we feel. Okay. Now, if I generate this mind, enter this mind of feeling the room all at once, Listen, mind, I can't think. But I can, let's say, feel. I have to have some word. Let's say I can feel it. I can also notice not only that it's a different mind, but that it feels different in the body.

[44:31]

I can also notice that it's a different mind, but I can also notice that it feels different in the body. feel the bodily aspect of mind. And I can feel it and sustain it in my breath. And I'm not talking about anything, anybody, anyone of you can do it. Any one of you can do it. You have to notice that it's a different mind. And then you have to notice that you can feel it physically differently. Okay, then I can choose, once I've felt this all at onceness or field of mind, I have the feel of a field of mind, I can then come back to looking at each one of you as a particular person,

[45:34]

Without leaving that field of mind, and now you also are a field. Just as I feel the field of mind looking at Tara here, I can feel not Tara's name or anything I know about her, but I feel her presence. Now, what is it to feel her presence? Or Eric Eno, Eric whatever your last name, I-S-E-No. What is the presence? And it brings me back to this time Marie-Louise and I were lost in the forest. Das bringt mich zurück zu der Zeit, wo Marie-Louise und ich im Wald verloren gegangen waren.

[47:02]

In der Nähe von Johanneshof. And for some reason it was winter in the forest and summer, short-sleeved summer outside. It's not so bad to be lost for two and a half hours, but when it's sleeting and it's summer outside, it's... It was cold. We were cold. When you're cold and you don't know where to go, there's none of these little signs saying eight kilometers to such and such a village, which you don't know where that is anywhere. And if somebody appears out of the forest a walker And someone suddenly appears out of nowhere, for example a walker, you think, a being, a human being.

[48:04]

And you don't say, that's not the kind of guy I like, I don't like, I mean, that's a... I'm not going to ask him any questions, I'm not talking about a human being. How the hell do you get out of here? Well, it's a very interesting question. Why don't, when I'm so grateful to see this person, why don't I feel that whenever I meet anyone? Why don't I see each of you as if you just walked out of the forest and you're about to save me? I don't think this is an inconsequential question. And I talked this last weekend about how sometimes in the movies you feel the ocean or... Trees moving or a long road.

[49:13]

I mean, we live on this, a valley in Crestone, the size of the state of Connecticut. And there's one road straight across the middle of it for miles and miles. You can see down it. They call it the gun barrel. It's just how I drive to the grocery store, 60 miles, 100 kilometers away. But if you see that in a movie or in a photograph, It has a poetry which doesn't have when I'm driving to the grocery store. What is the difference? What territory does a film make the road more real to us? No pun intended of R-E-E-L. Are they also examples of a different mind?

[50:36]

But I think that if I bring this mind of all-at-onceness, this, let's call it, because we need a technical term, let's call it a field mind. If I bring this field mind to each appearance. This field mind that I can't but I can feel, then each person I see feels like that person coming out of the forest. Now, what does that have to do with bodhisattva practice or Buddha nature?

[52:01]

Yeah, obviously, I think it has some connection. But I really don't want to say the connection, if there is a connection. Because what we need to do is create a territory, and sometimes the territory is articulated through questions. So that we can let our experience into this territory. Okay. Thanks. So let's take a break.

[52:31]

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