I don't need to introduce myself because you're quite well known to the audience. So I think the rest should be said by you. I like the rest. This is the easy way out of an introduction. I'd like to welcome you to this presentation. I'm looking forward to it. I've been waiting for so long. Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding of the time, I don't think you'll have to look for me. But in any case, [...] Thank you very much. It's different.

[01:36]

These windows are new, aren't they? It's like a different room. Well, you had half an hour to meditate. So, Well, I hope I don't have the title wrong. As I understand it, the title is The One Who Is Not Busy. Well, this is... You know, based on this phrase is from a story about Yunyan and Daowu.

[02:40]

And it's one of the most famous koans and famous for its simplicity and its usefulness. And I think it's been... It goes beyond being a koan in a way because it's just a kind of practical resource. And it's a story that I think has been useful to a lot of people. I know it was useful to Thich Nhat Hanh. He told me that Once, I believe in his late teens or something, he heard the story or was told the story by his teacher and it remained a resource for him. Anyway, the story is these two guys who are Dharma brothers and blood brothers.

[03:49]

Daowu and Yunyan. And Daowu, I think was the older brother, but anyway he seems to be the brighter one. He's a little more alert. And In quite a few stories about them, Dao Wu is always taking the lead and in a kind of way is Yun Yan's teacher. And I would, my guess is, you know, not having been there, but my guess is that Yun Yan had some, probably had some power as a person, but wasn't as quick as his brother, and his brother, in a sense, had a feeling of taking care of him, of maturing him.

[05:15]

So the story is quite simple. Daowu is sweeping, as you do in monasteries a lot. You sweep the dust and you sweep the rootless dust. Man kehrt den Staub weg und man kehrt den wurzellosen Staub weg. And he's sweeping away and his brother comes by, Dawu. Nun er kehrt und sein Bruder Dawu kommt vorbei. And says, I'm too busy. You're too busy. Er sagt, ja, viel zu geschäftig. And Yunian looked at him and said, you should know there is one who is not busy. Und Yunian schaut ihn an und sagte, du solltest wissen, dass es jemand gibt, der nicht beschäftigt ist. Ja. So Daowu immediately, as it says in the koan, saw a scene, saw, can you hear way back there?

[06:22]

Really? Okay. Immediately saw a scene and he said, aha, if so, then there's a double moon. And Yunyan held up the broom and said, Is this a double moon? Now you don't have to know too much about Buddhism to get the gist of this koan. But what's clear here, and would be helpful to you too if you're practicing Zen, is to have a sense of... to keep in view your understanding of Buddhism.

[07:33]

Like you keep in view that everything is impermanent. Basic things like that you keep in your foreground mind or in your background mind, at least in view. And what you're doing when you do that is you're beginning to generate what we could call an accurately assuming consciousness. Because we have a capacity for, we don't just have intentions, we also have a capacity for intention. And if you don't acknowledge that capacity for intention and discover some deep intention that you have or articulate your innermost feeling.

[08:51]

Your initial perception of the world is always going to be a little mixed up or confused. language itself implies that everything is permanent. So if your basic assumption is that things are permanent, you're always going to slightly be misreading the world. So these two guys are Yun Yan, the slow-witted one, still is who happens to be in my lineage. Can't be helped.

[10:02]

I can't change it now, you know. Yunyan, still, he's very present when his brother says to him, too busy. He doesn't miss a beat. He says, you should know there is one who is not busy. Then when his brother pushes him a little further, tests him a little further, ah, if so, there's a double moon. Again, without hesitation, he holds up the broom. Is this a double moon? Okay. So I should try to explain to you what's going on in this koan, perhaps. First of all, you don't need to know much except you yourself can work with, while you're busy, while you're doing things, while you're active, the feeling that there's one who is not busy.

[11:29]

Now, that's a basic intuition that you can... I mean, you don't have to know much about Buddhism to have the feeling that even in the midst of activity there can be this feeling of not being busy. But it's helpful, I think, to understand it more specifically from a Buddhist point of view. Now, this rests on a rigorously thought through philosophical principle and understanding. But it's presented here as this story.

[12:51]

Because philosophy, which couldn't be presented as a story, would just be not very real, really. So, in a way, these two men are representing something they've studied, but also something they've practiced. I mean, Buddhism is developed from practice. And Zen in particular is based on a succession of valid cognitions. It's not taken from philosophy or from scripture.

[13:58]

The reason Zen is called a teaching outside the scripture, outside the sutras, Because although the sutras, the scriptures may give you insight, may show you something, they are not the truth. Only if the scriptures lead you then to a valid cognition in your own life are they validated. Or lead to a direct experience. So the truth of Zen is outside the scriptures in a direct experience, but it doesn't mean Zen doesn't use scriptures.

[15:00]

And I see these two close friends. We're here. We're with our sashin. We just did it. The house is still out. We just finished the other day. And what I pointed out during the Sesshin, I can use as an example of this relationship between experience and scripture. Is it when you practice meditation, and particularly when you get somewhat experienced at meditation, You may have, you're likely to have certain blissful experiences. Yeah. At least I hope you do. But if you don't have some sense of I mean, there can be a tendency to say, well, that feels kind of nice, but, you know, so what?

[16:29]

But, you know, the outer four noble truths are there's suffering, And there's a cause of suffering. And because there's a cause of suffering, there's freedom from suffering. We could say the inner four noble truths is there's a body characterized not by suffering, there's a body characterized by bliss. And the second would be there is a cause of this bliss. And there's a cause of not knowing this bliss. And hence there can be a loss of this bliss. And then there's the path, which is the fourth noble truth.

[17:46]

There's a teaching in Hinduism which is that our states of mind are waking, and Buddhism is rooted in this, are waking, non-dreaming deep sleep. One understanding of this is that, you know, and where yogic practice comes from, is can you develop a mind that knows waking, dreaming and non-dreaming deep sleep. And as in your waking consciousness, your waking consciousness doesn't allow the kind of consciousness dreaming is to be carried in waking consciousness.

[18:54]

So we tend to forget the majority of our dreams when we become conscious in the usual way. There's this ancient Hindu idea that non-dreaming deep sleep is a state of deep bliss. And when you wake up, you forget it even more thoroughly than you forget your dreams. But the idea is, the understanding is, that most of us couldn't survive our daily life if we didn't at least have this bliss experience at night, even if we forget it.

[20:14]

Buddhism doesn't teach it this way, but Buddhism does say, Zen does say, that what happens when you open yourself consciously to non-conceptual consciousness... When you open yourself, we could say to an objectless continuum of mind, this bliss comes up in you. Now, if you know this, Or if you know a certain quality of the meditation body, or shall we say, is characterized by bliss. If you have this teaching, then you will notice bliss in a different way in your meditation.

[21:28]

The experience is the same, but the teaching suggests you notice it a certain way. And by noticing a certain way, your body begins to remember it. And your body becomes to be more nurtured by it. Okay, so these two guys again are just talking from their own experience. But there's a lot of teaching in the quickness and immediacy of their response, in that they understand their experience in a very particular way.

[22:42]

Okay. So what does it mean, what does he mean to say there is one who is not busy? Again, we can talk about this as an intuitive resource that you can just remind yourself about the one who is not busy. But in a simple sense of looking at meditation in a therapeutically sense, we would say, well, you've been so busy recently, you need a vacation. Dann würden wir einfach sagen, du hattest so viel zu tun in der letzten Zeit, du brauchst einfach Urlaub.

[23:48]

Yeah, you've been so busy, you better do some meditation, have some times of stillness. Du hattest so viel zu tun, also mache doch einfach etwas Meditation und gönne dir etwas Zeit der Stille. And that's probably pretty good advice. So, but the conception there is that there's busyness and then sequentially there's periods of stillness. But Yunyan doesn't say, oh, yes, I am awfully busy. I'm going to take a nap this afternoon. Yeah, I'll do meditation later. Or let's go have a beer. Now he says, just now is all the stillness I need is just now.

[24:52]

So that's simultaneous stillness, not sequential stillness. And so let's use probably the most useful metaphor around is water. Water and waves and so forth, you know. Water purifies things, you know. You take all this dirty water and throw it in the ground and it bubbles up somewhere else pure, you know. Okay, so what's going on in a wave? Or, you know, there's a lot of lakes around here and I had lunch the other afternoon after sashina at a restaurant on a lake somewhere. And the late afternoon, the wind died.

[25:52]

We say died in English. Do you say it in German? The wind died down. And the lake became very still. I mean, the water is so responsive to the slightest wing of an insect, yet it was really, the whole lake was almost completely still. And earlier it had been a little choppy with some wind. So here we have sequential stillness. When we arrived at the restaurant it was a little dark and a little windy, but later on it became very sunny and also very calm.

[26:53]

And certainly when we first start meditating we have these periods when we for which we meditate and which we feel very still, hopefully. But of course, if you try meditation, you'll find out it's not very still usually. A lot of stuff you don't want. It's actually good. You're restoring, reprogramming your karma, actually, but still it's very disturbing. Yeah. And you think, you know, there better be stillness in the midst of this because there's no stillness in, you know...

[27:59]

I'm not finding stillness by waiting for it. I'd better have it now. Well, if you look at a wave, ocean wave or a lake wave, what is the wave doing? It's returning to stillness. I mean, if a wave didn't return to stillness, the water would just fly off somewhere. But the wave itself is always, no matter how badly it's disturbed, it's always trying to return to stillness. And we sense that right away. I mean, there's a compelling thing about looking at waves just because you can feel the stillness shaping the wave.

[29:17]

And I'm sure there's a mathematics which describes the shape of a wave based on its always returning to stillness. So even when the wave, in a very busy wave, the wave is actually in the process of returning to stillness. Mm-hmm. We could say the nature of the wave or the nature of the water is stillness. And also even in the wave, whether it's still water or wave water, the water itself is the same. And this metaphor, which water lends us, is actually not different or extremely similar to mind.

[30:37]

Now, when your mind gets identified with its thoughts all the time, It tends to go from wave to wave to wave to this sentence, this word to that word, this thought to that thought, and you don't feel the stillness much. But if you can break that adhesiveness of the identification with thoughts, You immediately start feeling your mind returns to stillness. And the more it returns to stillness in the midst of thinking and in between thoughts, And the clearer the surface is, stiller the surface is, this joy that usually we only know in non-dreaming deep sleep comes up in non-conceptual still mind.

[31:41]

And technically we call that the Sambhogakaya gate, the gate to the body of bliss. So, Daowu asks, says, hey, hey, you look pretty busy there, brother. You should know there is one who is not busy. Not later. Just now the mind of my own, the water of my own consciousness or mind is returning or is in the midst of its own stillness. And I guarantee you, you can discover this if you haven't already for yourself. And one of the characteristics of Zen practice, which is unique to Zen, I think, for the most part,

[32:57]

...is to use phrases as things outside of language. Now, when you take a thought, a phrase like the one who is not busy, If you use it more as a thing, just a phrase that you repeat, the one who's not busy, it's not really language. Yeah, and it's not in a syntax. And it's not leading to the next thought, to the next thought. So it's a way of using language as an antidote to language.

[34:13]

So you take some words out of language and just repeat them as a kind of object of meditation. It's almost like if you could take a chunk of a wave and make it still in the midst of the water, it would tend to influence all the water. So this story as a teaching story is suggesting that you take this phrase out of language, the one who is not busy, And hold it in view. Now, I did this when I was somewhat younger, in the early 60s. And I worked with the phrase, there's no place to go and nothing to do. And I was pretty busy.

[35:34]

I had a young baby. I had a job. I was in graduate school at the same time. And I was practicing Zen. And so in the midst of all the activity, I kept repeating to myself, there's no place to go and there's nothing to do. And this phrase that was derived for me from several sources, but one was this koan, you should know the one who is not busy. And at some point it became very easy to be busy because I always felt not busy. So, you know, you can take your own version of this phrase. You don't have to be stuck to it in some way. You could turn it into something else.

[36:35]

But the sense is to know, to recognize, to keep in view this deep intuition that there is one who is not busy. Most of the koan, most of the usefulness of the koan is in this phrase. And this is, I mean, a real treasure. It's like the Count of Monte Cristo or somebody's discovered, maybe opened this up. Whoa! I mean, this is, you know, this is worth a lot of money. I mean, you know, it's better than money. If you can spend the rest of your life knowing the one who's not busy, And it's only dependent on your intention and your repetition.

[37:40]

Basically mindfulness is intended attention. So I give you this gift this evening of the one who is not busy. But maybe we should talk about this other half of the koan. It's not really necessary, but it does answer a lot of the questions that might arise. Because you might ask yourself and you might say, well, then is there one who's not busy and there's one who's busy?

[38:40]

Are these two worlds or is it something dualistic? Or is there some kind of absolute unchanging reality behind this reality? Where the gods live. Or where something outside this system So partly Daowu's question is, is there something outside this system? The double moon means, is there the moon we see, which of course already is, even when you see the full moon, you're only seeing half the moon. So there's the full moon and the new moon and the moon reflected in the pond and so forth. But is there some real moon behind this, like Plato's ideal forms, and this moon is only an insufficient representation of the real moon?

[40:03]

All that philosophy of Plato and much of Western culture, which assumes there's something outside this system that created this system, is in Dao Wu's innocent question. Ah, if so, then there's a double moon. And Yunyan just holds up the broom. Hey, baby. There's nothing outside this system. Is this a double moon? Yeah, it's a good story, huh? So, but also there's the sense of the relative and the absolute.

[41:19]

And Buddhism is based on this sense, based on the teaching of the two truths. So this is also a teaching in relationship to what is relative, what is absolute. I don't want to get into that tonight. But let me just say, we're all sitting in this room. And what makes this possible is the space of the room. And the word dharma means that which holds in place. And everything you see doesn't hold in place. I mean, if you look at a leaf, It moves, you know.

[42:33]

And it's going to, it's blooming now and it will fall in a few months. But is there anything that stays? We have the experience of something staying. I have the sensation that there's a space here called the present which has a duration, although actually there's no duration. There's a duration in my sense fields. Which I hold in a kind of immediate memory. So Buddhism is asking the question, everything's changing, what holds? Well, the simplest answer to that is the space of this room holds. And this space also is not just the container.

[43:53]

It's through and through. You can't separate it. The space is created by the form, and the form is created by the space. But this basic condition seems to stay in place and the form keeps changing. So the basic condition is called emptiness. Yeah, you can call it space, but we call it emptiness because really it's not graspable. You can't say anything about it. If you can say something about it, it's form. So in Zen talk, in Buddhist talk, we can also understand the moon to mean the absolute and the double moon to mean the relative form. In the Zen language, the moon, the absolute and the double moon, means the form.

[45:20]

So Daowu Yunyan is saying, form and emptiness, everything is contained right here. So in that sense, this is carrying the practice from the keeping in view the one who is not busy to also keeping in view the absolute simultaneity and uniqueness of each moment. This lifting up the broom of yin-yang will never be repeated. Now I've lifted up this little bell striker a number of times. Each time it's absolutely unique and it's not the same as before.

[46:24]

And the Buddha held up a flower for Mahakashyapa, and we've been holding up everything since, but it's each time non-repeatable, absolutely unique. So we are right now in an absolutely non-repeatable, unique moment. And if you know that with a complete abandonment of any attachment to form, Your mind has become so still that it won't turn into waves anymore. That it does not accept objects. It's open to the bliss of non-dreaming deep sleep. But it's now become the kind of water that even dreams, images don't occur in it.

[47:39]

And the experience of that is that your senses don't reach to this stillness. So it's almost like you are looking out your eye holes and your eye holes are way out there somewhere. And the stillness is, you know, doesn't admit a single thing. Your ear holes are out there somewhere. And you can bring them in and enter the world. Where you can go into this stillness, real deep stillness, which is not about silence or noise, but about a mind that doesn't accept impressions of objects.

[48:57]

It's almost like water very deep in the ocean. The waves are going on, but the water is really still down a few hundred feet. And when you know this experience, you really do know, as a presence in your life all the time, the one who is not busy. And although this is your experience in meditation, there's teaching also which helps you recognize and realize this. So, Daowu and Yunyan are simultaneously presenting to us in this little anecdote. The word anecdote in English at least actually means unpublishable or unpublished.

[50:16]

This kind of story is not really publishable, it's only experienceable. And I hope it would be nice if from this evening this story becomes like it happened to you sometime last year, yesterday or something. Because this story can be as real in your experience as if it happened to you at work or something. So in the sense that they're born of the same lineage, they share this deep stillness. In the sense that they die in a different lineage, they are both absolutely independent, unique moments. And this is true of all of us.

[51:18]

Each of us is an absolute unique moment. That's both your personality and also what we call your Samogakaya body, the particular bliss of you. And simultaneously, we all are also this one who is not busy. And this is the teaching of two natures. Okay. Anything you want to add, Eureka?

[52:45]

Here we have these two good friends here. We look sort of like sisters, if they're not. And I'm sure they know they are both absolutely unique, different people. And yet there's some deep connection between the two of them. See, I'm not so dumb. And they influence each other. They have this possibility of sharing and also teasing each other, getting them both to go to the Sashin. Come on, let's both go to the Sashin. So if I ever gave them Buddhist names, I might call one Da Wu and the other... Yeah. So why don't we take a break now? Not enough, you know? Yeah, and you've had half an hour sitting with me.

[54:05]

So, and if anybody wants to have some discussion, after ten minutes or so, if anybody's still here, we can have some discussion. So I'll ring the bell when the break's over. Okay. Okay. Okay, what would you like to talk about? First time I'm here. He asked the most difficult question since the first time he's here.

[55:11]

Zen is the one who's not busy. Zen is a school of Buddhism based on meditation. Thank you. It's actually more a lineage teaching based on meditation practice and not so much a school. Because the institution is the connection between person and person and person, not some kind of societal institution which exists but sometimes rather dilutes the practice. Yes, and the institution or the school here is only the connection actually from teacher or teacher to the next one.

[56:17]

And I create this connection and it is not a social institution that keeps the teacher upright, which often actually dilutes the teacher. Something else? You all came back. You must have come back for a reason. Or did you come back to have someone else ask a question? When you talked about this bliss that arises from non-dreaming deep sleep, what about any other feelings like jealousy, anger, and so forth? Could you say something about those feelings? Actually, it's interesting because the Buddha, as a practice, arises from being able, arises from having the daring to have a concept in your life of maximal greatness.

[57:53]

Some ideal greatness or maximum greatness. And to work with the sense that always, no matter how calm or refined your mind is, it could be calmer. And that awareness generates a mind that includes both the grosser forms of mind and the more refined forms of mind. And I would say that's the essence of how you work with the image of Buddha in your ordinary life. And that's hard for us Westerners to do. Because it's not polite to think you're Buddha.

[59:13]

It's unseemly. But you need some daring to say, okay, I am me, but I would like to, if I'm going to try to imagine what this human life is like, I should imagine it at its fullest possibilities. By contrast, the Bodhisattva, which is the one who could be a Buddha but stays in this situation to just work with people, As a practice, the bodhisattva is very different from the Buddha. The bodhisattva practice arises from jealousy, anger, etc., So when you work with these feelings and you see how they arise, for instance, you can be angry at your friend.

[60:33]

But you can also be angry at the way human beings lead their lives. There are two different kinds of anger. One anger inspires you to transform the world and one anger demeans you by being mean to your friend. But they're on the same continuum. So bodhisattva practice is to recognize the deep roots of our compromised, confused behavior. For example, at one level of mind, we are trapped in always liking or disliking things. And the space left for us is very narrow, because I like this, I don't like this, you know... Ja, but liking and disliking things is also caring.

[62:03]

I'd rather have a student who liked and disliked things than one who didn't. Because at least this person cares. And if you can see that your constant likes and dislikes are actually a kind of selfish form of compassion. Yeah, kind of narrow form of caring about things. So if you transform likes and dislikes into caring and accepting,

[63:05]

And if you transform caring into a big mind of compassion, then you're pretty close to being the Bodhisattva Avulokiteshvara. Or Kannon. So, hey, Okay. Yes. I don't understand one thing, namely the idea that the comparison with the dreamless dream phase, how can something that is actually characterized by absence of everything, at the same time contain happiness? Yeah, I don't understand how something like dreamless deep sleep, which is characterized to the freeness of all things, or the non-presentness of all things, or non-presence, can be bliss.

[64:32]

Okay. Why not? Okay. When we feel good, when you're in love, that's one of the most common, hopefully common, but not addictive, feelings of bliss or feeling very good. And what's it characterized? By feeling profoundly connected with another person. And generally, falling in love is springtime. you also feel real connected with the world, with the birds, the flowers, the trees, everything looks better.

[65:42]

And so what it's characterized is feeling much less separation than usual, much more identification with another person and with the world. So it seems to be the case, the more we move toward an experience, a unitary experience, not oneness, oneness is a theological problem, but a unitary experience, We tend to feel happy, we tend to feel blissful One of the characteristics of meditation practice is you start to feel gratitude or blissful for no reason.

[66:42]

It's called non-referential joy. It's not because somebody did something nice or gave you something. It just... Gratitude comes out, or joy comes out. Now, emptiness is not a... Sorry, I'm giving another lecture, but hey, all right. Emptiness is not... nothing. Emptiness does things the way zero does things in mathematics. And emptiness purifies you. One of the things it does. Why does it purify you? Because if there's ambivalence or contradiction... There's no emptiness.

[68:07]

So the more you have an experience of emptiness, you have an experience of connectedness and it doesn't tolerate ambivalence. It doesn't tolerate conflict. So when you begin to experience When you have this sense of emptiness or deep stillness, your experience is resolved. The conflicts find ways in which they're not conflicting in order to be sustained in this experience of emptiness. So non-dreaming deep sleep is considered the time when you are most connected with everything. And the human experience of that, when you feel very connected with everything and no conflict is bliss.

[69:27]

And my guess is, being partly an animal, Or fully, I mean. I mean, is that while animals don't have hands for the most part, And they can't think things through the way we do. My guess is animals are in a blissful state a good part of the time. It makes it almost worth it to be a dog. And I think that's why we're so cheered up by our pets, because unless you have a damaged pet, somebody beat it up when it was young.

[70:38]

Bliss is contagious. That's why we meditate together. But you come home and you're feeling lousy and everything went wrong and you look at your dog and he's there. You don't have to translate it. And, you know, it's contagious. You're blissed out. You're the dog. You get down on the floor. So, something else. Yeah. How could I bring meditation to my kids without putting pressure on them? I don't want to damage anything. It's contagious.

[71:38]

So the more you have this feeling of stillness, you'll teach your children. And the decision practice is rooted in conscious intention. It's not belief. And conscious intention is for the most part an adult decision. So to really practice is something mid-teens to into your twenties you can make the decision. Before that you can't really make a decision to practice. But the more you have this kind of experience yourself, and you show stillness in the midst of your own actions, you do things with your body more.

[73:07]

For example, in all cultures, it's rude to point. But it's not rude to do that. Why? Because this is a mental act and this is a physical act. This unfolds from the body. So the more you relate to your children with this unfolding, like if you pass them something, you pass it with two hands, you know, just here. The children will pick up, just naturally, mind that's in the body and which has the potential of stillness.

[74:17]

And the more you also have an accurately assuming consciousness, I mean, the example I use all the time is instead of seeing a tree, you see treeing. Because it's not a tree, it's an activity in the process of being a tree. So as much as possible, if you can find ways to express this kind of accuracy about the world in just the way you talk about things, The kids pick it up. I said to my little daughter, she'd come in to me and say, I mean, I go overboard, I have to admit. But my daughter comes in and says, Dad, it's raining. And I say, what's raining?

[75:38]

She says, it's raining. I said, will you show me this it? Where is it? No. Because it is a theological idea. It implies a God that does the raining. So finally she says, well, rain is raining. I said, that's right. And when you say it, you should know that it's actually rain that's raining, not it. You can play like that and, you know, they may get bored with it. She's mom's being zen again. Yeah, but... There's worse things to be called.

[76:46]

I've been called that quite often. There he goes. So, what else? I often have the impression Zen is a kind of mental path, but I think the physical is very important. I mean, how to express that in Zen. Well, I mean, it is mental. My feeling is that Zen in the West is... In fact, my feeling is that for the last couple of hundred years Zen has been poorly taught.

[77:50]

Except for a few lineages, it's mostly taught in a diluted, oversimplified, unduly simplified form. Actually, I don't even feel I'm teaching Zen. What I feel I'm doing is I'm teaching Buddhism through meditation practice and Zen teaching. So in general, I feel that Zen is taught too much like enlightenment was a Protestant conversion experience. Where everything's going to be instantly different after this and you're suddenly wise and a Buddha, you know, just because one moment you felt good.

[79:03]

I mean, enlightenment does change everything, but it needs to be matured and... So I feel it should be taught with more analysis and I don't like the word intellectual because it's too political, but more analysis and more of the philosophy behind it. But I've never thought of it as mental. And within Buddhism, I think it's safe to say it's the most physical of all the Buddhist teachings.

[80:22]

But it's not as physical as Tai Chi, say. But it is, I mean, the Eightfold Path begins with right views. And because it's understood in Buddhism and in Zen that all your physicality, all your mental activity, everything is influenced by your views. So you have to work with those views because those views condition your senses, conditions how you stand, conditions how your stomach works, etc. And so koans are, you could say, taking words and phrases out of language, making them physical as an antidote to deluded views. And the beginning practice in Zen for the most part is to get your identification with your thoughts into your breath and into your body.

[81:42]

And Zen is a yogic practice and yogic practice means that main gate is the body. And it's the main gate to work with your views too. Yes. Yes. I have a rather practical question, and that is, in my profession I come a lot with... ...with... ...uncomfortable feelings about processes such as... ...brutality and violence and... ...murder and torture and such things. And... ...it happens to me again and again that I... ...things... I ask myself if Richard can give me any help.

[83:04]

In my professional life, I have a lot of contact with violence and brutal actions and murder and all kinds of things. And on and off, or often, you know, I absorb these things and can't digest them properly. And my question now to you is, can you give me some advice how to deal with that better? Do you meditate? Yeah. I mean, daily or several times a week? Yeah. Yeah, good. Well, I mean, first advice I'd give you is to meditate. But you already do that. I would say that what we need to do in general, and what I implied earlier, is to begin to have a more neutral state of mind.

[84:22]

One of the problems in our contemporary society, which isn't in previous and other less developed societies, is we have so many choices available all the time. We rarely have a neutral state of mind. We're always involved in choice and likes and dislikes and so forth. I mean, if we watch our, and I'm not just speaking to you, I'm speaking in general, One of the things I would suggest you do if you practice mindfulness, which is the kind of basis of all Buddhist practice, is you try to notice what habitual views arise on every perception. Yeah, and there's a topography to what arises.

[85:45]

And you'll probably find that the patterns that arise with seeing are a little different but very similar to the patterns arise when you hear things and so forth. So, one of the most useful things to notice is how much you're caught, to what extent you're caught in alternatives. You either like it or you don't like it. And all the varieties of these alternatives. Yeah. And then... you have a preference about it, which isn't quite the same as a like or dislike.

[87:03]

You have a preference means you want to control the outcome. And whatever comes up you think has to do with you. You personalize everything. If we have a tendency to personalize things, to try to control the situation and whether we like it or dislike it is the immediate structure we put on every perception. If that's the case, you're in trouble. It's going to make you sick. It's going to age you. I mean, it really is exhausting.

[88:04]

You constantly have to make decisions. It's constantly, I mean, it's really, it's horrible. Worse than alcohol. Better have a drink and then you say, oh, I don't care what I've done. It's interesting. I think it's one of the main reasons people have a drink. I'd like to like a few more things. and get rid of my critical attitude. Okay, now what's the antidote to this prison of likes and dislikes and preferences and personalizing things? It's to work on creating more neutral space where you just accept what it is without choice and you don't care whether you like or dislike it. And you can take something, I mean, I remember when I was young, I'm very interested in architecture and houses.

[89:11]

And I was always going on, well, I like this house, I don't like this house, and I like that, and I didn't. It was driving me crazy. And I had such a bad, worse habit than any of you have, I'm sure. I was completely tired of disliking or liking these houses, but I couldn't stop it. I either liked them or I disliked them. To survive until this day, I simply had to find a more neutral state of mind. So some houses can be completely ugly and I think, hey, be happy, be ugly. And some houses can be real beautiful and I think, I don't have to own it. So more and more you find ways to trick yourself, to teach yourself to have a more neutral state of mind.

[90:39]

And ideally you come to the point where you don't have to have any alternatives unless you have to really make a choice. And that kind of mind doesn't react to things. After a while, it doesn't react to things. And things don't upset it. You can throw a beautiful object in the lake, or an ugly object in the lake, and the lake just splashes. So you can get to the point where You don't want to get numb. That's what happens to a lot of nurses in hospitals. They get numb and then they don't feel anything anymore. Neutral is not the right word.

[91:42]

It's like a stream has banks. Maybe this bank is I like it and this bank is I don't like it. And the water is very shallow there. The deep water is in the middle, where it's not about like and dislike. So that deeper accepting mind that doesn't react always, you can actually deal with, without becoming numb, you can deal with pretty startling things. This is expressed in Zen by, like in this, one of the koans we looked at in the Sashim, was, it says, the kind of fellow who would understand this is the kind of fellow who wouldn't turn his head when whacked by a stick.

[92:54]

The kind of person who could understand this koan is the kind of person who wouldn't turn his head if you hit him with a two-by-four. It's a little dramatic language, but there's some truth to it. And in Sashin, you want to develop this neutral space in Sashin. And one of the ways you do that is you make a schedule that's annoying. It's annoying because it's difficult. It requires constant energy to pay attention to all these little details.

[93:59]

And it seems meaningless. And you certainly could improve the schedule if somebody asked you. So it's difficult and it's different than you're used to. And it's exactly intended to be that way. Because You want to put the person in a position that, God, I don't like this, I do like this. You just have to stop and just do it. Now, it's pretty hard to get someone to do that for their lifetime. But maybe you can get them to do it for one week. The world will not fall apart if you just do this for one week.

[95:02]

And you're not hurting anyone. Only yourself.

[95:05]

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