The Dance of Love and Emptiness, is that right? Or, what did I, what do we have for the title? Tell me. Is that a help? That's right. The Dance of Love and Emptiness? Oh yeah, because I had different dances going, I didn't know which one I chose. Because we could have wisdom, the dance of compassion and emptiness, for instance. So I... If we're... What we... If we work with this title, we're going to have to work with the idea of emptiness or the practice or experience of emptiness. And to... I mean, emptiness is the... other than the idea that everything changes, emptiness is certainly the central what?

[01:21]

Something of Buddhism. Or maybe it's not a something, maybe it's a non-thing. But it certainly doesn't mean no-thingness. It doesn't mean nothing. If it meant no thingness, then you wouldn't have form equaling being the same as emptiness. So form is exactly emptiness. Emptiness is exactly form. And this is the central teaching of Mahayana Buddhism. Maybe we all better go home now.

[02:22]

How can we possibly understand such an idea? So if it's not a no-thing, and then it's something, but how can it be something if it's empty? So the subject of this seminar will have to be what kind of something is this non-thing, or nothing. And what kind of, how can we approach it? Or is it in the realm of experience? And I suppose that in Buddhist teaching, Buddhist philosophy, emptiness plays the role, let's say, takes the place that truth does in Plato's philosophy.

[03:59]

So, you know, philosophy with a capital P and truth with a capital T. Of course, you capitalize everything. Okay. So, if, thinking about this, if I say Mahakavi is here in this room, I mean, we could debate that, but for all practical purposes, we can say it's true. And we can say it's rather warm this evening. And we could say, as a true statement.

[05:15]

And we could say, you're hearing my voice and not Christian's voice. And we could say, these are all true statements. But Pragmatists would say that these statements contain no common element called the truth. They're all true, but there's no essence of them that you can say, hey, that's the truth. Someone might say, as Rorty points out, it rained yesterday.

[06:19]

And Plato might say, men should be just with each other. Plato would say, this is a higher order statement than it rained yesterday. More truthful. But pragmatists would say, it rained yesterday is true, That men should be just is an opinion. That men should be just, men and women, is an opinion. That people should be just is not a matter of truth, it's just an opinion. So what I'm bringing up by talking about this is just looking at our own way of thinking, our own cultural ideas.

[07:40]

Do we have some sense that there's a universal quality that everything has or that touches everything? Like everything is affected by gravity. Or maybe you can have a lot of arithmetic statements like two plus three is five. And three plus two is also five. But the road, the Autobahn between Munster and Heidelberg is not the same as the Autobahn between Heidelberg and Munster. So maybe three plus two equals is something different than two plus three.

[08:45]

I mean, these are questions people ask themselves. But even if we accept these statements as true, then we have also the idea of number. The idea of number is involved in all arithmetic statements. So is there some quality like number or like gravity that is true of everything? So Buddhism says everything without exception changes. And emptiness is a more subtle way of looking at the idea that everything changes. And emptiness is now simply a more subtle idea with which you consider the fact that everything changes.

[10:08]

So what I'm again trying to bring up is, if emptiness is form, and this is a form and it's also empty, does everything have a quality that we can experience or understand or something? To say this is real or this is true, is it the same as saying it's empty? So anyway, that's the kind of, at least looking at it theoretically or philosophically, within our own Western context, that's how I'd like to bring it up. Now, I partly put it into a context

[11:30]

of our Western thinking, because I don't want you to look at this just as something I'm presenting to you. I want to talk to you in such a way that you can have access to this in your own experience. Now I also would like us to look at a koan while we're here. Do you all have the copy? Oh. Well, why don't you bring it? Well, why don't you bring it? There is a difference between the emptiness of the flower and the emptiness of the bell.

[12:58]

is not separate from the flower. And the emptiness of the bell is not separate from the bell. Otherwise, form and emptiness would not have any... Form is exactly emptiness, would not have any meaning. At the same time, the experience of the flower and the bell both as being empty is extremely similar. But emptiness is not something you can separate away from the flower and the bell and isolate it. It's not something like the truth which is common to all statements.

[14:09]

But I want to avoid getting... I mean, I started out rather philosophically. But I want to avoid, my point in the seminar is to avoid being philosophical. But I had to start somewhere. And I'm still on the Autobahn somewhere. Does anyone have the koan? Okay, now I want to start trying to see if in the context of just a weekend seminar we can use koans.

[15:12]

Part of it is because it's very difficult for me to go much further in what I'm teaching without something like a koan to make certain things clear. But koans are rather daunting. Anybody know what daunting is? It stops you. So you read this and it says, the great way to the capital goes seven ways across and eight ways up and down. And you think, you know, maybe I shouldn't read any further.

[16:24]

But, you know, it's quite still, what are we going to do with this? So I have to figure out with you guys in what way we can approach this, because I think we can. And by chance we used this koan to some extent in Münster. So it's, you know, but we didn't read it. We just referred to it, and pretty soon it became clear in various ways. So this, uh, this, uh, Koan raises the question in various ways about what is emptiness or what is the practice of emptiness.

[17:32]

And it starts out with, where are you going? And we can spend some time with that question alone. And koans are meant to be read in a way that's very slow. So where are you going is what are you doing with your life? It's another way of asking who are you or what are you. Where are you going? What do you think your life is? And so forth. So when Dijan asked Fayan that, Fayan says, I'm going on a pilgrimage.

[18:37]

I'm starting to practice Buddhism or something like that. And he says, what's the purpose of your practicing Buddhism? So then you can ask yourself, what is the purpose of your practicing? And he says, well, I don't know what the purpose is. So Dijang says, not knowing is nearest. And of course, as is usual in these stories, Fayan is enlightened at this point. Now, were any of you enlightened yet? So, what is this I don't know and what is not knowing is the question here. What does not knowing have to do with emptiness?

[19:41]

This is form and emptiness, but what's that all about? But not knowing is nearest. So this koan is trying to give us some feeling of the practice of emptiness as being a state of mind that doesn't know. Anyway, that's one thing anyway it's doing. Is there something anybody wants to bring up here?

[20:42]

I'm not ready to give a lecture this evening. Sorry. What is the koan? The case or the introduction? The whole thing. And when you... You want to say that in German? And if any of you take this home this evening and read it, you should only... If you're unfamiliar with koans, what you should do is just read it kind of gently. Don't try to understand it. And if any phrases stick out at you that's what you pay attention to. So it might be where you're going, it might be not knowing, it might be any of these phrases.

[21:59]

So by using the word dance, I want to try to look at the ground of this experience that includes us and has this strange idea of emptiness in it. But, anyway, something else? for a little bit then and then we can probably stop. We'll see. So what I have to find with you and what we have to find together is

[23:13]

an entry into practice and teaching. And to do that I have to of course attune myself to be responsive to the traffic and so forth as we all do.

[24:30]

So now, how do I find a way we can share this idea of emptiness now that we're all here in this room? And now I have to find a way to share this idea of emptiness, now that we are all in this room. And as a prelude to this teaching in Munster and last night in Frankfurt, I spoke about being a stream-enterer.

[26:06]

or the sense of being in a stream. Now this word stream is is a way of experiencing everything as changing. We could say it's a word you can use as an entry into really experiencing everything as changing and not just knowing things change. One could say that electricity is a word that can be used as an access to the experience that everything is changing, not just an intellectual idea.

[27:29]

Entering a stream is another way, a different way of seeing. Said that a stream enterer acquires the eye of seeing. And that means that someone who enters a stream, for them it is necessary to have an eye of the seeing. So this, as usual in yogic practice, this idea of a stream is not a metaphor, it means an actual experience of things of your life as a stream.

[29:14]

So it becomes, you know, are there, what has the quality of a stream? You know, of course, water. Clouds streaming by. But the physical world doesn't have qualities so much like a stream. But the physical world doesn't really have the characteristics of a current. So the most accessible to us, the most accessible experience of ourselves as a stream is of course our breath.

[31:03]

And when you shift from counting your breath to just being present in your breath or following your breath, You're beginning to have the experience of your breath as a stream. that a while I won't ask you to sit much longer.

[32:35]

But I want to, before we stop you, to notice your breath as a stream. I think we should stop for the evening. This idea of a stream as a way to experience everything is changing. So if your mind becomes more associated with your breath,

[33:37]

or you experience your if you experience your breath as a stream you experience you create a state of mind that has a stream-like quality it will cause you to see things differently And the practices usually given in Zazen and in Buddhism, mindfulness practices, have a stream-like quality to them. They're involved with repetition usually. You say something over and over again to yourself. Or you try to pay attention to just what you're doing. You pay attention to each step as you're walking. And what you're doing when you do that is you're developing a continuous state of mind.

[35:13]

And if you can develop a state of mind which has a feeling of continuity, then it's no longer a conceptual state of mind or a comparative state of mind. And if you have such a state of mind that has a certain continuity, then it is no longer a state of mind that is conceptual or that compares. So you need to find, in this way, I mean, in other words, let me put it this way. Many of the practices given to you without much explanation, the point of is to try to get you or give you the opportunity to develop a mind with a feeling of continuity. And when you develop a state of mind that has a feeling of continuity, this is considered the same as developing an eye of seeing. And when you develop such a state of mind that has a feeling of continuity, then it is the same as when you say you develop the eye to see.

[36:34]

Now if you, as I pointed out before, if you develop a sense of physical ease in your body, that sense of physical ease or a kind of relaxation is also part of this developing a mind of continuity or a stream mind. In other words, if I created a term, shall we say stream mind, it would be a mind of whether some ease or relaxation. And this koan would ask, where are you going? He could have answered something like, I'm entering the stream.

[37:48]

Where he's going is into a feeling of entering a more fluid or soft or relaxed way of being. And that's possible, but you can't exactly do it by thinking. So you're attempting to know yourself in this way. You're not trying to know yourself through thoughts or through looking to understanding. You're trying to sense a state of mind where you feel a continuity with yourself and the world. So that insight or effort is an entry. It's an entry into... into having a way of being that feels like it's in the midst of change.

[39:35]

And there can also even be a kind of fluidity in the way you feel. Now certain states of mind, emotions have more continuity or fluidity to them than others. If we take for example anger, anger doesn't have much continuity or fluidity. But a feeling like gratitude has more feeling of continuity. So you can begin to notice what feelings or states of mind allow you to have this sense of a stream or continuity and what feelings keep breaking you up or stopping you.

[40:38]

And this difference between more fluid and more stopped states of mind is a significant difference in your physical and mental health. So to practice this kind of teaching, which is not a philosophy, It can be described philosophically, but it's not a philosophy. You have to be introduced to it.

[41:51]

Like being introduced to a person. And usually you have to be introduced through a person. And that introduction usually is an entry or a feeling you have of an entry into another way of looking at things or of being. And to say that this form is empty requires some kind of entry into it, otherwise it's just an idea. I don't know if I'm capable of giving you an entry to that, but I'm going to try. Okay.

[42:56]

So, what time are we supposed to meet tomorrow? Well, nobody lives near here, do they? Oh, I see. And, um... I guess I should propose something like entering the stream of being. Okay, so I'm proposing some phrase like entering the stream of being.

[43:59]

I'm proposing some phrase like entering the stream of being. Now, as was clear last night, or I said last night, in practicing... with you, I need to find some entry into practice with you. The entry always has to be exactly where you are. And as Ulrike exhibited that tendency last night when she spoke about being on the Autobahn as feeling some of the things we were trying to talk about.

[45:04]

But Sometimes where you're at is not such a good place to start from. But that's the only choice you have, actually. So individually we have to, when you think of something like, geez, I'd like to practice, you don't put that idea into the future. When you think, jeez, I wish I had time to do zazen, at that moment you start doing zazen. And you take that thought, jeez, I wish I had time to do zazen, as a signal that you ought to do zazen just at that moment.

[46:20]

And really the conditions for doing zazen or the need to do zazen is probably present. But in this, as I've said, you have to become a connoisseur of your own experience. Now, the conditions for you to practice are each of us individually to practice are whatever our immediate situation is. And again, you can see this, you don't have to look at the koan, but you can see it in the koan where Dijang uses the conversation they happen to be in and turns it.

[47:20]

And on the next page, or the page after, where they tell the story of Linji, it's the same thing. He uses the actual situation or befuddlement and turns it, using that as the starting point. And if you do that subtly enough and deeply enough, and the person is aroused or has a ready state of mind, It can actually be an immediate cause of enlightenment. And I use the word enlightenment, I must say, with caution. Because I don't want to use it as the ultimate goody.

[49:00]

Yes, the bonbon. And you don't want it also to be, as I've said, part of a strategy of self-improvement. And Buddhism means something very specific by enlightenment and the experience of enlightenment, which perhaps might be clearer by the end of the seminar. But the point I'm making and why I'm bringing it up is that Zen Buddhist practice is based on the understanding and realization that enlightenment isn't somewhere else.

[50:07]

If enlightenment has any meaning at all, it has to be exactly here. So the trick is to practice with that understanding. To practice with that acceptance. Now, as I started to say, for each of us, each of you and myself, Ulrike and all of us individually, The entry to practice always has to be exactly just this moment. But the practice together is not quite that simple. Or teaching Buddhism is not that simple. Because I have to find a way to enter practice with each of you, with all of you.

[51:42]

And of course, again, I have no choice either but to use this exact situation. But with your help, I'll try to change the situation so that we have more opportunity to understand. That's why we do zazen together. So we're changing, I mean, I'm consciously, you are consciously changing your situation. Now, of course, in practice, personal practice too, you change your situation to make it more compatible to understanding.

[52:46]

Nun, in unserer persönlichen Praxis, da verändern wir die Situation eben auch, um sie einfach geeigneter zu machen. Aber daran ist etwas Künstliches. Aber diese Künstlichkeit ist notwendig. So sometimes you do something artificial, like say, well, I guess everything's here right now, but it'd be better if I did a little zazen. You may be practicing with a word like already. Now I don't know if the word already, whatever it translates into in German, has the kind of feeling the word does in English. But in English it says all is ready. And also has the sense that it's already time.

[54:02]

There's no more time. It's already 10 o'clock or something. So you can take a word which has connotations like that, a kind of... Not a meaning you can easily pin down. Like I suggest people practice with the phrase, just now is enough. Knowing in a practical sense, just now is not enough. But knowing in a spiritual sense or a deeper sense just now is and necessarily has to be exactly enough.

[55:05]

Okay, but together we also have to find something artificial a little bit, an entry into practice together. Now I'm talking about the process of our practicing together and doing this seminar together. And the process of teaching. Not because I expect you to become teachers. Though I do expect some of you to become teachers. And I'm not talking about teaching or the process of the seminar just because that's what we're doing.

[56:09]

I'm talking about it also because it is what I'm doing. And I have to start from where I'm at. But you, in your life, whatever you're doing, whatever your work, daily life is, you start with that. Mine happens to be teaching, so that's where I start. Now this sense of finding an entry, and my calling it artificial, is no different from recognizing that it's more satisfying to look at a flower than a garbage pail. So if I suggested an object to practice direct perception with, it's a lot easier if I suggest a bunch of flowers, I think.

[57:13]

I could just as well put a garbage can here. But it wouldn't be so easy to get your attention on the garbage pail as it is in the flower. That's what I meant by artificial. Choosing real flowers over an artificial garbage can is more artificial than choosing the garbage pail. So in response partly to what Dirk said last night. Figure out how I'm attached here. Where is the... Oh, there.

[58:35]

This is very simple, but I don't know why I'm writing it. But anyway, if we put form over here and emptiness here, And I said, here we have some objects over here of various kinds. These are objects. And some of them, you can experience emptiness on better than others. Okay? Okay? So we have to choose certain things to practice with in order to have some opportunity to experience emptiness. But if you once you have some experience of emptiness maybe we should change the order here So then anything you take, you know, let's take this one, it is the experience of emptiness for everything.

[60:12]

So from this point of view, it doesn't matter what you choose. And one of the signs of an adept practitioner is that they feel emptiness on everything. But a beginner may have that experience only on, say, sometimes doing meditation or something. So in your practice with each other and with your friends and with non-practitioners And with yourself in the beginning.

[61:16]

You have to organize your life and take care of your life in such a way that it creates the possibility and increases the possibilities of practice. No, I can practice equally well sitting in a McDonald's and watching the stream of being. But when they leave McDonald's, they don't have any more understanding of Buddhism than they had when they came, probably. But if I could talk everyone at McDonald's to coming to a seminar, maybe there's a 1% improvement at the end of the seminar. So in a way, we've all made a decision today to be mostly here and not at McDonald's. And I'm going to take that decision, that intention, and intention is very much part of the practice, to be a desire to enter what I'm calling the stream of being.

[62:36]

The stream of being in yourself and the stream of being of everyone around you. This is, I would say, a kind of goal. An unattainable goal that you take as worthy of your entire life. Now I realize when I end up, Ulrike sometime in late fall usually says to me, we need titles for the seminars.

[64:10]

I sort of say, oh gosh, all right. And I tend to think of a few things. And after a while, usually, sometimes it takes me a few days to sort of like let some titles appear. Which I feel relate to each other. And it's something that I feel in the continuity of practice with people in Europe over the years would be a good next step. And it's very clear to me what each of the titles is, you know, the general idea or focus of each of the titles.

[65:31]

So clear that I don't bother to take any notes or anything. And of course, when I get here, I've forgotten completely what the titles were about. Well, not completely, but quite a lot. Then I find that, you know, I like this title, which I put right at the end. If I'm really going to make this clear, I've got to teach all of Buddhism to you in two days. We need about ten entries here to this, not one. Okay. Anyway, I'm bringing this up partly just so that in your own life you'll see the value of sometimes doing something a little artificial, arranging your life so that you can practice.

[66:42]

And finding points of entry for yourself in your practice and in your life. So what I was thinking is probably the best point of entry for us into this is the four immeasurables. Now, the four immeasurables are also, we could call them streams, attitudes which have a stream mind quality to them. And again, I used the word stream as one of the entries last night. And I could also use the word field.

[67:46]

So maybe the first title of this seminar, the initial, initiatory title of this seminar, should be The Fields and Streams of Buddhism. It happens to be the title of a men's magazine in the United States. But it's the fields and streams, the fishing and hunting. But I'm talking about the fields and streams of Buddhism. Or the fields and streams of being. So when we do meditate during the seminar, I would like to suggest that you see if you can notice ways, as I said last night, in which you notice a stream-like quality to your being.

[69:08]

I'd also like you to notice alternately or the same time or, you know, mixed up a field-like quality to your practice. And that doesn't have to be just in meditation. I mean, of course not. So right now you can maybe have a sense of a field of being. Mm-hmm. Maybe if you don't grasp at it or pay too much attention, you can actually feel everyone in the room. And I think if you don't think too much about it, you'll notice it's a slightly different feeling of the person to your left or right or back or front.

[70:16]

But you also have to notice that, and you may notice when you do zazen, that you have a little different feeling within the field of your own body. For instance, you may feel on your left that it's... and softer, say. On the right it may feel harder or brighter or something like that. And in the front another way, in the back another way. So this sense of front and back and left and right There's actually a kind of presence to it that you can feel around you.

[71:32]

For example, if you in meditation imagine your mother is sitting with you. You may find immediately without thinking your mother is sitting on one side of you rather than the other. And you can do this little experiment with your father or your children, your brothers and sisters or whatever, your friends. And what you begin to notice in such a thing, becoming a connoisseur of your own experience, that the field around you is actually already populated. It's populated by certain atmospheres or people even.

[72:41]

And it's populated by where you would place someone if they were in a dreamlike space around you. I notice when I'm teaching and Ulrike is on my left or right, it's somewhat different in what happens if she's on my right or left. So anyway, you don't have to, as I said, wait till you're in zazen before you feel a, you notice this sense of a field of people around you. The field you carry with you and the field that appears when someone else is in your field.

[73:43]

Now beginning to let your mind or attention rest in this more non-graspable field is part of this practice I have been suggesting. beginning to notice your mind more as a continuum or a stream now i'd like us in a few minutes to take a break but maybe we could sit for just a couple minutes And then after the break I will tell you what the four immeasurables are.

[74:56]

Floats in our sense fields. Floats in our sense fields. is one of the fruits of the realization of emptiness. And one of the conditions also for realizing emptiness. And even it helps to pretend a little. To pretend you feel this field is one of the first steps in feeling this field.

[75:58]

This field of being that we're always embedded in. And usually don't notice. Not because we don't want to so much as no one's ever showed us. This field of being.

[77:02]

This stream of being. And the first, they're not in any special order, but the first one usually listed is equanimity.

[78:29]

And these are called war. There are various things they're called, but that's me. And we could call them four stream of minds or attitudes too, of course. They're also called the four unlimiteds. Can I tease you a little and tease myself a little?

[79:40]

Please. Sometimes, you know, I think it's more that I'm an American than I'm so friendly. But sometimes I talk with strangers so much, you know, just people on the street. Ulrike sometimes says to me, you know, can't we just walk along the street? Sometimes I get a little tired of your unlimited friendliness. I put unlimited in parentheses here. The next is compassion. And the fourth is joy.

[80:53]

Now, I'll try to speak about why these are together and what they mean in Buddhism, but I'll do it over the time we have together. But I can say that these in a sense are entries, equanimity and joy are entries into emptiness. And these two emphasize form. But let's just leave them on there for now. Now I think to talk about this I have to talk about the idea of self in Buddhism in relationship to the idea of emptiness.

[82:25]

Now, self is, if you wonder how to experience self, or you want to get a taste of it, you can do a little experiment. Like while you're meditating. Now, I'm assuming you're meditating once a day or so. And you understand the difference between strictly doing Zen meditation and meditation as a territory in which you become familiar with yourself. And in that more experimental territory in which you're becoming familiar with yourself, you can try things out, see how you feel about things, notice what you're thinking about, and so forth.

[83:40]

And that's not just a distraction. It's really important to become familiar with yourself in this new territory of meditation. And it's also a kind of preparatory practice. A basis for more strictly Zen meditation itself. Okay, you can try a little experiment, like imagine that you have been falsely accused. Or remember when you've been falsely accused of something and the feeling that comes up. That's an experience of self. And Another way to look at it is, say you see someone beautiful.

[85:16]

Or has something else that you wish you had. So you see someone beautiful and you wish, geez, I wish I were beautiful like that. It's a quite natural feeling which only the most beautiful person in the world has never experienced. And even they will tell you they're not the most beautiful self. But if, anyway, that's a quite natural experience. However, if you were really only your own body and mind, you couldn't have that experience.

[86:20]

Because it's impossible to be someone else. So, I mean, this is a kind of common sense. But when it's really impossible to be someone else, Then if you see someone who's beautiful or has something you wish you had, actually you feel their beauty on you. It's like I talked about the other day in Sashin and in Frankfurt, I think. When you're sitting here and you notice your posture sitting with others, through sitting here, you often feel your own strength, but you feel it through being here sitting with others.

[87:30]

That you feel your own, through other's strength and posture, you feel your own strength. And this experience becomes, if you know this kind of stream mind I'm talking about, you feel this more and more. You are with people and you can feel What can I say? You feel your own strength, your own... But through being with others. And we do that all the time. That's what movies are about, social life are about, restaurants are about. Why we dress up when we go out.

[88:42]

Okay, now the sense of love in Buddhism is the way you love somebody when you really wish the absolute best for them. For example, you might feel for your child if you have a child. Or if you really love your partner, you won't always be possessive or attached. More fundamental than that, you wish the best for them, whatever it is. So part of practice is beginning to notice these differences between an experience of self or selfishness and experiences of your own identity.

[90:05]

and experiences of your own identity.

[90:28]

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