So I think, you know, I'm so surprised. This is the last day and the last tea show, etc. And I think to put this into... For the context of practice, I ought to speak about this term I've been using, imaginal space. It's not imaginary space. At least in English, it wouldn't be imaginary space. And I mean, I think if you, those of you, some of you live in Hungary and some of you live in Romania and so forth.

[01:19]

And here we are in Germany. And I think, I'm pretty sure the governmental space, the societal space is different in each of those three countries and different again in the United States. Again, if we imagine there should be some kind of democracy, then you expect certain kinds of freedoms or possibilities. When they're not there, we feel something's wrong. Or different. And the Internet is an imaginal space. So the concepts, certain concepts guide how the internet is used and then some countries police it differently.

[02:46]

Right now, if I imagine some of you don't know much about Buddhism or are new, maybe I speak one way to each of you. If I imagine, however, that one of you is... that in this room there are potential Buddhas... And maybe some secret Buddhas. So if I imagine this room is full of potential Buddhas, I'm going to speak a little differently to each of you, to all of you. Okay, now I've spoken about the four criteria for a Buddhist practice.

[03:57]

Which also can be the four conditions for a Buddhist relationship. What you expect of the relationship or the potentialities of the relationship. And this koan, this encounter between Daowu and Yunyan, there's a... There are various potentialities that are implied in the simple meeting. And we can make use of these potentialities ourselves. Yeah. So the four criteria for Buddhist teaching, in Zen practice, it's not that the Buddha said it or it's in a sutra.

[05:33]

It's that, first of all, is there the potential? Do we imagine the transformation phenomenological transformation or enlightenment is actually possible. No, I've said this before a couple of times, but we really need to get it into our way of being. In other words, if you don't think that enlightenment is possible or that transformation is possible, you're not going to practice with the subtlety that's necessary. So you actually have to believe that transformation and enlightenment is possible and possible for each of us.

[06:56]

This will make you notice your practice and feel energy in your practice in a different way. So, and the second criteria is you have to imagine that freedom from mental and emotional suffering is actually possible. If you don't think it's possible, there's going to be a basic discouragement undermining your observations. And I suppose if you're a professional psychotherapist, you're going to... I see this mental, emotional suffering every day, all the time.

[07:59]

No one's going to get rid of it. It doesn't mean you should be falsely or unrealistically optimistic. But it means that you should actually know it is possible to be free of emotional and suffering. And if you know that it's possible to be free, you're sure it's possible to be free of emotional and mental suffering, you'll notice slight changes in your state of mind or your way of functioning or your way of standing that actually shift your relationships.

[09:18]

And the third criteria is that it is possible to practice in a beneficent way. beneficial for others and beneficial for yourself and beneficial for the planet. And the fourth is it's possible to live, as I said several times now, close to how we actually exist. So these are criteria which say, anything I would say, anything that meets these criteria is a Buddhist teaching.

[10:30]

Okay. Now, these can also be conditions for how you function. When you're with someone, or right now, I can imagine, it's possible for enlightenment is a possibility. The potentiality. And I can speak to you or I can just meet with two or three of you and in the meeting feel it's possible to be in this together. I accept if there's mental and emotional suffering, but it's possible that we can be free of it too. And your imaginal space can also be when you're with somebody, is this beneficent?

[11:44]

for this person? Is it beneficent for me? Is it beneficent for others? How can we function within a beneficent field? And then how do we actually Are we here? Are we open, allowing, accepting how we actually exist? Now, I've also spoken about how you get some traction in the immediacy. And of course, this encounter of three, Dao, Yun, Yan, and the one who is not busy,

[13:04]

is happening in what we can call immediacy within the mutual sensorial field. Which is constructed by each of us. Didn't exist before. It's constructed from the ingredients that are available. Mm-hmm. Now, again, to say something about getting a feel for immediacy. Yeah, I mean, what I've decided after some months of pondering this is to imagine through

[14:15]

to imagine and actualize three dimensions of immediacy. One is, the first is, as I've said, spatiality. Now again, as I often, often, often said, We're not living in a container. Spatiality is created by the opportunity of all the objects. Did you say the opportunity? Yeah, why not? Objects deserve a certain opportunity. Freedom of expression. So right now, My experience is primarily one of spatiality.

[15:44]

The spine is, of course, a dynamic of it. But the feeling of interiority and exteriority is part of the spatiality. And when I get up, I mean even though I'm just getting up and it's just air, my feeling is I'm in a kind of medium, a kind of, with a certain viscosity. And when I stand up, I just stand up. And even if there is only air, I still have the feeling of being in a kind of medium that has a certain density. The Japanese try to have this concept of ma, and it means something like proportionate space. And to use the term proportionate is to find a gateway, to find a way to enter the feel of the field of space.

[17:03]

So I'm very aware if I move forward, I'm changing the proportion of the space between myself and Paolo. And I can feel the medium of the space between Nicole and myself and myself and Otmar. So it's not just dead for me, it's a kind of living stuff, like you can feel between your hands sometimes. So if you have this, and when I get up I'll go bow, etc., but I don't have the idea I'm going to go bow so much as I have the feeling I'm moving through a medium over there, and then within that medium it's almost as if I was underwater bowing.

[18:23]

And I think we have to cultivate this feeling. And I think we have to develop this feeling. Cultivate, just like a farmer would cultivate. Literally, we plow this space and plant in this space. And see the seeds of enlightenment. And the second dimension of immediacy is what I call patiality. I don't think it's an easy word in German for pace. We can say temporality, but the feeling is pace.

[19:27]

Breathing pace, walking pace, moving pace. And the second dimension, and for that it's not so easy to translate in German, is the English word pace. So rhythm, tempo, or you could also say temporal timing. Now there's really no difference between space and spatiality and patiality. The only difference is we can experience them successively or differently. So there's a complexity there that our senses allow us to see two aspects or imagine two aspects of space and pace. And we can use that. Like when I watched the football game, American football game on the TV, I could feel how the players were using the space.

[20:35]

And because I could imagine it and know what the succession would likely be, I could feel what they were doing. And if you teach yourself, train yourself to notice just ordinary activity, this spatiality and spatiality, Und wenn du dir antrainierst, dir angewöhnst, diese Räumlichkeit und zeitliche Taktung zu bemerken. You'll begin to feel immediacy. Dann wirst du beginnen, Unmittelbarkeit zu spüren. And it will occupy some of your attention, maybe all of your attention.

[21:55]

Because immediacy is an attentional phenomena, and if there's no attention there, you're the victim of immediacy. And since we are constantly in the self-referential modality, we're always comparing ourselves. How am I doing? What is someone thinking about? What will I do in the future? And will I do it well? And does anybody notice how terrible I was in the past? Or I said that dumb thing? Then your attention is, there's no immediacy.

[23:00]

So somehow you have to trick yourself into immediacy. Unless you're driving, you better be immediate in driving. I hope I might be in the other car. Mm-hmm. So the attentional spatiality and attentional spatiality give you some traction and immediacy. And what's the third one? Dimension of immediacy. The sensorial field of immediacy.

[24:01]

It's uncertainty. We could say indeterminacy and sort of words like that. And they'll all be right, but I think the simple dimension is we're uncertain. We don't know what's going to happen. I mean we function within oh it's what's likely to happen but you can practice this uncertainty by simply for a while every now and then feeling when I put my foot down does the floor come up to meet it Aber du kannst diese Unsicherheit immer mal wieder üben, indem du dir die Frage stellst, wenn du deinen Fuß auf den Boden setzt, kommt der Boden dem Fuß wirklich entgegen?

[25:10]

Und du kannst deinen Fuß nach vorn setzen mit der Frage, dem Gefühl, wird da wirklich ein Boden unter deinem Fuß sein? So wie du das machen musst, wenn du blind bist, so wie Frieda. And, you know, my balance isn't so good anymore. Yeah, and so I find it quite useful to have the riddle of the sphinx third leg. And I find that not everyone knows what the riddle of the sphinx is. Oedipus was asked to solve the riddle of the sphinx. And he did. What has four legs in the morning? And two legs at noon.

[26:12]

And three legs at night. The human being, a baby on four, an adult on two, an old man on three. Yeah, and so when I have my stick, it's got a lot of fun. It actually improves my balance. I feel the rhythm of the Sphinx. And a little complexity in the story of Oedipus is he, yeah, he solved the question, but he didn't know what his fate was. Even though he answered the riddle, his fate was determined or riddled. Okay. So we need some kind of attentional gate, and we can use language, words, phrases, as we've seen in this koan, as attentional gates.

[27:39]

And the whole thing of elephant bone crag story in the koan It's all about if one person tells a falsehood, 10,000 people will tell it as truth. And this Xue Feng and... Who is it he's talking to? Nansen? He throws down the young men.

[28:39]

I guess so. I have to see the words. I don't remember them by sound. That's why I don't know German. I don't know. It's anyway a riff on the rope as a snake. You're going along and you see a snake and it turns out to only be a rope. So Xue Feng says, you know, all of you be very careful because there's a poisonous snake, a turtle-nosed poisonous snake around. Whoever it is throws down his staff and says, ah! So he borrows reality and imagines fright. And the point is, you can be free.

[30:04]

You don't have to exist in the world in ways that you're frightened. These are all simple things, but they help you adjust and fine-tune yourself. So two words you could use, can use, are maybe noticing and receiving. And a non-worded noticing and receiving. Ivan Illich, who was a good friend and a teacher of mine too, said the grammar of silence is much more complex than the grammar of speaking.

[31:09]

Ivan Illich, a good friend of mine and also a teacher, said that the grammar of silence is much more complex than the grammar of speaking. So there's a non-worded feeling, spatiality and patiality, you can begin to be sensitive to it. And you can kind of like motivate yourself by feeling, always noticing. And in Zen, you notice without looking around. Looking around is curiosity and thinking. You notice, but you don't look around. So noticing and receiving. and you just know that you're always in the process of noticing and always in the process of receiving and you just allow this receiving to happen and the sensitivities which receive begin to develop

[32:27]

Now, I said this object of the three buildings and the paths and the gardens is also one of the things that's transmitted. We want to establish this place as a location for realized practice. And I call it now more a Sangha center than a monastic center. Because most of you are not monks, for sure. But your adepts, so many of you are adept in practice, it's true. So we're a Sangha center which will be by some of us, by all of us, transmitted for others over the coming years and who knows how long, a place where they know there's realized practice.

[34:02]

A realisational practice. I know, when Yonetz first came into the other building there, I wanted to show him the building. We were thinking of whether we could get it or not towards this center. And as he walked in the door, he took one look and he said, buy it, buy it. And when he stepped through the door... When he stepped through the door, he looked around once and said at first glance, buy this, buy this.

[35:09]

I didn't have it. It was the most positive remark I had. Okay, okay. What did you say? Yeah, and so now we want to articulate this transactional immediacy as a place for Sangha practice. Now, if I say this, there's lots of questions. If it's a place for Sangha practice, Should we have ordinations and monks?

[36:23]

In what way are we a religion or are we a phenomenological practice center? What am I doing sitting here in these This costume. Yeah, I like it actually. It's kind of, you know, it's okay. But what are we doing? And should we have Tangario three days of sitting or more or whatever for practice period and even for anybody who comes to live here? How should we define what a Sangha practice center is? And define it so it can be transmitted to future generations. The concept of Maitreya Buddha is quite interesting.

[37:44]

The assumption that there will be a Buddha of the future means, yeah, let's take that into consideration. Diese Annahme, dass es da einen Buddha in der Zukunft geben wird, das bedeutet, ja, lasst uns das mit in Betracht ziehen. Wie sorgen wir dafür, dass das wahrscheinlich wird? Da brauchen wir die Hilfe voneinander. Vielen Dank.

[38:12]

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