It's so good for me to see you each, because most of you are very familiar to me. And now, unfortunately, Nicole is sick, or somewhat sick, but fortunately she hasn't experienced replacements. Yeah, because I'm not teaching. I guess I'm teaching. That's what I do, right? I don't think of myself exactly as a teacher, but anyway, I guess I'm teaching.

[01:02]

But I feel that I'm teaching through knowing you. And I'm teaching within the context of knowing you. And that knowing you is like... big percentage, more than a half of the teaching. And you are knowing me. So I can proceed to discuss things that I just couldn't discuss in other contexts. A week or so ago, or very recently, we had a seminar, a practice week, a winter branches week, discussing the Koan Mu.

[02:19]

which is really yes and no and mu as emptiness. And about how you relate to the world which is somehow empty. And I think that our discussion of the ganjo koan means I probably ought to speak about what Dogen assumes as emptiness. Dogen says something like the emptiness of the whole body hangs in empty space. And I think it's the Diamond Sutra which says that no things exist.

[03:48]

Nothing exists. The Diamond Sutra. It means something like non-things exist instead of nothing. Non-things exist. Aber das bedeutet nicht Dinge existieren. Es bedeutet nicht nichts existieren. So we could say nothing exists but then we could also say yes but non-things exist. Wir könnten also sagen ja nichts existiert aber nicht Dinge die gibt es. So Dhyaman Sutra says, since form has no form, we say that form is the true form. To follow that logic.

[04:56]

In other words, if form does not exist, form is no form. So you can't say no form is true form, because it's no form. So because form is no form, then the Tathagata says that form is the true form. But the form is the true form if you know that form is no form. Now, why are they worrying about such things? Okay. The reason basically is, I would say, that there was a recognition, like in physics, that the present doesn't exist.

[06:09]

So we have to say, and I didn't speak about this whenever in the winter branches, And I'm trying to then and now find ways to speak about this that make it accessible to you. Because I'm interested in the craft of practice. And that is my interest because I'm interested in your finding this practice accessible. Because if I can emphasize the doing of it, then you can do it. And although, again, monastic life is designed to help you do it,

[07:10]

And I'm actively involved in establishing the potential possibilities of the practice of monastic life. But simultaneously conceiving of monastic life as also a practice for laypersons. Yeah, I mean, really, you're breathing and walking around and talking and you do the same in a monastery or in Frankfurt. So what are the crafts of practice that are common to both monastic life and potentially lay life.

[08:50]

Yeah, and what practices are easier, you know, etc. So, but In the end, as I've been saying, it all comes down to how you shape your life through vows, intentions, and mental postures. Again, you have a genetic disposition. And then within that, it's your vows, your intentions, and your mental postures.

[09:52]

Okay, now Dogen starts out with when all things are the Buddha Dharma. He also defines the Buddha Dharma in other places as the 10,000 dharmas. Okay. Now I think it's actually quite important that it's not just translated as myriad or many. Though many of you would know that the word myriad actually in etymology means ten thousand. But when many, when ten thousand things become many you You lose the preciseness.

[11:05]

10,000 things seems like a lot. But there are many 10,000 things in this room. I mean, I could just start with the threads of this pillow. How do there's some thousand in there? So 10,000 things emphasizes the... of these ingredients. And it implies, suggests, shows us really that we can have precise relationships to these 10,000 ingredients. Und es schließt ein und zeigt uns wirklich, dass es auch, zeigt uns die Beziehungen, die eingeschlossen sind in diesen 10.000 Dingen.

[12:19]

Now, Dogen defines the Buddha Dharma as the 10,000 dharmas, not things. So he's saying in the first line of this classical, when the 10,000 things are the Buddha Dharma. The 10,000 things are the 10,000 dharmas. The Buddha dharma is the 10,000 things. Then there's delusion, enlightenment, etc. Now, it's clear we need to spend a lot of time, as we're doing well yesterday and today, on the beginning of this koan in order to enter into the practice of this koan.

[13:37]

So I'm trying to give you a starting point. So when all things are the Buddha done. He means when all things are dharmas. And now he means when all appearances are dharmas. Okay, now I asked you last night, when the spine appears in your practice, Again, if we take the way of understanding the Ganga Koan as to complete that which appears, Okay, now I'm saying quite a lot of different things.

[14:57]

Yeah, and so I'd like your help after the break. To what? to what sense you can, how can I present this so that you catch it in your feeling. So a Dharma is an appearance. Okay, so you're studying the Buddha Dharma. the teaching of the Buddha about dharmas.

[15:59]

And how, when you understand the dharmas, it may make you become a Buddha. So again, we're looking at how appearances are dharmas. Okay, there's the anatomical spine, as Hans-Jörg pointed out. But there's the spine you feel. And that how you feel it shapes your day, your zazen, part of your life. So if the Genjo Koan is the teaching of completing that which appears what's appearing and how do you complete it? Okay, I'm looking at you. In what sense is that looking at you in appearance? And how does it have boundaries?

[17:22]

And not just superposition with all the other appearances which are simultaneous. That means to take several positions at once. Okay. You and I are superpositions. Okay. Okay. So let's go back to the spine. Right now I'm sitting as best I can. I used to be better at it but my operation made me lose my flexibility. I missed the flexibility but this is good enough.

[18:24]

And much of this, the posture of the legs, is to allow the spine an uprightness. So is the appearance of this, I'm going over a bit of what I did last night, So is the appearance of the spine the feeling of its potential or factual uprightness? And the feel of the spine, as you know, continues right through the head where there's no spine and you can feel it at the top of the head. And at what point is this a dharma? At what point is this an appearance which is completed?

[19:54]

And if you get more if you practice if you do Zazen pretty regularly your spine becomes a kind of mind a kind of column of awareness And as you can feel the world in your heart, you can feel the world and other people in your spine. Now, this would be true more practitioners than usually because most people's attention is in their thinking. Or is in their distinction between self and other. So Dogen is assuming in this that you are free from, sometimes free from, or you're able to free yourself from, the distinction between self and others, meaning people.

[21:25]

Of course there's a distinction between myself and the floor and so forth. But there's also the loss of that distinction. Well, because, you know, it would be hard for me to sit on this platform if this platform wasn't on the floor and the floor wasn't on a foundation that Giorgio built. So that I can get up and do things, etc. We have a platform and we have a floor that helps me stand up and blah, blah, blah... But without the floor and the foundation and the trapeze and everything, I couldn't be here.

[22:34]

So Dogen defines Dharma as also taking away the distinction of self and others. So, in other words, sometimes you function through the absence of self and other. So, the distinction between self and other is a mental distinction. Now, I told you this article which helped... which opened up the study of consciousness was written by Thomas Nagel and published in 1974, I think.

[23:55]

nagel That's a German name, Nagel. Anyway, he said, he wrote an essay, What is it like to be a bat? Some of you may know this, it's quite in neuroscientific circles, it's a very famous article. And he says you could study a bat, you could know everything about its bat, cognition, states, etc., You could study all its cognitive states. I don't know how you do that. But you wouldn't know what it's like to be a bad person. You could not study what it's like to be a bat.

[25:16]

So newer scientists can study our brain and consciousness and etc., but they don't really know what it's like to be a particular human being. And what it's like is extremely important, as you each know, what it's like to be you. And even though I know many of you pretty well, I'd be happy to know you better. And I sort of have a feeling of what it's like to be some of you. But I don't really know what it's like to be you.

[26:19]

Completely, obviously. Okay. Going back to the spine. So the feel of the spine for the meditator allows you to start feeling the world in other ways. Now let me give you another example of the way Zen teaches through meditation. Not only are koans called cases, Zen in general teaches through cases. An exemplifying case. Okay. So, Da Wu and Yun Yan, Yun Yan is in our lineage,

[27:21]

born at 970 that's quite a long time ago not too many 200 year units I mean a 200 year unit isn't very long as I say my talking with my grandparents, goes back, they knew people from 1850, and I'm going to know you in 2050, or maybe you're going to know, remember me in 2050. Also, ich habe mit meinen Großeltern gesprochen, sie kannten Leute, die 1850 gelebt haben, und ich werde mit euch sprechen im Jahr 2015, oder... So 1850 to 2050 is a 200-year unit. Ten of those bring us back to Christ. Not so long ago, really. Twelve and a half bring us back to Buddha. Okay, so... 970, yeah, that was the other day.

[28:56]

So he had a conversation with his fellow monk who might have been his actual brother. So Yunyan asked his brother, Why does Avalokiteshvara have so many hands and eyes? And the statue, the paintings of Avalokiteshvara often show a thousand arms like a halo. A nimbus. And there's often an eye in each hand and there's 11 heads and this is one far out guy. So it certainly represents a high degree of attentional awareness.

[30:02]

Okay, so Dao Wu says, oh, it's like searching for your pillow at night. So what's that about? Well, it's sometimes referred to as nocturnal eyes. Now, in this Genjo koan, it says something about when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. So in this case, dark doesn't mean something negative or that you can't see, but that There's no duality in darkness.

[31:17]

Yeah, so that searching for your pillow at night, you can usually find it, move it and so forth. It emphasizes functioning with awareness without conscious distinctions. So that as you get, so that you more and more let your body participate in your decision making. This is like searching for your pillow at night. So Chinese Zen Buddhism tends to use examples like this because you might think, oh, I'm going to let my

[32:17]

And the Chinese Buddhism likes to bring such examples, because it invites you to make your decisions in such a way that you think, yes, I can make my decisions in such a way as Dao, who looks for his pillow at night. So is the appearance of the spine the feeling of uprightness or is it the mind that's part of the appearance of the spine? Is it the appearance of the feeling of uprightness or solidity or centeredness or is it also the mind that's noticing the spine? In other words, again, I have the stick and I have the bell.

[33:41]

Okay, consciousness knows this is a stick and consciousness knows this is a bell. But what appears on the bell and the stick? Both the bell and the stick also appear as mind itself. Okay, so now a yogic skill is can you peel mind off of consciousness.

[34:50]

So I experience mind on each of you and consciousness simultaneously on each of you. So you're a Richard, right? As you're a Gerhard, supposedly, maybe, sometimes. But you're both... In consciousness, you're a Richard and a Gerhard. But there's a quality of mind which appears... You're the same as mind. It's hard to make the words... do it, but that's what it's like. Now, Dogen says, I simply ask all of you to be steadily intimate with your field of mind.

[35:51]

That's so important. We actually put it in the poster brochure about the new Zender. So what Dogen means when he says, I simply ask you to be steadily intimate with your field of mind, He means don't be steadily intimate with your consciousness. Be steadily intimate with the field of mind in which each of you appears separately. It's like as if your mind could be the water and the waves could be Richard and Gerhard.

[36:55]

And could mind always be the water, whether it's in the shape of a wave or not in the shape of a wave? No. So Dogen says, again, I feel I'm asking you to do something and myself to do something which is extremely radical. In other words, first to imagine it's possible to peel mind and consciousness apart. And then shift the continuity of your identity to the field of mind rather than the particularities of consciousness. You know, these guys did this.

[38:12]

Dogen, Daowu, Yunyang. And when they did it, they were called enlightened. But I think all of us not only are so used to identifying with ourselves through the distinction between self and other, and identify our experience of continuity through this distinction, then it's unimaginable to shift away from this as your experience of continuity. And when somebody does get pushed into such a shift because something terrible, their life falls apart or something,

[39:29]

That continuity kind of falls apart and we call it a nervous breakdown. But if you can shift True, the identity to be suddenly in the field of mind, you can't have a nervous breakdown. Because all those parts anyway are assembling and reassembling and, you know, anyway. You're always in the midst of a nervous breakdown. You just don't notice it. Yeah. There's a potential nervous breakdown always. I don't feel I'm making much progress here. Okay, and it's time to have a break. So I'll try to progress afterwards.

[40:38]

I know where I want to go but I have to feel I can get there. And where I want to go is no place at all. But it's a realm of freedom and playfulness. Okay, thank you very much for your patience. Thank you.

[42:09]

You can give me this donation for the seminar in the break. We will hold it up over there. Can we do that later? Later as well. There are different opportunities. One is the absolute truth and one is the relative truth. Did we charge it somehow?

[43:30]

Yes. We found a wire? I bought one. You bought one? You went into town yesterday? Yes. All the way to Vienna? No, to Crens. Crens, oh. Not so far. Nothing, yeah. That's just a towel though. Uchiyama Roshi, who I knew quite well in Japan, used to sit with him when I first moved there.

[45:15]

defines the title Genjokoan. The profundity of the present moment becomes the present moment. Die Profundität des gegenwärtigen Moments wird der gegenwärtige Moment. Okay. This, as a translation of Genjo Koan, is a rendering, but why does he say, what does he mean? Also das als Bedeutung von Genjo Koan ist eine Auslegung, aber warum Yeah.

[46:17]

And by the way, Yunyang was born in 720, not 980, or whatever I said. And he studied with Baijian, one of the most famous Zen masters of all times. And he studied with him 20 years and wasn't enlightened. Then he went and studied with Yao Shan and did become enlightened. And then Yun Yan became the teacher of Dung Shan, which is the founder of our lineage. But to say he studied 20 years with Bhajan and wasn't enlightened.

[47:33]

It's like saying, I spent 20 years of my life with Bodhidharma and I didn't understand a thing. Yeah, so that's one understanding of enlightenment and the other is we're all already enlightened. And that's something we have to put together. And again, the quote of Dogen, the whole empty body hangs in empty space. Again, I'm trying to say these things to try to get at what they're trying to say to us in a way that shows us something. Dogen also said, I often say, there are no universals.

[48:45]

Time is not universal. It took me a long time to have the courage in seminars to really emphasize how thoroughly non-theological Buddhism is. And then we have to deal with the loss of the usual sense of self continuity. Of course, it doesn't mean we don't have a life rooted in an experience of continuity. But the real continuity rooted in it is not the continuity established through self. So this is again like what Jan Roshi is saying, when the profundity of the present moment becomes your present moment.

[50:07]

Now here I'm trying to bring together what I was saying before the break. Okay. Okay, so let's again go back to the spine. And let's go back to the word kekkai. And kekkai often means to offer a stick of incense. You create a fixed point. So if we had a incense burner here, I might start the seminar with offering incense.

[51:26]

We can call it a fixed point, but it's completely arbitrary. I could offer three sticks of incense, I could offer one of them upside down, anyway, etc. Okay, so when we bow at the beginning, I start to say something. We could call that Kepgari. Und wenn wir uns verbeugen am Anfang, bevor ich etwas sage, dann können wir auch das Kekai nennen. Yeah, now I'm going, it has two Ks in it, so it is Kekai. Also es hat zwei K, Kekai. So, let's go back to the spine again. Also, lasst uns zurückgehen zur Wirbelsäule. So, you feel the spine. Is that a Dharma?

[52:27]

Well, again, this koan, this fascicle starts out with when all things are the Buddha Dharma. And And I think the Diamond Sutra says, the 10,000 dharmas are the Buddha dharma. I think we read this, you know, you read these things, but you don't actually say, is this my experience? Can it be my experience? Maybe you read it like a poem. It's mysterious and interesting. Like a foggy day or something. But what does it mean to say the 10,000 dharmas are the Buddha dharma? Okay, so 10,000 myriad or 10,000 means it's a numerical term for the things of the world.

[53:47]

Now when you say those 10,000 things are dharmas, it means you experience them as individual appearances. Okay, so let's go back to the spine again. Let's go back to the backbone. So you feel the uprightness of the spine. You also feel the mind that's aware of the spine. And you also feel that the activity, strangely enough, the activity, the mind which follows the breath, The attention which you can the attentional skill you can develop to be present continuously in the breath is also the

[55:12]

can then be defined as a circle coming out and then coming up in the body as the inhale and out as the exhale. And you can develop that feeling of a circle. And it stabilizes the breath. And you're not breathing so much with your chest lungs, but with your diaphragm. And the way the diaphragm works, it feels like the breath is coming in through the lower part of your body and then being exhaled through your nose and mouth. No. Okay. Your breathing is real. Sort of real. Your breathing is part of your being alive.

[57:02]

And your being alive is real. But a bat doesn't know what it's like to be you. And what it's like to be you is not graspable. And you don't know what it's like to be you often. Sometimes, oh, I really feel like me. Oh, goody. So we feel in various ways our own aliveness. But none of them are exactly graspable. They appear and disappear. Okay, so this circle, so that your breath is sort of real, but this circle is also sort of real.

[58:13]

It's clearly your experience as the movement of your lungs and diaphragm. Okay, so this circle is now real. and its reality can be extended so it concludes you I can feel you in this circle or I can pull that circle in and feel it go up my spine So your breathing really becomes integral with your experience of the spine. So you have the bone spine and you have the breath spine. And you have the attention spine.

[59:26]

And you have the spine which moves into the field of space. So you have the spatially centered spine. Which one is a dharma? They're all appearances. They're appearances when you bring them to a point which we can call kek gai. So if I'm getting up from zazen in the morning, the many appearances that are my actual experience of the anatomical spine, which I don't really experience, except it's there.

[60:29]

That you don't experience, except... as a feeling. Okay. So if I get up from zazen, say, and I really have been fully aware of my spine, attention, wait. I may walk around feeling the presence of the spines of everybody else in the room. Then we could call that a dharma. Okay. Or maybe I would feel it as my breath. And I could feel my spine as the location of a wide experience of breathing. And if I take that as an emphasis, that's then a Dharma.

[61:47]

So a Dharma isn't a thing like this. A dharma is my feeling about it or my hearing it or my looking at it or my making it. So if the feeling of the breath spine is a dharma, Well, it's a dharma. But I just created it. It didn't exist before. It existed because I brought attention to my zazen, attention to my spine, and so forth.

[62:52]

So it's empty. Because it doesn't have any substance. But it functions within my lived life. So when I know the 10,000 dharmas are simultaneously, the 10,000 things are simultaneously are dharmas, means I simultaneously know the 10,000 things are empty. Because every appearance is, I mean, there's an infinite number of appearances happening, I choose out of my human sensorium certain ones to give a completion to. So again, I get up from zazen and my...

[63:55]

I'm in the midst of a dharma we could call the breath spine. And I talk to somebody else leaving the center. And immediately I experience My presence, presence is the bodily feel of the body. So the presence is the body-mind experience. The body-mind experience. So I stop and I talk to somebody else who's leaving the Zen Do too about something. And I'm not thinking about them. I'm just in the midst of the breath spine. I suddenly find myself within the bodily mind presence of another person that's an overlapping presence.

[65:31]

And there's a Zen phrase to accept and settle into it. So I notice the presence of the person I'm speaking with and the presence of my own presence arising from my spine, my breath. and I feel the overlap of the presence and I accept it and settle into it and look fully in the face of the person and wonder what they're going to say And that's a dharma.

[66:43]

But it has no reality. It's just created at that moment and only lasts a moment. So when an appearance becomes a dharma is when you know that appearance, that you experience is simultaneously empty. And that's the assumption built into this core. And again, it's why Ujjamaa Roshi says, when the profundity of the present moment becomes the present moment, Or Dogen says, the whole empty body hangs in empty space. My experience of the spine, mind, breath, etc.,

[67:53]

This hanging in space is empty of any substantial reality, and it hangs in empty space. So one of the things I finally ventured into, I think in the last year, was to say, there's no universals. Time is not a universal. Space is not a receptacle in which things happen. Space is what happens when things happen. The simplest way to say that is, to what extent the Big Bang is true, at least conceptually, it didn't happen in space, it created space in it banging around.

[69:17]

Okay, so how does Dogen express this? So great. He says the sky flies off when the bird flies off. and then he says when the bird flies off the sky flies off you can't separate the bird from the sky and the sky from the bird they're conditions of each other so when you try to think of the sky assume that space is a universal, you can think, oh, the sky has just flown off.

[70:23]

The sky has just flown off. And Dogen literally says, now we should study what is this flying off. When are you free from the space of the universal? No, we're here making this space. And we're remaking the space that Giorgio made before his trees and forest. So Giorgio made this space from various sources. And now we are remaking the space the way we use it. So we can say the sky is flying off and arriving.

[71:40]

Okay, so what I'm getting at too here is that let's go back to coming out of the Zendo and I feel that the presence of arising from the spine-mind-breath. Now, I'm not feeling like Baker Roshi. And I'm not feeling like Dickie Bird. What somebody used to call me. And I'm not feeling like... And I'm not feeling like a person with things to do and defined by consciousness.

[72:47]

Those are all there. If somebody, one of the farmers going by, said from the street, if it were the Zendo's, Dickey Bird, I would probably turn around. You would have called Dickey Bird now. It would be my secret name. Oh, because the attention has been in zazen now so established through 55 years of doing zazen established in the spine I had to shift from a spine mind being hanging in empty space to notice the presence of this person who has spoken to me.

[74:02]

And this presence, the presence of this person who has spoken to me, is also their present. Okay. Now let's take this statement of Dogen's again, to be steadily intimate with the field of mind. I simply ask all of you to be steadily intimate with your field of mind. Within the context of this genjoku, we also know that he could have said or meant I simply ask you all to be steadily intimate with your field of the present.

[75:20]

Because the field of the mind is also the field of the present. If I peeled mind off of consciousness, And I'm here in the field of mind with you in which you're all appearing within and from, it seems like, the field of mind. And my practice, yogic practice, is not to go to thinking, but to go from the field of mind to a particular, back to the field of mind, back to a particular. And the particular isn't like Gerhard, it's just maybe his pencil on a slightly curved up notebook.

[76:25]

Or it might be the yellow band-aid on your finger. I've never seen a yellow band-aid before. So I go from the field of mind, not to thinking, but to the yellow band-aid or the pencil or something like that. And by using my attentional presence intentionally in this way, I limit the degree to which my attention is involved in thinking and another kind of thinking appears I remember when I was in school, I was ten or something.

[78:05]

I was fascinated by molecules and atoms, subatomic particles, which are just then being kind of noticed. And I asked the teacher, everyone is supposed to give a little presentation. I said, can I give a little presentation on molecules and atoms and things? In those days there were like little basketballs or something and they weren't fields yet, but anyway, I said I would give it a shot, a try. They were like little basketballs and not fields. Now they're not anymore thought of as ball-like units. The teacher said, I don't want you to do that because nobody's going to understand. And she should have said, and because I won't understand.

[79:12]

But my father is a scientist, engineer, and I said it was like... figured it out, and I worked out models, and I came to this. It was completely clear and simple. And I said it, and everyone was sitting like... And her prediction became true. No one understood it. So I vividly had the experience that I couldn't talk into a field in which there was no understanding. No, I thought of this just now. It came to mind. Because I have the opposite experience here.

[80:13]

I feel I'm able to speak into a field where there's... commonality and resonance. Okay, so if the field of mind is also to be steadily intimate with the And a dharma is something that appears, has duration, and decays, and disappears. And the disappears, the act of you turning it into a dharma,

[81:14]

And the appearance, the duration of the appearance is the present. So the present is a duration within your sensorial. It has no substantial reality. You generated it, your life, your genetics, the circumstances, it's generated from the circumstances. And you can decide on its duration. So sometimes this is experienced in a poetic mood or something like that, as you know, 45 minutes of an evening is like, changes your life.

[82:39]

Or the time of childhood is so different from the time of an adult. But when you play with the duration of the present, you can really come back into the time of the experiential time of childhood. And perhaps the artist, the poet, the painter or something, is one who can bring themselves back into the experience of the time of childhood from which the poem may appear. Now, as Dogen is trying to present us in this Genjo koan, the experience of the present

[83:43]

is a dirty emptiness. I'm sorry, it's a challenge to me as well as the translator. So it means though that when you're meeting another person, your durative presence is interacting with their durative presence. And when you know that your durative presence It's not fixed. It's not substantial. It's playful. Your present moment is your freedom. There's ingredients but you're deciding what ingredients become your present.

[85:05]

Now if your consciousness is doing the determining as Dogen says it's cages and baskets Then consciousness is categorizing things. And imprisoning those things in the categories. Now, that's useful for many things to do. But it's not where the enlightened person lives. And it's not where the enlightened person finds themselves free of Mental and emotional suffering. Mental and emotional suffering. So now we have again Ujjana Roshi, when the profundity of the presence or the present moment becomes your present moment,

[86:17]

And the 10,000 things are dharmas which are empty. This is the teaching of the Gensokan. And the 10,000 things are dharmas Okay, that's the best I can say. For now. Okay. Anybody want to say anything? Okay. Whatever you say will be empty. Non-subtantial. But it might affect me deeply.

[87:36]

Yes, Hans? Or are you just scratching your head? I'm dealing with completing what appears. and accept this sentence and surrender to it. And you sentence to accept and to settle into it. Yes. Is that a kind of perfection in the mind? Does this also describe a similar activity, like completing? Yes, that is a way to describe completing.

[88:40]

And that noticing is sometimes intentional and that noticing is sometimes circumstantial. Okay. Yes, ex-translator. I'm asking myself how this is with subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Yeah. When the bird leaps off, the sky leaps off. And when we say there is nothing universal there, and then we say there is nothing universal there, and then we say there is nothing universal there, and then we say there is nothing universal there,

[89:54]

And if I understand it correctly, in our own experience of each detail we establish dharmas. If you simultaneously that you experiencing that you're establishing them and they're empty because they're only something you're establishing, then they're dharmas. Then there are as many realities as there are beings. That's right. That's why we say, I said, usually it's translated, can I interrupt you there? Usually it's translated to complete that which appears in the midst of knowing things are simultaneously universal and particular. But universal is a wrong translation. The closer would be infinities, not just infinity. Because there's an endlessness to the world of the bumblebee or the world of the bat or the world of the human.

[91:41]

And they're all superpositioned. And so to enter immediately is to enter, to walk into that midst knowing you are also the midst. And at the same time, we are here together to locate the truth. Yes, right. So there is a common ground. To locate, to share a similar way of knowing the world. And that's what's exciting.

[92:47]

I can share a similar world with you guys. Yes. Similar, but not the same. Not the same. I mean, the two crystals, it's the same. Or the three crystals. It's one glowing crystal. A shining crystal. Yes, Christ. Yes, well, somehow I notice that from the topic So somehow I noticed that I'm really, I'm taken hold of by this topic. My feeling is somehow everything leads to this Gensokyo one. And it's so intense.

[93:59]

And when you bowed to us and we bowed together, So this was a moment where something just happened. And after you have been unfolding this for us so well, this makes me so happy. I know that this was a Dharma. Okay. This gives order to something within me. It's not that this is something new, but it's so clear that everything is relationship. Exactly.

[95:25]

And then there is a question. You talked about establishing the field of mind. Going back to the particular. Jedes Mal, wenn ich zurückgehe zum Partikular, schafft mich ein Daumen. Each time I go back to the particular, I'm establishing a dharma, creating a dharma. And when you go back to the field of mind, you're establishing a dharma. So there are differences when the field of mind is extended. Then appearances occur.

[96:26]

Appearances within and without. Each perception of within and outside that occur and it can be quite fast, can you also call this a Dharma? If you want to. If it becomes an identifiable momentary experience, we can call it a Dharma. But if it's the sound of the bird out there and you barely notice it, it's not a Dharma.

[97:27]

It is, but it isn't. This teaching is not about reality. It's not about what's out there for science to understand. It's about what you experience that makes a difference to you. So the wisdom is to notice appearances in a way that it makes a beneficial difference to you. So if you have the attitude, I hate everything, And everything you perceive, you say, I hate it, I hate it.

[98:42]

This is a dharma, but it's a detrimental dharma. Yeah, a shakless dharma. So wisdom is to notice the same thing, but notice it in a context where you accept it and relate to it in some ordered way. Yeah, okay. So this is also how I now can understand we turn the sutras and not the sutras turn us. Yes, good. Herr Fischer? Dr. Fischer, excuse me. Yes. So this means creating a dharma also includes an intention.

[99:58]

I would say you form an intention to notice experiences as dharmas. You may not have intended it, but it's an experience and you notice it as a dharma and empty. Okay. So not everything you experience is an intention. If Rosa slapped you in the back right now, that wasn't your intention. Yeah, but it would be an experience that you could then relate to. I don't even know if that is an interesting question, but I have been dealing with it for a long time.

[101:11]

Then it's interesting to me. Say that I complete an appearance. Yes. Is it interesting to ask myself whether now this flower pot as a next appearance comes up or that one? No, you let your nocturnal eyes do that. You notice what appears, but you don't try to control what appears. You try to create a field, an attentional, intentional, dharmic field in which things appear, but you just let things appear.

[102:20]

You can create an intentional and attentive field in which things can appear, but you do not control what then appears. I do not mean to control the form, the question is why? So it's not a matter, the question is not to control, but the question why does this appear or this appear? Well, the why is because you're a human person. To the back it would appear quite differently with its, you know, sound radar. But the concept of the Ālaya-Vijñāna is that everything that's ever happened to us that has been experienced enough to be stored Not an unconscious which has been processed by consciousness or rejected by consciousness.

[103:38]

but it's non-conscious to you but it's still part of your liver you don't control your liver but your liver is controlling you so your liver has something to do with whether you notice this flower or that flower but it's not intentional So by noticing the topography of what you do notice, you learn something about yourself. How you search for a pillow at night. So if you have, say, compulsive thinking, you keep thinking about something that upsets you.

[105:18]

You may intentionally shift the field of mind so this compulsive thinking doesn't come up at all or doesn't come up often. That would be wisdom. First of all, it would be wisdom to know you could do that. And it would be exercising wisdom if you did it. And if you thought, I can't do anything about it, I'm just that kind of person, that would be delusion. Because if you think, I'm that kind of person and I have this identity, that's delusion. Although we're often on the edge of that. And I have this idea that this is deception, even if we are often exactly the same.

[106:30]

Yes, Christopher, or two, or one. I have a need to ask you something. I feel the need to bring up something which needs to be distressed from my feeling. The Dhamma that Pekaroshi described is the presences that penetrate each other. Overlap. Overlap, yes. and maybe penetrating. Overlap at least. These are just words. So I just say, this is an experience that has little concreteness.

[107:51]

Excuse me. Why are you excusing him? OK. It is concrete, but at the same time it's not. That's right. The same concrete has not the same concreteness like the Podest. As the platform you mean? The platform, yes. And I feel that there are, let me say it like this, there are things outside Yeah. They are concrete. Yeah. But they . They're longing for, they're longing to be experienced in the way they are.

[108:58]

Okay, the platform is longing to be experienced as a platform, which I'm doing it. But usually we do not experience it like that. We do not experience it like the platform actually is. Well, the actually is is kind of a problem. We're getting close to delusion there. What actually is the platform? If I jump from up there onto the platform, the platform would really be there and be rather impressive.

[110:16]

If I jump from the top to the platform, she would be there, and that would be quite unremarkable. But that's because I used it that way. Because I used it that way. And this concreteness, this concreteness, it goes away a little now. It is... So I'm missing, what I'm missing is this concretheit. The concretheit of the platform. The concreteness, the realness of the platform. In the moment, when we zoom in on the platform, it really is the platform. In the moment when we perceive the platform as it actually is, we don't perceive it as outside.

[111:35]

We don't experience it as outside. But as a simultaneous appearing. Okay, I said earlier, from one point of view, the floor and I are separate. It's other than I am. Okay, and it is, you know. But it also, within my experience, the floor can be, if I have... if I am not dividing things into self and other, then my fingernail, which gives shape to my finger, and the floor, they're all just ingredients. They're ingredients in my experience. But they're also ingredients in your experience, and they're also ingredients in a different way in Giorgio's experience.

[112:57]

And they were once a tree, and then they were lumber, and then they were milled, and you know, etc. Yeah, and they would exist differently to that ant that has been wandering around. So there's the ant's floor and there's my floor. Anyway. Yes, Adi? I always think your last name should be Dharma. Adi Dharma. Because there's the Abhidharma. Herr Dahmer, what would you like to say? I feel a need to say this now. Yes, everyone seems to have a need. This is good. I want to thank you that you made very clear and specific the topic which was rather vague for me yesterday.

[114:22]

Okay. You're welcome. You deserve the last name Dharman. Okay, someone else. Yeah, I know it was vague yesterday, but I had to wander around a bit. Yes, Dickie Bird. From my point of view, we have two very different views of ourselves. In my view, we have two different ways of seeing before us. The first one is the dualistic point of view. which is somehow adapted to our daily life and our need to survive and also like a small child in developing has to establish an ego to be able to function

[115:48]

And now you have presented to us this other way of looking at the world, or experiencing the world. Yes. And I myself am occupied with that in another context of philosophy. Also zum Beispiel gibt es den westlichen Philosophen Cusanus, Nikolaus von Kues. So for example there is the western philosopher Nikolaus von Kues. Cusanus. Cusanus. Oder zum Beispiel auch Nishida oder Nishitani. Nishida, ja. So these people talk about in itself contradictoriness.

[117:08]

But in this contradictoriness, there is an opposition which is neutralized. Okay. So that the separation between subject and object falls away in this part of you. So Nishikawa talks about everything has its own middle and there is no middle that is outside of it. So in the way you described it, the dharma is practically the creation of the moment in the connectedness.

[118:34]

So if I try to translate what you brought up, it's the creation of the middle in the connectedness. I think what you're pointing to, Nishitani, is what I call inter-independent. Things are interdependent, but simultaneously inter-independent. But yes, this is also the two truths. But when you become very familiar with the two truths, the absolute so-called and the relative, at some point they just are simultaneous.

[119:55]

Yes. I always do that because I saw so many western movies when I was a kid. Yeah, that's a genre. And the cowboys and Indians meet and they always go, how? How? I'd say how. I also saw this movie, so how? How? I have an exercise in my daily life which I might break it in a year. I'm working in a place in Vienna where there's a lot of where masses of people just intermerge.

[121:09]

My colleague oftentimes looks down from the window and asks, what are they doing all day? Out on the street or in the city? Yes. And when going through these masses of people, I have a mantra that I use which is to actualize and it's As I walk through, there's no way one can sense what's going on.

[122:15]

It feels like swimming, just letting it pass. There's no substance. But there is no substance which is going through, but I myself am also passing. And in the encounters, I don't know what will arise. And for the encounter itself... the encounter itself also as an appearance and I find that quite satisfying because one is not determined in those encounters.

[123:24]

And yet in these monetary encounters they can be quite satisfying because Something can happen even if it's not meaningful. Baudelaire wrote about these things. I would call it, if I understand, I would call it the trance of the flaneur. Do you have the word flaneur in there? And the flaneur developed as a concept when they began to light the streets of France, of Paris. Because before the streets of Paris were lit at night, partly my theory, but I think it's right,

[124:29]

People who were in the city during the daytime were working, doing things clearly. They had something to do. And until they had gas lamps and then electric lamps, the elite and aristocracy would be out at night in carriages with pomp and guards. But once they lit the streets so they were safe, Relatively safe. Ordinary people could go out and wander around.

[125:42]

And then Baudelaire could write a poem that I'm wanted by all these people, etc. And there's that face I could have loved and she walked right back. Shall we have lunch? Okay. Thank you very much.

[125:56]

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