But you expand that feeling of body to the coming and going of birth and death. And when you know the coming and going of birth and death, as the true human body, then this is where sages are illuminated. Now it's taken us from yesterday until today, until now, before we can talk about this. And when you know this as the true human body, you may understand or hear in sentient beings speaking the Dharma.

[01:02]

While Marie-Louise is here, I'd like to repeat a little something she told me yesterday. What we've talked about. So maybe Marie-Louise can even tell it or translate it, but I'll start out. She said when she's nursing or going to sleep with the baby. Sometimes she's noticed that everything suddenly has the same value. The room, the wall, the baby, the air and all is right in her face and has the same value. has the same immediacy. And when she notices that mind appears, she simultaneously notices the baby has gone to sleep.

[02:30]

And in a similar way, if she is singing to the baby, to put the baby to sleep, while she's singing, sometimes she'll suddenly feel like she's inside the singing. She's not singing, but singing is all around her. And she notices again, oh, this means the baby has fallen asleep. And I think Tatiana talked to me recently. You've had similar experiences. I think Tatiana, you talked to Marie-Louise and you had similar experiences. Yeah.

[03:49]

Even, may I say, when you were a couple miles away from your... From your baby, who was with its father. Hannah, when she was tiny. She suddenly felt her milk appear at a particular time. And then she asked her, the baby's father what happened at such and such a time. He said, oh, the baby started screaming like mad. Yeah. So, you know, I have a grandson who's six years old. Like a couple years ago about when Marie-Louise would hold too much.

[05:01]

Half Portuguese. Yeah, nice little boy. And getting nicer as he gets older. And she would hold him and she could feel him go to sleep. As consciousness draining out of him. He would relax in some way with consciousness draining out of him. And what seems like now when Sophia goes to sleep? Consciousness drains out of Sophia. An ordinary consciousness simultaneously drains out of Marie-Louise.

[06:17]

And you come into another kind of knowing. Consciousness which gives us inside-outside distinctions. Suddenly she feels inside the music, singing. Suddenly the world is there of sameness, not of the distinction of the consciousness. in der alles gleich ist, von Gleichheit, jenseits der Unterscheidung von innen und außen. Wir können das auch die Lehre der nicht fühlenden Wesen nennen. Fühlend heißt, dass etwas innerhalb von Gefühlen This is more like just a shift.

[07:36]

Something suddenly you know, but it didn't happen through feeling or thinking or something like that. You can't, there's a simultaneity about it, not a logic causal sequence. Because insentient, we have to assume that Dogen means something, insentient beings. Beings and insentient are a contradiction. So we can approach it with a feeling of beings who are more of what-ness than who-ness. a knowing or understanding that comes through the conjunction of things.

[08:44]

If there's any time when life streams flow together, it's between mother and infant. Yeah, I mean, this baby is biologically, I think, still part of her mother's body. Rhythms are not really fully its own yet. But the Bodhisattva, as understood in Mahayana Buddhism, is one who enters close toward, approaches this intimacy. Who approaches this intimacy? in language and experience, of the flowing together of our life streams, which matures the seed of mutual aspiration, is the garden or ground of Buddhas.

[10:10]

which we as a Sangha are trying to seek out. So you can see how important Shantideva's conjunction of circumstances is for this moment when we turn toward the Dharma. When we turn toward the Dharma. This moment in which consciousness drains out of the baby into sleep. And consciousness drains out of its mother into awareness. Something we mostly hardly notice. And we don't have medical people saying, well, you won't notice this if you use a bottle instead of wrist.

[11:53]

This face-to-face, body-to-body knowing won't happen. So the practice of the Bodhisattva is teachings that bring you back into such conjunction. To approach such conventions. To realize this deepest flower of humanity. The flowering of Buddhahood within us. Is there something you'd like to add to what I said?

[13:02]

It was like that. Let's sit for a few minutes and then we'll have lunch. This little bell is a handmade, signed bell actually, signed because it's handmade.

[14:34]

And it has an interesting complexity. Sometimes it will shut down the ear because the sound is too complex for our ear to hear. Manchmal betäubt sie fast das Ohr, weil ihr Klang zu komplex ist, um ihn zu hören. And then it will open up the ear again. Und dann öffnet sie das Ohr wieder. Then it has the interesting quality that not too many bells have. Dann hat sie diese interessante Eigenschaft, die nicht allzu viele Glocken haben. Of making the ear hear it. bell even after the sound has stopped. It activates the ear to hear the sound. This is also the teaching of the incentive being.

[15:38]

Consentient means something wider than who. The world as thus coming and going. That's Tathagata. And Garbha means both womb and embryo. As large and small are related to each other. Form and emptiness are not independent of each other. So also womb and embryo are not independent of each other.

[16:54]

So Tathagatagarbha means to see the world as the true human body. To see each moment as simultaneously fruit and seed. Womb and embryo. Not to just see the world as a bunch of stuff you happen to live in. But the place of coming and going. In and out. In and out. Which is both embryo. To envision the world this way.

[18:06]

The world as our true human body. This is to awaken. That means to awaken our Buddha nature. Because the Buddhas arise from the whole of circumstances. And the whole of circumstances is also our own inner being. Thank you very much.

[21:54]

Perhaps it seems so strange to you that a conjunction of circumstances should be Buddha-nature. We have the sense perhaps of a beginning in our culture, more of a sense of a beginning. Yeah. Asian culture is, the old Asian culture is significantly different. I'm not saying one is truer than the other.

[22:57]

But I think it's very useful to see the differences. I mean, even in the way we do our letters, like A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc., they could all be made with pieces of wood nailed together. that could be easily made as physical objects. But if you look at the kanji, the characters of Chinese and Japanese, for example, They couldn't be nailed together.

[24:06]

They're held together by space. You can imagine a square or a circle that the character is contained in, but all the parts don't touch. Imagined square circle where the parts are within that square circle, but the parts don't necessarily touch. In such small differences, there's a big difference. You feel space. They assume a space that connects. Yeah, it's interesting. We count a baby's age from the time of birth.

[25:10]

The moment it comes together as a child and is born. And according to Barbara Duden's book on the history of women's bodies, In the Middle Ages, women didn't think of, when they had a miscarriage or something, they didn't think of it as a baby. They thought it was some physical problem that wasn't a baby. It wasn't yet a baby. So not yet a baby, you didn't think of it as a baby. It's strange to me anyway that fundamentalist Christians, particularly in America, out the birth of a person from conception.

[26:43]

They understand it, being a person, as conception. But, you know, in Asia, when you're born, you're one year old. It's not so much that they're counting the nine months before. It's more the feeling that A lot happened before you were born. That the birth itself is only one step in the process.

[27:45]

Almost there's no beginning and end to the process. And you can see that this is not so much based in fact. Because both versions are based partially in fact. But I think you can say more accurately they're both significantly different ways of looking at things. So what I'm trying to suggest here I'm trying to give you a different feeling for the conjunction of circumstances itself as a kind of nature.

[29:05]

Yeah, but nature itself, the word nature means birth. What's natural is related to birth, nativity. So probably if we used a yogic logic, We wouldn't speak about human nature. Speak about something like human locus. Locus being the way things come together, a location. Not a toilet. She can't help but remember, remember the sashin where somebody chanted, what did they chant?

[30:25]

With purity like an opal. Yeah, that's right. The white thing was with purity like a lotus. And the whole sashin starts laughing, and I don't understand why they're laughing. And she's still laughing. Someone maybe had to find a different word in German. Focus isn't quite right. In English, locus is quite good. The center of a location is locus. The center of a locality is the locus. Okay, I'll find a good word. So we could have Buddha-nature.

[31:45]

Instead of Buddha-nature, we can have Buddha, the word we can't mention. Okay, this end, how do you... Instead of Buddha-nature, we can have Buddha, the word we can't... Instead of Buddha-nature, we can have Buddha. He's watched too much television. you know, even with a baby, is the genetic material of a very particular moment, in a very particular circumstance. Yeah, and then there's the you know, diet of the mother. And the mood of the mother and the father.

[32:48]

And the circumstances of the birth. And there's, you know, then the culture and minds of the parents. and the circumstances of good friends or spiritual friends, the social conditions and so forth. In Asia, in yoga culture, they would see all those things as part of the birth. You can't separate one thing. I'll say, this is where the soul sprung through. That's why it's so hard to speak about soul and spirit, things like that. It is so difficult to talk about the soul or the spirit in this Asian culture, because there is nothing like such an essence that is then passed on.

[34:08]

Yes, we can see in Sophie, and I suppose in Zoe, from at the moment of birth, there's already some kind of personality present. And that precedes psychology, memory, consciousness, and so forth. Okay. And yet, still, that personality is a manifestation of a conjunction of circumstances. There's always this idea of the hidden and the manifestation in Chinese and yogic culture. We try to write an original poem. The Chinese try to write a poem that's the echo of all poems that have been written on a similar subject.

[35:22]

A poem isn't just like, hey, we're saying goodbye, I'm going to miss you. So a Chinese poem might be something, folding the reins, the reins of the horse. So You see two people standing holding the reins together, two horses. Holding the reins, standing by the river. The sun sets. That's a fairly typical Chinese poem. But it echoes. literally hundreds of poems about clouds, rivers, mountains, horses, partying, etc.

[36:42]

And it's meant to echo. It's the... to call forth the invisible architecture, the emotional spaces in which we live, the times you've parted from someone, the times you've parted from someone. Yeah, someone you loved or someone who died. Or reading a poem or a novel in which you feel the parting of someone. because if you depart from someone, the ways you felt before when you departed from someone are part of that feeling.

[38:02]

So you end up with poetry that accumulates and brings towards you rather than brings you into something new. That accumulates, brings up into you, rather than brings you into something new. Both make sense. Yeah. And you may think that, well, you know, this example of a nursing mother crossing the boundary of body and mind. When consciousness leaves the baby, it leaves the mother another kind of awake version of that consciousness.

[39:38]

You may think that's a pretty unusual example. We're all not nursing mothers. Particularly Andreas, me, Mike, and so forth. Yeah. So maybe we're the men that are incapable of crossing the boundary of body and mind. Yeah, but, you know, that was, in this small group, one nursing mother is an example. In fact, there were two nursing mothers an example. And there might be others. I don't know. I didn't talk to all of them.

[40:39]

This is a small group, so that's a pretty good example, actually. Yeah, and how rare is a Buddha? Well, we know Buddhas are pretty rare. And yet, talking about the possibility of the seed of Buddha-nature. Being something so, being something very simple, what we actually can know. Even in this small group. We have examples of this crossing the boundary of body and mind.

[41:39]

Of the moving of life streams. Outside of outside of language, in the open text of the world, outside the text of texture of culture. Yeah, language. And this is not something Marie Louise learned. No one taught her to expect this. Or taught Tatiana to expect it. It just happened, they noticed. Something outside the usual categories of relationship between people.

[42:43]

So how do we bring ourselves into some mind fertility of mind. That's womb-like time. where we feel some kind of new intimacy or connection between us, outside of personality, where we may be annoyed with each other, annoyed or bored or something. where we feel some softening and some other mind appears from a conjunction of circumstances.

[43:50]

I'm saying it's possible. And it might happen suddenly. And it's more likely to happen if you practice. Just like it's more likely to happen to me Louise if she's been pregnant. But, you know, perhaps, you know when Tatjana first spoke to me about her experience of body and mind coming together. And she said something like compassion of you. And I said, let's look at what you actually experienced.

[45:21]

Let's not call it compassion necessarily. Let's look to our actual experience that arose in a particular circumstance. So Marie-Louise looks to her actual experience and says, this experience, an almost overwhelming experience, she said. of the world being present to her and of equal value. You know, the ordinary structure of consciousness makes things near and far and there and here and so forth. The one that structure disappears, dissolves. everything is very present to us in an almost timeless way.

[46:43]

where time is also a structure of consciousness. So if she looks to this experience, she might say, not, oh, this occurred because I was nursing. She might not say, this occurred because I was nursing. She might say, this occurred because it's possible that this occurs. Through the conjunction of certain circumstances. To stand in a circle of many possibilities. And which possibilities come into the center.

[47:54]

So if she views it as yes, this is possibility for us human beings. Us Buddha beings, maybe she says. No, why don't we say that? Starting to use words in a more resonant fashion with practice. Yeah. And like Beate said earlier, sometimes these feelings are something very familiar. Some Vietnamese might say, oh, this arose in this unique situation of nursing and the baby falling asleep.

[49:06]

But she might say, she didn't say, but she might say. But there's something familiar about this. It's certainly familiar to me. I know the experience she spoke about. I've never nursed, actually. Sophia has tried, but it didn't work. I've fallen asleep with the baby. But I've had this kind of experience with my teacher and with practice. So there's It might be familiar to her, but it's familiar to me. So it can arise from other circumstances than this particular circumstance. What other circumstances are there?

[50:22]

We can't just limit it to teachers or people or something like that. We can't just limit it to teachers or people or something like that. It might be the teaching of insentient beings. A tile falling off a roof. Or a clap of thunder at night. And it doesn't have to be some special moment Every moment is this possibility Now the teaching of the Paramitas is exactly meant to do this.

[51:33]

Is to put you at the center of a lotus. A lotus holding two people or people together. A binding together not just from the world created in language, Binding together not just through the world created in language. Binding together through this mutual aspiration. The vision of the possibility of a Buddha arising between among the two or three or four or all of us. And we who practice those who practice together are connected by this vision.

[53:00]

With this potential vision. And by this ever-present possibility and while at the same time accepting what is at this moment perhaps a failure of this possibility and yet there is an acceptance of the of the way we are and acceptance of the way we could be. They fit together like large and small. That kind of liquid or feeling This kind of flow or feeling is something different than the world described in the language and this kind of feeling we can also call the seed of Buddha Nature or the garden of neutral aspiration

[54:18]

I was going to ask you if you had any questions or discussion. I wandered off into what I thought would be a little moment about focus and poetry. Yes, I wanted to, yes anyway. So is there something you'd like to bring? The hidden is important but the manifest is also important. I want to mention something about the example of the poems in Asia. And that we in the West try to create something new and that Asian people try to collect that which has already been.

[55:55]

There is a kind of philosophy that comes out of focusing. It says when... You have to let him translate, or I can sort of understand. I understand by looking at you. It says when... When within a being, those things that were earlier come together, they cross, and then something new, there is the old, but also something new is created, and this new is somehow carried forward.

[57:30]

That's very much like the view that I'm speaking about. Yeah, so Zoe and Sophia are very much like their parents, but they're also completely new. Zoe and Sophia are very much like their parents, but they are also something completely new. But we hope that they continue to like their parents. It doesn't always happen. I'm too new to like you, Dad. Ich bin zu neu, um dich zu mögen, Vater. You old father. You alter Vater. Yeah, something else?

[58:34]

Etwas anderes noch? Yes. This morning I was struck by the word that people drift about and that that is the same meaning as samsara. And somehow in my life, instinctively, I have felt that, and my response to it has been to intentionally create activity. And it's not so much for the sake of activity, but it is kind of for the sake of keeping connected to intentionality of my life. And I wonder how to place that, and whether that's a useful direction. or how does one stop drifting? Yes, in German, please.

[59:41]

It struck me that the word drift has a similar meaning to samsara, and I have found in my own life that I always do activities, and not because of the activities themselves, but more with a certain intention. I want to know if this is useful in this direction, or how can I get out of this delusion into a more guided life? Well, of course, in your particular situation, I know you well enough to respond with preciseness.

[60:45]

And just because you might describe some of your life with the word drifting, doesn't mean it means what this means. I mean, here it means they don't see the actual situation they're in. But it sounds like from what you say, and I know from my own experience, when you create activity just to... Keep your mind stable. I have something to do with others. It's a little bit like you're throwing out roots and hope somewhere they stick. And this can be a fertile period.

[61:54]

But I think you at some point have to come to what really is essential to me. But you couldn't imagine doing without. Basic things. Breathing, washing your face. At that level, what can't you imagine life without? And you form an intention.

[63:15]

Of how you want your life to be. It must be this. Could be, should be this way. And then you hold that intention in mindfulness. And it starts to gather things to it. The intention, without acting on the intention, gathers things to it. And our life begins to take a more rooted form. It also helps to keep rooting our mind in our body and our breath. Anyway, that's as much as I can say. This is, glaube ich, alles, was ich dazu sagen kann.

[64:24]

Someone else? Jemand anderes? Nicole? No. Nicole? Sophie? Sophie? Ja, Breite. You're supposed to always be ready with something. That's practice. Ray Louise? I'm just wondering, I am in this situation, when you take certain things away, what is it that can do to set the world as it simply is? I mean, in your own life at this moment, well, perhaps you stand in the middle of the circle. The circumstances are not just things.

[65:26]

They're standing in the middle of things. To change the subject slightly, you know, we, you know, this, for instance, even our health. In yoga culture, it's considered a function of intelligence. That our medical world is implied, all bodies are the same and we treat the other body equally. You've got a liver and you've got a liver and the livers are the same. In our medical view, which is a good one, every human being is treated the same.

[66:27]

They come to the doctor, are you legal or illegal? You both have kidneys and the kidneys are the same. But in the Asian medicine they'd sort of say, is there an intelligent kidney or a less intelligent kidney? They wouldn't separate the kidney from the person. And we certainly have a good instance of that in this antibiotic resistant TB that's seriously present in the world. Antibiotic resistance, TB. TB is what? Tuberculosis. It's resistance to antibiotics. Oh, yeah. which if you're a drug addict and fairly stupid, and not responsible, you are responsible.

[67:46]

If I give you both antibiotics equally, And I don't stand practically gunpoint and make sure you take the medicine. You create for the world drug resistant TB. And for these pills they give people for TB, supposedly in Africa, the price for dry pills is higher than the price for wet pills on the market, on the wholesale market.

[68:51]

What is wet? Wet means they've been standing and watching them take the pill, but they hide it in their mouth. And later you take the pill out and sell it. The wet ones don't give as big a price as the dry ones. So with So actually, and unfortunately, though it's partly true in the West, an intelligent person is given more sophisticated medicine than an unintelligent person. Because how you take care of your body is... considered something intelligent people do.

[70:08]

But I know enough doctors, you know, if they see someone come in who's been an alcoholic, etc., they don't treat them as carefully as they treat somebody who clearly has been doing their best to stay healthy. So this sense is that you're responsible for your own body and your own state of mind. So I got a cold in Mexico. Yeah. And the economics of fresh air on airplanes. Economics? Yeah. Because they give better air to the pilots in first class. So if you're in the back of the airplane in the TB ward, ward is the hospital room.

[71:27]

Yeah, they're much more likely to get sick. Because these airplanes are circulating the diseases of the world along with the people in the air, in the cheap air. So even though I got this cold in Mexico and and then was affected by the air on airplanes. Still, my health is of my own responsibility for kind of use of alcoholic father. or I get hit by a car, I might be able to collect insurance. But still, at this moment, my mind and body is my own responsibility.

[72:48]

This circle I stand in the middle of. Mindfully, hopefully, in the middle of. Yeah. Now, I would like to start the parameters, but I don't know if we have time. Yeah. Is there anything else anybody would like to bring up? To me this sounds like as if we create the circumstances and that at the same time they're already there. That's right. They're not circumstances until you bring them into the circle. Yes.

[74:06]

Well, they're there, but you make them into a circle. You know, and if, I mean, I think about these babies. If a baby, I think almost all babies have immense potential. And if you have complex parents, they're going to make a more complex circle for the baby to grow up in. They'll notice more things. They get different toys and so forth. I'm not saying we should all go to Beate's store and load up our toys. There's a limit. Sometimes you see kids of rich parents, they can't see over the toys.

[75:11]

But I do think it makes a difference what we notice. And some people notice too much and can hardly function. They're too sensitive, too responsive. Yeah, then you really need Zazen. To get back to original mind. to return to the original spirit. Okay. Anything else? Yes. Agni is a state of being able to look back, to recognize, or to believe, to realize. Yeah, maybe not. Can we go through it step by step?

[76:27]

It's difficult. Yeah. The way I... The way I perceive and experience Buddha nature, and maybe that's not right or wrong, that one has to see the Buddha nature in a space or a realm, And to realize it. Where there is no distinction between subject and object.

[77:34]

Within a space that transforms subject and object. And I think that we can actually enter this space quite often. And then it can happen that we are So we took off in politics. Yeah, that we have thrown back into this subject feeling where... The dualism of subject. The dualism. In this moment there is... A struggle or a self-assurance or even murder or something like that?

[78:42]

Self-defense. Oh, we can go back to our, you know, some sense of being a hermit. Yes. Or we have the possibility to carry our cross. And I think it doesn't work without doing this last thing. What is the last thing? Last thing is very important. The last thing is what?

[79:45]

It's to carry your cross, or it's the way of... In a Christian sense, or to bear your suffering? Certainly we have to bear our suffering. And certainly the teaching of the Buddha begins with being open to and even accepting suffering. And that's an assumption that is For a practitioner, that's a fact of one's awareness and consciousness.

[80:50]

The fact of one's awareness and consciousness. Continuously working presence in one's awareness and consciousness. and so is present in any teaching or experience. But going back to the first part of what you said, I think the stability in this kind of practice is when this opening, this space, this knowing that we can call non-dual, is simultaneous with and working as part of the knowing that is dual.

[82:12]

And these two are inseparable. But you experience them somewhat differently, but they're inseparable. And that's one way to speak about the teaching which reaches into everything. A teaching that form is exactly emptiness and emptiness is exactly form. That's the best I can say. So let's have a break. And let's divide up into groups again. And let's have them a different configuration.

[83:19]

And maybe what you can... feel as a topic is what are your actual circumstances and how are you standing in them and can you stand in them with a sense of Buddha nature as well as human nature How can your circumstances, your present actual circumstances, not changing, your present actual circumstances, have the conjunction of practice as well as suffering? Um... These circumstances?

[84:21]

They have a conjunction of practice and realization as well as a conjunction of suffering and samsara. You know, some feeling like that. And then tomorrow we'll again come back to Andreas' question. How do we plant this seed of mutual aspiration? Nurture this mutual aspiration. This our Buddha nature. By the way, I noticed during Zazen this morning,

[85:44]

That only four or five of you had an intact mudra Most of you are sort of... something like that Yeah, remember again that All physical phenomena have a mental component. All mental phenomena have a physical component. And surprisingly not only does the mudra reflect the general alertness of the body It reflects the general alertness of the mind as well.

[86:52]

It's almost like the mind is a window and thoughts and things drift by. And that window stays open as long as the mudra is open. When the mudra collapses, the window collapses. And the mind is sort of like a window, a window in an old building that's fallen over and grown over with ivy. So it's helpful, really, if you find a way to develop consciousness in your body that maintains your mudra.

[88:05]

The Buddhist police are everywhere. Watching your mudra. I couldn't check on yours this morning. It's important, but don't worry. Okay, is there anything anyone would like to bring up? What about this? Yeah, this one is okay. If you can't do this one, you can do this one. But when I was looking at your mudra like that, it was sort of like this.

[89:06]

That takes a lot forward. Keep it like that. This is a certain energy in this mudra. It's fine. All in all, I think this one's better, but this one's not good. Anything else? Yeah. I have a question I don't know if it fits. You said in the very beginning that there are in Western society, there are some brilliant people which we have to call from a Buddhist point of view, enlightened.

[90:13]

But they have difficulties to teach because they are not in the lineage. And I'm interested in this point. How it supports the lineage in the ability of teaching. Because there was also, like, Krishnamurti's teaching, who said there's really no village, and don't care about any form, and so on. This is kind of interesting, too. . I don't know if this is the right question, but to begin with, I would like to say that in the rest of society there are also some deviants of heads

[91:20]

also pass on wisdom, but it is often difficult, because they are not in a classical teaching line, often do not develop the ability to really pass on their knowledge and to learn. And for me it is an interesting point to see how far a teaching line really is, which provides the ability to teach and to pass on wisdom, because it is also someone who is certainly not enlightened. Krishnamurti says that all of this is just an imagination of the mind where we want to feel at home, in a certain line of sight. And all of this should be taken away and brought to the realization.

[92:33]

Of course, it didn't mean just Westerners. I meant there's Asians in Western society who are also teaching, not rooted in the Libyans. Yeah. First of all, I would say that over all, this is an observation. and something approaching a fact. Now, can we find an explanation for this fact? That there's a difference. What I've seen, what I've seen, what I've observed is that some people I know who have the second generation of a lineage, of a second generation

[94:14]

are the successors of a teacher who didn't have a lineage. They know how to get people started. They don't know how to continue. They are in the frame of the enlightened experience of their teacher. In the sense that a Pratyekabuddha or an artist who is enlightened is often in the frame of his or her experience. In the sense that a...

[95:05]

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