I feel Maya and I are part of the flower arrangement. I mean, she's a better part of the flower arrangement than I am, but maybe we should, well, we could peer out, you know. We can have a few more here so that we can play in between. We are so high up here that we might get dizzy. This is where I can stand because here is a different eye level. So this is our reality right now. Thank you for translating for me and us. You're welcome. I had to get up from under my knee.

[01:02]

So we have this impossible topic of truth and reality. We could talk about anything from now on till the end of the seminar. It might not be true, but it would be reality. But I don't like to, usually, as most of you know, I don't like to start with presenting a teaching so much. Aber wie viele von euch wissen, mag ich es nicht, so eine Lehre zu präsentieren. Maybe I feel that way because then it's in contrast often to our experience. Weil das dann häufig in Kontrast ist zu unserer eigenen Erfahrung. Your own contrast can be, of course, fruitful. Auch Kontrast kann natürlich fruchtbar sein.

[02:18]

But to me it's more interesting to see what our experience is. Aber für mich ist es interessanter zu sehen, was unsere Erfahrung ist and to see if from our experience we can see how teaching arises. Und aus unserer Erfahrung heraus zu sehen, wie daraus die Lehre entsteht und erwächst. So, particularly on this what I call prologue day, this day before we start the seminar Friday evening more formally, I like to have the feeling we can just discuss things a little more freely, somewhat independent of the topic. In the topic, what's the topic do? It gives us some place to enter. But it also is an excuse to talk about practice.

[03:20]

So I'm interested, of course, in any thing you want to bring up about practice? Because, you know, we're leading our lives or following our lives. And I suppose how we lead or follow our lives is in effect practice, whether it's intelligent practice or wise practice, that's something we have to figure out.

[04:24]

So I'd like to start with some consideration of the reality part of our topic. Let's leave truth for later. That's easier. We have an expression in America, later for truth, later for that. It means to put it aside. Okay. Well, we have a question, something like, what is reality? No one knows.

[05:35]

But we can start with our experience. How we use the word at least. Because I again think that how we actually In ordinary ways, use a word enters us into our experience of the word. Because I'm not too smart, I don't know how you use the word reality in German. But we say things like, my reality is that I'm always sick or something like that. My reality is that I'm always complaining about things.

[06:37]

So that's, you know, one way we say, speaking about our particular conditions. And sometimes, you know, I think we say, the reality is there's no jobs available to these years. Also zum Beispiel auch zu sagen, da die Realität ist, es gibt keine Arbeit derzeit. The reality of politics is that it's always mostly corrupt. Also die Realität der Politik ist, dass sie meist korrupt ist. So now we're speaking about the reality, the political reality or something like that. And then I can imagine we might say, so and so doesn't know how to take orders from reality.

[08:04]

Do you say so-and-so meaning another person? Yes, that's what I meant. Another person, so-and-so. Actually, English is just a dialect of German. With 50% French words thrown in so that you have a chance to... That's why we lost, you know, and English has no male and female distinctions because French had one system and German had another system, so they dropped no system. Yeah. So I suppose to say he or she can't take orders from reality. Thank you.

[09:24]

What do you mean? Here comes somebody. Thank you. Too. She's terrible. Don't get me. All right. You're her assistant and I'm his assistant. Well, that means, you know, you have to look at the conditions of, you know, take care of yourself, sleep enough, things like that. That's taking orders from reality. So the uses of that the common uses in English of the word reality.

[10:52]

It means we use it as some kind of measure of what we're doing. And a kind of not self-measure, something outside or larger than ourself. Even a person who can't take orders from reality, which is one of the main forms of neurosis, it means they are always trying to order reality or control reality. can't let reality, you know, etc. But you're still seeing things away from a third-person point of view, from a little bit outside yourself.

[11:58]

If you say, I'm a person who's always complaining, that's a little bit seeing yourself from outside. I'm a person who's always complaining. But that's already a kind of complaint. I'm a person who's always complaining. You can't stop complaining. I'm complaining that I'm always a person who's always complaining. But it's funny, we can accept that, but if you ask somebody what their reality is, they say, I'm always happy. You probably wouldn't believe them. Or you wouldn't want to believe them. Or you'd think they're some form of self-deception. Or it's not fair in this world.

[13:22]

Everyone is suffering. Why are you happy? That's quite interesting. We can say I'm always unhappy, but it's... It's not exactly acceptable to say I'm always happy. That's worth thinking about. Why is it Do we not accept being always happy, but we so easily accept always suffering or always complaining? And we can't say exactly, like you can say, if you say I'm always, I'm the person who's always complaining, that itself is a complaint. And it means you prefer to be happy.

[14:22]

Or happier with things. But really it means you actually are happy with your complaining. People are usually happy with what their situation is, even if it's suffering. I mean, at least psychologically, we often don't make real efforts to change things. It's a big step when you actually decide to change. Then practice is such a decision. But the degree of commitment to practice is difficult. Because we also often want to just make our suffering better, but to actually change ourselves is too big a price.

[15:53]

Now I'm just musing out loud with you about these things. If we said, saying, like we can say, I'm a person who's always complaining, is a kind of complaint. Can we say, I'm a person who's always happy, as a kind of complaint? I'm so tired of being happy all the time. Or if somebody said to you, I am so happy to be able to tell you that I'm always happy. What's wrong with this guy? Yeah. I mean, it would sound like he is kind of lording it over you, that if I'm happy and you're not, or the rest of the world isn't or something.

[17:10]

Okay. Anyway, so I'm saying that I'm bringing up really our happiness and sadness, happiness and suffering. What do they have to do with our entry into the truth? These implicit attitudes about suffering and happiness and so forth. How do they affect what we know as or could know as true? Or how are they a basis Or could they be a basis?

[18:32]

Or are they a necessary basis for knowing reality? Okay, so let's start musing from a different tack. Different tack? Sailors know that, with going this way or this way. From a different direction. If we ask what is reality, One of the most common things you can say is, first of all, you can ask the question, why is there anything at all?

[19:36]

Why is there stuff? Then we can also ask, why is there anything at all? Well, we can't answer that question, why is there anything at all? Wir können diese Frage nicht beantworten, wieso es überhaupt etwas gibt. But there's still some point in asking the question. Aber es gibt immer noch einen Grund, diese Frage sich zu stellen. Because at least by asking it we can perhaps eliminate the question. Aber dadurch, dass wir sie fragen, können wir vielleicht auch die Frage eliminieren. But it also, the question assumes that the basic position, fundamental position is nothing at all. Now I don't know if you've been watching the news, most people watch the news I think.

[20:45]

But there's these huge forest fires in Southern California. And it's a very known experience for me. Because I... I was in what at that time was the second biggest forest fire in California history. Which was about 250,000 acres. No, no. Don't worry about it. It's big. And for two weeks, there was so much smoke that at midday, it was like late in the evening here, almost dark. And the smoke went all the way from Big Sur up to 100 miles south of San Francisco.

[22:04]

Anyway, so I was in the middle of that fire fighting to save our little monastery in the middle. But I won't start telling you fire stories or things like that. Not yet, anyway. But this fire in Southern California is twice as big. It's about 450,000 acres. And it's the size, as I said last night to Andreas, it's the size that already a few days ago of Luxembourg is burning. And the flames, unbelievably, if this is a pine tree,

[23:07]

Big pine trees, four or five times higher than that. Yeah, this is all to say that those people, when they come back, more than 2,000 homes have been burned. Most of them are in surprisingly good spirits. We're going to rebuild. This is just stuff. None of us got hurt. But their idea, basically in their mind, their conception is they're back at the beginning and they'll start over. So the basic position in their mind, in their assumption is nothing and they'll build something.

[24:26]

So we have some idea like that things need a beginning trees need to be planted this building needed to be built or renovated and so And if you didn't renovate it, it would have returned to nothing. Because that kind of thinking is so basic for us. It's certainly one of the reasons we imagine, at least at the level of imagining, a god. It's in our thinking that there has to be a beginning. But Buddhism takes a somewhat radical A different position.

[25:46]

But there's no beginning. There's always been stuff. Now, that's harder for us to imagine that there's always been stuff. There's been stuff forever and there will be stuff in the future. But if you just try that on, it changes your thinking to think that way. Stuff has fluctuations. It appears and disappears, but it's always been stuff. Then you don't need a creator.

[26:52]

You don't need a beginning. Okay, so we can try on the idea that there's always been stuff. But still in our thinking there's this sense that nothing is the beginning point. Yeah, but it's pretty difficult to think about what there was before the beginning. That's even harder to think than that it's always been stuff. So again, I guess what I'm doing here is what I always find interesting, that if you just look at simple basic things, at a certain point you can't think them anymore.

[28:02]

They're not thinkable. So if we are going to look at these questions what is reality and what is truth Yes, we are going to have to look at least first of all in the realm of our own thinking. Because we can't go very far past what's thinkable. I said, maybe we can start with nothing.

[29:07]

Then we have the thing, why is there anything at all? And then we accept there's stuff here. Flower arrangements. Yeah. But then what is this stuff? The visible stuff that we bump into. There was a British philosopher named Barclay who said that everything is mind. And Samuel Johnson, a British philosopher, I think he wrote the first English dictionary. He was sort of the smartest man in England in the 17th century.

[30:15]

And he kicked a stone hard, grabbed his foot in pain and said so much for Berkeley's theories. And he hit a stone with his foot and said, yes, so much for Barclay's theories. Okay, so there's all this stuff, right? There's all this stuff. But what do current cosmologists say about the stuff of the universe? What do the current cosmologists say about this matter? Well, they say the visible stuff is about 1% to 4 or 5% of the universe. So 95 to 99% of the universe is invisible to us. That's not way out there.

[31:21]

It means right here it's invisible. It's about 60, they say, what, 33% dark matter. Dark means they don't know what it is. They don't know what the dark is. But they can see that the gravity of the known visible material isn't enough to hold the universe together. So they measure something like the imagined gravity of this invisible matter. It turns out to be about a third of the universe. The other two-thirds are dark energy. Thanks a lot.

[32:24]

I think Darth Vader would understand. You know, the dark forces within it. Dark Vader. Dark Vader. Anyway, so, but what if it's not nothing and it's something, but the something is only 5% there and the rest is dark energy and dark matter. Then what is reality? Well, obviously we don't know what reality is.

[33:34]

You can't answer the question in any general sense like that. We can say it's a certain kind of activity. We can say it is a certain kind of activity that we can measure by our observation, tools of observation like telescopes and tools of computation like mathematics. But there's no way we can really say what reality is. And I'm saying all this not because you don't know these things I just said, because most of human history has assumed some kind of knowledge of what reality is. There's a great turtle and the universe sits on the turtle.

[34:45]

That's the American Indian's idea. That's why Gary Snyder, the American poet, very influenced by He was one of the original Beats, but influenced by the Indians. And Gary Snyder, der sehr stark von den Indianern beeinflusst ist, calls the Earth Turtle Island. Der nennt die Erde Schildkröteninsel. Yet the ideas we have about reality influence our experience.

[35:46]

So I'd like to speak to some extent about what ideas of reality can be useful. And I suppose we have to think also about to what extent these ideas of reality are useful or also true. And from what basis now, where do we start? Okay, so I think that's enough at the beginning.

[36:47]

And we can take a break. Let's sit for a moment and then we'll take a break. An hour?

[37:54]

And is it okay if we go until 12.30? Around 12.30. Before we have lunch. Somebody missing, or they just... Their glasses are... Is this your class or something? This is my place. I'm not sitting here. You're always like that. I understand. I should have known. And I recognize your security blanket, actually. You're advancing it.

[39:16]

You can leave your security blanket there while you're... My daughter, who's 40, still sleeps with a piece of her blanket under her pillow. I suppose I'm not so different. This is my security blanket. Yeah, we need a window open somewhere, a little air. Doesn't have to be wide open. We want a little of reality to come in. Oh, no, it doesn't have to be so open. Just this way. That's okay. You get too cold, you can turn it like this.

[40:17]

German technology. Yeah. No, no, it's okay, okay. We don't have such sophisticated windows in the United States. Sure. Our windows just, you know, go up and down. That's all. You know, it's sort of like limited. I know a lot about this now because I studied the way windows are made so we could put new windows in Johanneshof. And every two or three years they get more sophisticated and they need new machines to make them and new... It's amazing. And the German man I spoke to said, well, the Austrians and the Swiss, they're pretty good, but the Germans are better. And the rest of the world, they don't count.

[41:18]

In terms of windows, they don't count. I was impressed, and both of us were touching the wood of the larch. We were very impressed, and we had this larch wood. Smooth as a baby's bottom. Yes, very soft, like a baby's butt. Baby butt. I've learned that word, actually. I have a daughter who is two and a half. I have a daughter who is two and a half years old. And every day I speak to her on the phone, she says, Papa, come home. Come, Papa. I never even separated from her. Fly, Papa. At first she said I wasn't away, I was just out a different door the first few days.

[42:26]

I was not out the front door, but I was at some different door, and if she could find the door, I would appear. So that's her reality. And truth means, in English, It's the same root as tree and it means what's there. What continues? Like you open the door and the tree that was there yesterday is still there. So a lot of our actual experience of reality has to do with predictability. Now I'd like to have some discussion of what we're talking about, would you? But first I think I ought to bring this a little more into the domain of practice.

[43:41]

Maybe the idea that the world, the universe, the multiverse, the cosmos... I like the word cosmos because it's the same root as cosmetic. So from that point of view, the cosmos is the ornaments of emptiness. Yeah, lipstick on nothing. Eyeshadow.

[44:41]

Maybe the idea that this cosmos is 33% dark matter And 66% dark energy. And is not possible to measure in any direct way. You can measure other things and imply something's there, but there's no direct measure. Of course, we ourselves, let's say, for the most part anyway, what can we do? We can't test this ourselves. But we accept what's called the community of the adequate.

[45:41]

In other words, other scientists all agree this is probably true. So that's called peer review or the community of the adequate. And the Sangha is a kind of community of the etiquette. In other words, I have to teach in the realm of what we all can experience and confirm as true or not true. Now, what's comparable to the scientific community, the adequate, and the Sangha, is they're both based on actual experience or direct experience of some kind.

[47:23]

Not just theories. And my job as a Zen teacher is not to teach any theories, just to teach experience. Prostate cancer. I didn't feel sick. But they told me I would pretty soon if I didn't do something. But how do I know it's true? It wasn't my experience. But I decided to accept the community of the adequate's opinion. And after an operation and many other things, it turned out they were right.

[48:39]

Yeah, I'm a little wary about accepting things that are beyond not in our own experience. But I think to some extent we can trust a views teaching that are based in experience that isn't necessarily our own. Thank you. I'll try to be simpler. So let's say that we accept this hard to test for us theory or measurements that the universe is 33% dark matter and 66% dark energy.

[50:06]

Okay, so maybe it doesn't Maybe we can't experience it, but it can, you know, make more subtle, perhaps, our sense of what kind of universe we live in. But maybe it makes us more sensitive to the way in which universe we live. Universe is already not a very good word because it's unique, one verse. It's not. We don't know. It's many verses. Okay, now, very many people... who practice Buddhism believe that somehow all is one.

[51:15]

And they have experiences of oneness. But I would say they have, if they call it oneness, they've made a conceptual error. What they've experienced is connectedness or relatedness and they call it oneness. In any case, one's experience, one's experience of oneness Is your experience of oneness, that doesn't mean that everything is one.

[52:20]

But it's deeply embedded in us to somehow think all religions or there's one truth out there somewhere. Contemporary science would say it's probably not true. And when Einstein looked for a unified field theory, he was probably barking up the wrong cosmos. When Einstein looked at the unified field theory, he found the wrong tree. You know, there's a Zen and Taoist saying.

[53:32]

I can't remember exactly the wording, but the sage wanders in 10,000 different things with 10,000 different rules. So in Buddhism we say, not one, not two, as you all know. If you say it's one, no, it's also two. If you say it's many, yeah, but it's also somehow one or related. So that's our actual experience, not a theory. So strictly speaking, Buddhism goes up to the edge of experience and doesn't go into the realm of theory.

[55:07]

It may be that everything's one. It may be that there's some meta-universe in which our universes exist that's permanent. But we don't know about it. There's no way to know about that. All we know is our universe is expanding. Dark matter holds it together and dark energy is pushing it apart. So it's obviously changing, as Buddhism says. Everything is changing and impermanent, including the universe. If there's a meta-universe, that's permanent. That we can't know about.

[56:11]

Okay. So if you take the view in your practice of not one, not two, both are true like the particle and wave theory in particle physics. That they're not going to be conceptually resolved is an outside conceptual resolution. then you may enter into this world with more, in your own world, with more sense of mystery.

[57:24]

Yeah, so if 95 to 99% of the world is invisible, And you're willing to let yourself feel that. Then you're willing to go to the edge of your senses. Or you're able to come closer to the heart sutra. Which says no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. And there's a koan which says the six don't take it in.

[58:27]

Now one way, and a fairly simple way though, one way of understanding that is the six senses, because in yogic culture, mind is one of the senses. The six senses don't take it in. It goes beyond the senses. So how do we have a mind of no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body? How do we have a mind of no mind? It's a little bit like I look at these flowers here in this garden. It certainly fills my senses.

[59:46]

But if I feel this, no eyes, no ears, no nose, etc. I sense it as perhaps something like the surface of a wave. You see the surface of the wave, but you don't see much of the ocean. So my senses are allowing this to surface into my consciousness and awareness. But I feel it as a kind of surface that's appearing. You know, let's go from the big picture of the cosmos, based on very, very tiny measurements,

[61:04]

Fractions of a millionth of a second difference might have led to galaxies. Well, let's just go down to the nodes. I mean, some of our nodes are not... Some are maybe too big, but in any case, it's a small thing compared to the cosmos. And, you know, supposedly your nose has in it something like a thousand olfactory neurons. And there's a thousand genes that correspond to each neuron. So that means not that we can smell only a thousand odors, but Because most odors are made up of many molecules.

[62:35]

Okay, so that we can presumably smell 10 to the 23rd power odors. That's a number that would fill this room. But probably we can only smell about 10,000 odors. Dogs are better. And the 10,000 is probably limited by our memory capacity. We couldn't remember more than 10,000. I mean, most of us can't remember, you know, probably anywhere near that. So what I'm saying here is, look, I don't know why I'm bothering you with all this stuff, but anyway, what I'm saying is... This is just how I think, I'm sorry.

[63:42]

That our senses only tell us a tiny percentage of the... one to five percent possibly of the world. But our senses are extraordinarily complex. Okay, so 10,000 odors. And in America, and I guess in Europe too, we've eliminated most of the odors. We scrub everything clean and make bathrooms smell like, oh, bleh. And one thing I enjoyed going to the Near East when I was 20 or so. I was in Iran and Iraq in the 50s.

[64:55]

1957, something like that. 1957. And my nose opened up. Everything smells, the walls, the fruit, the streets, everything. Not always good, but you know, it's all right. And it was great, because I noticed when I was in... I tell this story because it's one of the things that led me into Buddhist practice. I noticed that I knew things about people that I couldn't understand how I knew. It would just pop into my mind.

[66:04]

And I realized a good part of it was smells. And I was a little bit of an amateur scientist, you know. So I would try things like I'd walk up to a person and notice when it started to pop and that would be when I got in smelling distance. And I could tell, I could smell people's moods and things like that. Smell the mind. And you know we can actually, mice can, we can smell the genes of our parents in another person.

[67:14]

You all know about that research. Shall I give you a quick riff on it? Well, they discovered that mice won't mate with other mice which had genes like their parent. So if a pretty little lady mouse meets a guy mouse and he smells like her father, I'll mate with someone else. So they thought, well, jeez, like mice and dogs, they're much more sensitive than us. We human beings can't do that. But the lab assistants, mostly women began to notice

[68:20]

who would mate, what mouse would mate with another mouse. They were smelling, oh yeah, you'll like this guy. And don't we have, don't you, I'm half German, almost. We have an expression in German. I don't like his smell or I don't like her smell. So it's there in our, in your language, in our language. Anyway, I noticed this as a kid, and I thought, geez, no one tells you this in school or anything. So that was one of the signs for me that the world was more complex than it was being presented to me by my society.

[69:32]

Okay. So one of the interesting aspects of this, what I'm talking about, is that memory is a limiting factor. Now I've known cooks, you know, I've been in the restaurant business, and I've known cooks who can really smell into a dish served to them, tell you virtually everything that's in it. Now, William Blake, who's a British mystic and writer, you may have heard of him. He said something like, if we could only cleanse the doors of perception, we would see the world as it really is.

[70:48]

And he said, infinite. Yeah, it's a famous statement. And it was used in the drug culture a lot in America about cleansing the door of perceptions with LSD and a bunch of other stuff. And it's interesting what a role drugs have played in our Western culture. And it is interesting which role drugs have played in our western culture.

[71:49]

Freud took cocaine. And William James was one of the main western philosophers in America, but a western philosopher who pointed out the multiplicity of minds. And William James, he has... first said something about it with conviction after he took nitrous oxide laughing gas. And if you look back in history, it looks like Buddhism is a practice that decided on yogic experience rather than soma, rather than martial and mukti experience. And it seems that

[72:50]

The yogic experience was chosen here and not the soma experience based on mushrooms. Yes, soma, you know, psyche and soma, soma meaning body, but it seems to actually mean a particular kind of psychedelic mushroom. Yes, it's interesting that when we say somatic meaning body, In some sense, we're referring to a body under the influence of a psychedelic. We're not under a psychedelic. But even though I was in the midst of the 60s in San Francisco, In the middle of the 60s I was in San Francisco and I organized the first public discussion of LSD.

[74:01]

I organized something called the LSD conference at the University of California, Berkeley. I decided to I mean, I thought that we should look at it, the culture should look at it. And boy, did I get in trouble with the university authorities for putting us together. But it was too late to cancel it, and I... Yeah, anyway, so it happened. I decided to follow the more traditional Buddhist practice, which is do it entirely through yoga. So even though I never took LSD and was... So even though I was on the board of the Psychedelic Review magazine and did this conference, I never took LSD.

[75:22]

Because I decided to put all my eggs in the yoga basket. But still it's interesting that the openings into a wider sense of the world in Western culture often come from people who had some kind of laughing gas or something. They were always happy. Why are you always happy? I know this dentist. I know this dentist. But I would say that when William Blake says that if we were to cleanse the doors of perception, we would see everything as it is, as it is infinite.

[76:39]

he has not cleansed his doors of perception. Because adding the word infinite is to add a word like oneness or something. Buddhism would say cleanse the door of perception And see everything as it is. And I'm not going to tell you what this isness is. This isness is up to you. So we could say the practice of isness is one way to understand truth and reality.

[77:54]

Now I talked as usual, or not always, but more than I expected, so please, do you have something you'd like to bring up? Bringing this into the domain of practice took a little doing. A man without a head or something like that. He said, we don't have a head, we just know that we have a head. Yeah, that's a good book, that's a good book. Would you say something similar?

[79:04]

Yeah. I think that that's an interesting book because one is written by, I believe, an English colonial, not a professional scholar or Buddhist. Oh, my legs don't work so well anymore. And I think it's, what's his name? Was, who is the person who did the research which showed that Soma was probably a psychedelic, was also a British colonialist. In other words, these people are outside the professional scholarly world and they're more free to just see what's what. What is it, the man who lost his head, or without a head, or what's it called in German?

[80:10]

The discovery of what is obvious. Yeah. It's called something different in English, but it's like the Zen and the Art of Archery book. They're classic books at the beginning of interest in Buddhism. But I can't have you mention that without telling you an anecdote about my daughter, which I told recently at Sechin, but I'll do it again. My daughter, who's now 25, is sitting in the car in a baby seat, you know, beside me. I was driving. And she was... And I said, Elizabeth, watch your head. She said, you watch it, I can't see it. Oh, oh. But it's basically Douglas Harding pointing here.

[81:41]

Yes. But it's basically Douglas Harding pointing here. But it's basically Douglas Harding pointing here. which is the result of the Solipsism, i.e. the external clarity of the Antisemites, as it is described in the Kürbische Bild. So, even if we talk so much about scientific research, what are they supposed to strengthen? It is actually, and also at the end, when it is about the You better let her translate a little.

[82:44]

I let him translate. It's more complicated. All right. He asks himself, why are we talking so much about the outer reality? Füll mich rein mit den Begriffen, damit ich so ein bisschen... As certainly John's key to the stone, the chrism, it doesn't really matter to the standpoint of Barclay because this kind of subsism Isn't that, you cannot bring this kind of solipsism to a standpoint of, you know, you cannot fight against the standpoint of solipsism.

[83:57]

Well, I'm speaking about it because I think that no matter what we think, in fact, most of our bodily and mental actions that are outside of ordinary consciousness are based on a view of reality, an outside view of reality. So I think before we speak about our actual reality, which I wouldn't even call inner, We also have to speak about our outer sense of reality and make it more subtle. And I think a good example is William Blake. In all of British literature, English literature, he's known as the person most concerned with inner reality.

[85:18]

But when he says infinite, it's a concession to an outer reality. So we have to have a subtle sense of outer reality in order to really have a free sense of inner reality, in my opinion. Roland, did you have your hand? I'm willing to not make any sense, as you know. I was occupied with that I had a different reaction to this saying of like first of all I just found it nice and poetic

[86:25]

So that I didn't take it really as a concept or theory but as a input which pushed something in me so that the appearances could expand. No, I agree. And that's exactly what that statement has meant in English literature. But infinite is still an idea. It's maybe an expansive idea, but still an idea. And the idea of having no ideas is quite foreign to Western culture.

[87:47]

So it's interesting that Buddhism would stop with, we'll see things as they really is. But I think the impulse and the insight of Blake's is very similar. And he may have had to say that because you know he's in a Christian culture in England and you have to be a little careful what you say. So he may have just... Yeah. Anyway, that's enough. Okay, it's time for us to have lunch, I think. So let's sit for a moment and then we'll... The sit, you're welcome to sit on a chair.

[89:58]

Right here. On our laps. We'll just fight about whose lap gets sat on. Can you operate this new equipment, Gerald? I'm just learning. You're just learning. Oh, that's awesome, Mr. Smith. Oh, okay. There's some statements I think I'd like to keep coming back to because they need such close examination.

[91:11]

So now I'm making a shift from maybe we could say something like outer reality to inner reality. Yuan Wu, who, as I say, is one of the most trustworthy of our Zen ancestors. One of the compilers and creators of the Blue Cliff Records. What's it called in German? Smelt. [...] Okay. He says, realize right where you stand. Realize, enlightenment, just realize. Right where you stand.

[92:13]

In your case, realize right where you're sitting. Bring yourself to a mind where there's no before and after. And we could add a no here and there. And no inner and no outer. Okay, what's he saying? Well, he says, bring yourself to a mind Or realize right where you stand, right where you are.

[93:29]

Well, what are you going to realize? Realize. Well, he means something like, well, of course, realize enlightenment. But what is enlightenment? We could certainly define it as the experience of things as they actually is. Okay, so we can also say then he means realize reality. Okay, so somehow we have two realities.

[94:32]

The reality of right where you stand. And the reality that it can also be right where you stand is what we call enlightenment or knowing things as they are. So we have this surrounding reality that despite centuries of assuming somehow we're separate from it, we now have generally felt, understood that we're not separate from it.

[95:42]

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