Yes. What I also wonder about, and as part of what Petra said, cutting off the senses. This hyper-object that you spoke about, for me, in this room where the senses are cut off and the forethoughts For me that is in this space where the senses are cut off and before thinking. And to feel the space and, well, how far does cutting off the senses go? That's something I wonder about, how far does it go? How far do you think it goes? I can only go so far as my experience allows me to.

[01:17]

But I don't get entangled with the senses. Sometimes I have a feeling that I'm walking around almost like blind because I don't look at the detail or recognize the details. And sometimes I don't want to look so closely at the details because I don't want to be too involved with the senses. I can only say what I know in my experience, but I feel like to have a feeling for this space, it makes me feel that this goes much further.

[02:38]

Yeah. What this koan says, the five senses plus mind, is like a hammer without a hole. A hammerhead without a hole. That doesn't really mean you're cutting off the senses. The sense that, I mean, our practice is to be totally sensitive to everything. But you don't use the senses through mental activity. So each sense is fully sensing, but you don't necessarily put them together to make a common picture. I don't want you walking around half awake, especially if you're Mayanji.

[03:47]

Ich will nicht, dass du nur so halb wach durch die Gegend gehst und schon gar nicht, wenn du mein Anja bist. You start breaking tea bowls and things like that. Fängst du an, teetassen zu zerbrechen und so. I'll just bring it up because I've been thinking about it. Ich spreche das jetzt nur an, weil ich darüber nachgedacht habe. There's one Buddhist school, Madhyamaka school, will say, okay, we have the concept the whole is greater than the parts. But so one Buddhist school says the whole is greater than the parts.

[05:01]

The other Buddhist school says the parts are greater than the whole. And what's the difference? Okay. When the parts are greater than the whole, you have the realm of hyperobjects. Okay, so one Buddhist school will say, yes, in all the parts, like in the koan about the chariot, in all the parts, you can't find the chariot until you put it together. Now, what I'm trying to do here is use a seemingly ridiculous philosophical distinction And to illustrate that it really makes a difference, that it can make a difference.

[06:25]

Okay, so let's use the example philosophers always use as a table, because they're usually sitting at a table. Okay. So, in all the parts, the legs and things like that, there's no presence of a table. You can't find a table in a bunch of pieces of wood. Okay. But when you put them together, there's a table. Okay. Now, what kind of thinking does that result in? It results in a feeling that all the things of the world take form, can take a mind generated form as a table or as some kind of object.

[07:50]

Now we human beings tend to think and need to think with some boundaries. The experiential unit we call time or durative time or time. Where's our Dower person over here? Did he leave? Dower? Martin? No, Martin's right there. He's there. Oh, you're there. You were here before. No. You were sitting there yesterday. Yesterday. Yeah, so I was looking for you. The delivery room dower person.

[08:52]

Hans. Okay. So we need to, we will think, and there are experiential boundaries. Also wir denken in, und es gibt auch, Grenzen der Erfahrung. So if we think practically, the table exists. Wenn wir praktisch genommen denken, dass der Tisch existiert. Even if we know it is made from other things. Selbst wenn wir wissen, dass er aus anderen Teilen besteht. And it's impermanent. And we know it's impermanent. Still our thinking means all the things of the world take their form as tables or pillars or whatever. So our thinking sort of ends there. Wait, then I didn't quite get it.

[09:59]

We think that all of the things of the world take form. As a pillar or as a table or as the floor or as an automobile. There was a period there, period. I guess. Okay, then that's fine. Now, the other school says the table is only a provisional designation. Okay, so it's really the parts are more important than the design... It's only a temporary designation as a table, and really the parts are what's real. So if climate change or... The sixth extinction is a hyper-object. It's a hyper-object because all the parts are reassembling all the time and creating an immense object that stretches vastly in time and space.

[11:15]

And all the little holes, they're not holes, all the little tables which collect those objects are actually, the parts are more important. Yeah. Stop that right there. Then it is therefore a hyperobject, because all the individual parts change all the time and change in their constellation and merge into something that is far away in space and time. Okay. Sorry to present this to you. Okay. So it says here, for instance, a well-known Zen saying, seven flowers and eight blooms It also says here, who knows the extent of the sky or the breadth of the earth?

[12:41]

The extent of the sky and the breadth of the earth is to think in a big scale of things. to recognize the mystery of the big scale that those parts are out of control. They may do something we don't like and they are doing something we don't like. So back in Sumerian times, as much as we know, they started drinking milk. And so the men stopped hunting.

[13:44]

Why did the men stop hunting? Because if you're going to drink milk, you have to kill the male calves. If you're going to kill the male calves, you can eat them and then you can stop hunting. And so the men don't have to spend much time hunting because it's real quick to kill a male calf. So they had time to go out and visit other villages and sell the women's weaving. Which they had been only weaving for their own neighborhood and village and then they started sharing and then some weavers were better than others and so forth.

[15:04]

Yes, the parts are more important than the whole. You do a simple thing like start drinking milk and pretty soon the men don't have to hunt and pretty soon all kinds of other things happen. Commerce. Now this is expressed in Zen. why you don't have to confirm things through consciousness. So it came up the other day with do you notice that you're not noticing? This koan goes into this. It says, for example, Seven flowers and eight blooms means there may be seven flowers, but over a period of time there may be eight blooms.

[16:37]

So it means everything is an activity stretching over time. So why are there seven flowers and eight blooms? Because you're looking at it over a period of a month or a year. Okay. If you look at... I mean, this is fun for me. I don't know if it's fun for you, but I'll continue a little bit more. If you have a bunch of wood here, and the parts are more important than the whole, then you see the potentialities of tables and all kinds of things in the wood. Okay, so it means that in every situation, if everything's an activity and not an entity, in the midst of everything that appears, now that's the problem, I didn't want appearance and what seems, there's always potentialities.

[18:16]

So if you're going to see potentialities you don't want in the five dharmas, we go from appearance to naming. But really, we want to go from appearance to potentialities, not to naming. And did you say not to naming or then to naming? Not to naming. So the five dharmas, you go from appearance... to naming, to thinking about. And then you go from the wisdom of thinking about and cutting off that naming, and then you have suchness.

[19:21]

So at every moment you're actually in a field of potentialities, which is called suchness. And that suchness is characterized by both indeterminacy and maturity, maturing. Und Soheit, die Kennzeichen für Soheit sind Unbestimmtheit und dass es reift. It's simultaneously full of possibilities and simultaneously has an implicit directionality. Es ist gleichzeitig voller Möglichkeiten und hat aber auch eine implizite Richtung. It's like the painter is like, okay, which color, you know, like that.

[20:33]

So this is trying to show that the cutting off mental activity Now I turn that into noticing the mind that appears that's not in the conceptual billboards. And that happened through the sensitivity that happened through regular practice. But I yet didn't have the concept of Hishiryo. Which is about how you do that. And how you do that is to notice without thinking about.

[21:41]

Or not having the senses form names and so forth through mental activity. Through the senses, not thinking. going to naming through mental activity. The senses are just the senses. But since we want to be effective, we Westerners are naturally enough, everybody, and want to be intelligent, We have to recognize that noticing without thinking about creates another kind of intelligence that arises pretty naturally in the crafts and in the arts and in being a surgeon or something like that.

[22:45]

Or an athlete. So, this koan says, mountains and rivers are not seen in a mirror. Which means you do not see a mountain, you just feel the mountain. I don't know how to express this. It says here in the next page, if you say the mountains and rivers are seen in a mirror, Then they are not separate from the mirror. Then you only know them through consciousness. And it says here, do not use a mirror, do not use consciousness, the confirming consciousness, to observe them.

[24:01]

If you use consciousness to shape your life, or if you use a mirror to observe, then you create two parts. Just let the mountains be mountains and let the rivers be rivers. Each thing abides in its own state. That's a hyper-object. You're letting the mountains be mountains and be their own parts, and you're not turning it into, oh, that's a mountain. I'm just letting a mountain be a mountain.

[25:18]

I keep looking at Dieter because he has a PhD in Buddhist studies, so I have to see how he thinks about this. And then it goes on and says, if they're not seen in the mirror, then where do you see them? At least they can ask this question. If you're not seen in the mirror, you don't know them through consciousness, then where do you see them? And it goes on about Do you yourself in seeing cast a shadow? Or is your shadow gone because you're not even present so there's a shadow? And then it goes on. When you see, do you cast a shadow or is the shadow gone?

[26:19]

All right, that's enough. Then it says, to get there where there's no reflection of anyone, that's when mental activity is cut off and understanding is cut off. And then it says poetically, right now you don't need a pool in which to reflect yourself. like the moon is reflected in the pool. And you don't have to wait until the moon sets so that there's no reflection of the moon before you... We don't have to wait for the moon to set to realize this.

[27:31]

I like this thing here. It says, this is trying to tell someone this. It's like leading a man, a person. to the edge of a 10,000-fathom cliff and giving him a push. Then it says, but if you were even pushed on level ground, So you're not pushing the person over a cliff, you're just pushing them on level ground. And if you push them until the Maitreya Buddha of the future is born, You still would be unable to understand this. But one more thing about how they say things both ways. It says, when you get here.

[28:48]

Now, practice is supposed to get you there and then it's up to you to get it. When you get here, you must understand on your own. And then it says, the single transcending road has not been transmitted by a thousand sages. The single transmitting road, transcending road. has not been transmitted by the thousand sages. And then it says, students of practice toil over the forms like monkeys grasping at images. Then it says, the sages have not transmitted this and you are like a monkey and you're just grabbing at reflections.

[30:05]

What it means is actually the transcending path has been transmitted by the sages. Aber gleichzeitig heißt es, oder eigentlich heißt es auch, dass der Weg, der transzendieren kann, der transzendierende Weg von den Weisen sehr wohl überliefert wurde. But it says the single transcending path. Aber es heißt der einzige transzendierende Weg. Which means the path you realize has not been transmitted by anyone until you realize it. So, typically Zen it says, this path nobody has ever transmitted and you're just grabbing at reflections. But it means, do you have the capacity to really make this work on your own?

[31:23]

Isn't this fun? This side has been summed up for you. I just did it. But you must cross by yourself. Okay, that's doorstep then. We're on the threshold of the doorstep or trapdoor. Yeah, okay. Thank you very much.

[32:07]

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