Now understanding, knowing that objects are objects of mind. What does this understanding and practice mean to you? Did anyone have any thoughts about this? Okay. Our group had to stop the discussion right at the most exciting moment because time was up. Someone in the group, Frank, had asked the question, what makes things to happen, something that, an activity for us, an event? Yes. And this is something that has already drawn to me as an understatement yesterday.

[01:23]

It is actually the most interesting question how we can come to an intensity of the experience where we can really merge with what is happening. So already yesterday this question was like underneath the surface for me. How can our experience be so intense that we melt together with the situation and with what is happening? Okay, you can start right now. Okay, someone else? Thank you. Go right here. This practice to see with the mind is a practice that kind of throws us back onto ourselves.

[02:54]

And the object can be any object. And the object is just like a means to an end. One could take it away. and it helps to recognize one's own mental structures. Especially when I look at a person, I notice much faster that it's my own mental structures that are going on. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. This is your agent.

[03:55]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I wanted to say that this also makes it clear how much responsibility you have. This points out how much responsibility we have. Because the way how we perceive things that changes the things themselves. And it's important to have that in mind to remember that or to notice that. True. Yes. And in this situation, the question, what creates what?

[04:57]

In this effect, back and forth, neutral effect. Maybe it's almost the same question, where does meeting happen? And the meeting is at the same time the creation or creating. Mm-hmm. This kind of discussion is called entering into the tiger's cave. Because you endanger your reality when you start looking at these kind of things carefully. But when you came in that door you all agreed to endanger your reality.

[05:57]

That's why there's two doors. But it's blocked by the other tiger. I thought that was Tigger. Okay. Yeah. So in our group we also talked about that people or we see what we expect. And in teaching a lesson, teaching English, something happened to me.

[07:26]

And it's only now that I've understood what happened then in that situation. So at this time of carnival or Fasching that we have in Germany, she decided to at that time to wear something very unusual when she went to work. I mean, teaching English. So once she wore a Bavarian dirndl. They didn't realize I was dressed up. I found that shocking. Well, you don't live in Austria then. No. So I thought, next year, I'll go a step further. Next year what? I'll go a step further in the costume. So I braided your hair. And then I had a very colorful batik blouse and a painter.

[08:59]

Here, on the forehead. And like an ash dot on the forehead. And with a diamond. Not ash, but diamond. So normally I wear a business suit and wear glasses and everything. So I went in wearing this funny costume and no one showed any reaction. They're used to you. So in the last group she asked, don't you notice anything about me? No. No, no. No, no. So she tried to explain that she's dressed up because of hushing.

[10:22]

So they hadn't noticed. Maybe next year David can loan you his mask from Basel. I mean, I was brought to the thing and I couldn't recognize him. He's coming along with a drum and he says, it's me. The Basler Fastnacht is very different from the German carnival. David has a mask in front of his face and a whole body... No, in front of the face it's called Larva. And the whole costume is called Maske in Basel. And David didn't recognize Roshi at all. I'll just send it to David. I can't think of anything else.

[11:25]

And it was confusing because there were a whole lot of other people who looked just like him. And once he put his mask back on, I didn't know which one of them was him. Okay, someone else? Yeah? Don't know? Thanks for being here, by the way. All the way from Budapest and parts east. For me, in the approach, I turn the question What is the reality? What is the reality outside of my mind? And it comes to the same point. And just to see where do we put the board, I call it board also.

[12:35]

Yeah, okay. Thanks. So we discussed a lot of things in the group, but we've not come to any conclusion or any explanation. And the idea came up that when I close my eyes and then I open them again that I want to see the object again. And that brought me back to the question that we've had in practice about continuity and about changes.

[13:53]

Thanks. It is a question that comes together in the discussion. My view is that if the mind creates this object, where does this input come from? If or when the mind creates the object, where does the input comes from? I mean, the input the mind has, gets, for generating the subject? The input from outside or inside? Yes, it's a question. He's a Jesuit. Well, in the discussion it was not clear to me what an object actually is.

[15:04]

When a painter makes an object, it is somehow habitually clear. But when the definition of today-morning comes, that you put this object in the individual senses, Yes. So the question arose, what is an object? First it seemed clear that, in general, when an object appears in my mind, that seems kind of a normal kind of thing. But in this morning's techo, when you said an object is really six objects, when you take smelling, Where is the object in the smell if you don't know that it comes from a bowl of soup?

[16:04]

Where is the object in the smell when you don't know it comes from a bowl of soup? Yeah, or what is the object of the smell? I think what he means is when you smell something, how do you know there's a bowl of soup at the end of it? If you can only smell, use the sense of smell to identify it. What's the dust? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Well, it could be a bunch of flowers. It could be, but probably most of us know the smell of soup. Sage. Sage. That was a very wise old soup. So, Yahad's argument is like, I have this sense of smell and the bowl of soup is an association.

[17:16]

So how can there be an object in the sense of smell without the association? Well, if you're a baby, and you've only had a bottle and never had a bowl of soup, And someone held a bowl of soup under your crib. The baby, I presume, would smell it, but not know what it was. But there would be an object to the smell, but there wouldn't be a conceptual object to the smell. I mean, there'd be a sensation. We can call the sensation an object, but it's not tied to a concept. Okay. Yes. It might be the same thing just from different perspectives.

[18:57]

Well, we need lots of same things from different perspectives. I talked about an experience I once had and I think I already told you before. It was in the mountains and I really love the mountains and I love also the landscape of the mountains and once I sat meditating there with open eyes kind of looking over the landscape. And like the view or what I could see became very real, plastic. I don't think so.

[20:04]

Somehow very three-dimensional, very super-real maybe. Spatially articulated. Then suddenly there was a... And suddenly there was, even with a slight fright, a sudden recognition, a deep recognition. This landscape, the view of it, like on a postcard, does not belong to the landscape. From the point of view of the landscape, I'm a fool seeing it as I see it and as I love it.

[21:13]

And that was my sudden fright because I really like this view. Why did you use the word fool? Why did you use the word Nara? That's a childish expression. I just wanted to try to say that... She used the expression because she wanted to say that the landscape explains itself and doesn't want to be seen like a postcard view. Did you feel you were seeing it like a postcard or you were not seeing it like a postcard? No. The sudden recognition was that kind of this view she was having and always loved,

[22:20]

that it's not kind of inherent in the landscape, but that she was producing it or doing it. You were making your own postcard. Yeah. Yeah, or she created the view, and from the point of view of the landscape, from the point of view of the landscape... Yeah, yeah, yeah. the view didn't exist. Yes, there is something there, but it's just not the way I see it. But for me the problem is, where does the incredible intensity of this experience come from, from a change of encounter, where does encounter come from, How can such an encounter have such an intensity? You often do these games of deconstruction, then you replace this with that, you can deconstruct everything and it's just easy and it's a good exercise. But what is an encounter then? Okay, so this meeting and this recognition was a very deep experience and deeply felt experience.

[23:57]

So the question arises, what is meeting if like at other times one can play around with deconstructing a view or changing perspectives. But this was a really deeply felt recognition and meeting. So what really is meeting? Okay. So it seems that I've heard several times the word meeting being used. Are we using that in the sense an appearance is a meeting? We're meeting an appearance. You don't have to answer that. I'm just bringing it up as something. I remember I was walking down Washington Street in San Francisco heading toward Franklin Street.

[25:04]

And there was a cloud over a building. That was quite beautiful. I know the building. I can see it right now. The building, and probably they've changed the building since I was there, but at that time, yeah. And, you know, I'm just walking along, and the cloud was over there, over the building to my right. And then I suddenly had the realization or observation that the cloud wasn't over anything. From where I was, it looked like if I was over there, it would have been over this building. And at that moment I lost all sense of location.

[26:23]

Except the location you put together moment after moment. And that experience feels similar to what you experienced, at least it sounds like it. But maybe it's different. So it is similar in that it's a relative relativization of how I observe and how I perceive. But I had the feeling that I was in contact with something bigger, greater.

[27:24]

Yes, Dagmar? So Dagmar feels, and this ties in with her question, what is it that makes things to an event or something we experience? Yeah, okay. Having an experience, and I'm not trying to make it the same, but for me, having the experience of having no location felt like some kind of bigger location. Because I was definitely located, but I wasn't located by... Yes, Alan? I had an experience a while ago, looking at the night sky, at the constellations, and it occurred to me, maybe it's occurred to everyone else long ago, but at that moment it seemed like, aha, to me, that the constellations are completely a product of the spatial and temporal perspective.

[28:53]

And they've been serving as orientation for mankind for time immemorial, but it's completely a matter of perspective. Okay, yeah. Can you say that yourself in German? It's been a while. I had an experience. I looked at the constellations and it occurred to me that they are actually a product of a temporal and spatial perspective. They have nothing to do with it. Humanity has been Okay, thanks. Yes, begin. For me, this question of what is, what objects of the spirit are, This question, what happens or what is when objects are objects of the mind or could be objects of the mind?

[30:16]

For me, I'm reminded of the other thing you said and suggested, that the question or the statement, it could be different. And during the discussion this afternoon I noticed when one brings in it could be different. I noticed that somehow this changed my skill or my ability to perceive. This ingredient could be different. Somehow works with how I normally orientate myself and see objects.

[31:43]

and it helps me not to get stuck in thinking or seeing how a situation is or how it should be but how it could be. And that makes things new again and again. Okay, thanks. Ebene? the things as they are and the objects as objects in the mind.

[33:07]

These two things she mentioned, things as they are and objects as objects of mind are in a field of kind of tension. So these two things moved inside this field and like two different places and they overlapped so we asked maybe they are the same. And we also came to the point that it's a very good practice to try to separate the six senses and to have to take one into focus. Maybe to create or experience this aliveness and freshness.

[34:24]

Could you say something about things as they are and objects as objects of mind? what maybe the relationship is and whether it is in a field of tension. Okay. Well, I would say that things as they are, if we use that phrase, Also, ich würde sagen, wenn wir diesen Ausdruck benutzen, Dinge wie sie sind. Can't be separated as a term from your perception from mind. Because things as they are includes your perception of them. So then we can say, so then if we want to try to frame this, if I'm trying to go along with you, we can have things free of mind as they might exist or exist separate from mind, as they might exist to a physicist or something.

[35:54]

And this is Schrödinger's cat, you know, and all of that. And then things as they exist in the mind, is there a tension in that field? I think there is a tension. And as I tried to speak in the last seminar, of, let's say, tension between objects which belong to the past and beingness which belongs to leaving, departure or the future. Right now I don't want to try to put this together. But I likened it to being at a train station.

[37:02]

And the train is the object in front of you. But then the train leaves the station. But objects are always leaving the station. They're there, but then you leave the platform of the station. Then you leave the station and get in your car. Then you leave the road behind. So objects are always going toward the past and beingness is moving into what does not yet exist. And this creates a certain kind of tension and an experience of continuity Because this subject-object relationship with the subject always leaving creates a sense of continuity through the relationship of them like passing.

[38:43]

But I'm not satisfied with how I'm speaking about this. So you're going to have to wait until I can find a way to speak about it. So you have to be patient until I find a way how I can talk about it. Yes, everyone. As a child, I loved to ride in the tram. And in the back, I saw the track and I always wondered, so it was very clear, they came out of me and I always wondered when this track is empty. I sat there, saw the tracks, and it really felt like they come out of my self.

[39:46]

And I asked myself, when is the coil empty? And it was also clear the con is never empty, but my stomach always felt the same. You know, before we turn the world into the way it's supposed to be, the shared world, That the tracks are not coming out of our stomach. We all pretty much agree that the railroad tracks are not coming out of our stomach. But in a more subtle sense, they're coming out of our stomach. So this kind of experience, which is an official

[40:47]

contrast to the official way we look at things. When you practice, sometimes those experiences happen again or come back. And they begin to have a kind of sense that you couldn't allow in the past. Because your experience may be closer to how things actually exist than the usual way the tracks are out there, etc. So We need another kind of framework, a more open framework, to try to allow a more subtle experience of the world to occur.

[42:36]

And subtle experience of the world to happen as an event, as an encounter. Yeah. But we really have to accumulate or create and accumulate a shared vocabulary to speak about this. So I mean these koans are trying also to create a kind of coded vocabulary. Now, you know, I was reading the other day how Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats... I think for a couple of years, maybe three years, they met in a cottage in Ireland.

[43:41]

A stone cottage, they called it. And they tried to develop a common poetic vocabulary. And they also tried to develop a kind of code that's hidden in the poetry. They created a kind of elite of only those who knew the code could understand the poetry. And I think their deeper motivation was similar to the coded language of Buddhism. It's not coded to exclude anyone.

[44:57]

But it's coded to create a number of people who can understand together and their understanding supports each other. So it's not like, yeah, anyway, I think that's enough for me to say at this point about that. But you have, you know, simple things like the crane nesting in the moon. In this koan. Well, the crane represents longevity and it also represents, was used to indicate status, high officials in the Chinese court life.

[46:08]

You can see JAL, Japan Airlines, uses the crane in a circle like a moon for its symbol on its airplanes. So the crane, designs of cranes were on the fabric which people wore if you were a high status Confucian. So in this case it means Yao Shan was one of our people who created our practice. And then the moon, of course, The moon is not really a symbol.

[47:26]

It represents the phases of the moon. And even the full moon is only half the moon. And the moon reflects in every pond and so forth. And I remember I said to my mother when I was, you know, before school, I don't know, four or five years old. And I said to my mother that we lived on a lake. And I said, why is the moon running across the lake like this to us? So the moon represents its phases, its manifestations, etc. So our actual experience is not a symbol.

[48:27]

And the crane is more of a symbol of auspiciousness and... longevity. Because cranes do supposedly live a long time. I never lived with one, sorry. And so the crane representing longevity and something that holds and continues in the moon which changes It's a kind of representation of we're in a world that's constantly diverging and in our experience it converges This room is converged into this room.

[49:45]

And we have converged into this room and sitting here. And this room just some months ago looked quite different. And if we don't take care of Johanneshof, this room will start looking even worse than it did before we changed it. So if we don't take care of things, they start diverging, becoming random and arbitrary. So in the midst of a world that's coming apart, we bring it together, and it comes apart, we bring it together. And in the Buddhist worldview, there's no guarantor behind that. If you throw something down in nature, there's no kind of guardian bodhisattva going to come and sweep it up.

[51:02]

Okay. So this is like saying, here's this person who's presenting us this teaching, this wisdom, which lasts a long time. In the midst of changing. So the crane is in the moon. So there's this kind of articulation that allow, if we can develop a common vocabulary, we can begin to talk about what's at the edge of our shared reality.

[52:02]

Yeah, anyway, as I say, I can't relate this to her practice as thoroughly as I'd like to yet, I will practice maximal greatness and see if I can find a Bodhisattva who can do it better. You will practice great... Maximal greatness. Maximal greatness. And sometimes that bodhisattva is Catherine.

[53:09]

Or my translator. Because I know when I speak English, I don't have to speak it too clearly, because I know the translator will straighten it out. I would like to come back to your image of a train station. with the two dimensions of looking backwards and looking forward to the future. First what came into my mind was the physicist observes the train and we are sitting in the train.

[54:11]

And these two dimensions make the difference. And the question is, how do I connect them? And in our group In our group, we kind of stopped at this question or with this question. There was a very lively or live energy in this process.

[55:15]

With no answer. Okay, good. I mean, good enough for now anyway. Well, I always feel we're all in different trains. And all the trains have come into the Johanneshof station. And all the windows are sort of lined up right now. But sometimes I see one of you start to move and I think I'm moving, but no, the other one, no, but then the two windows get back together. And if the seminar really works, sometimes we all get out of the train and the trains are kind of disappear for a while. And then later in the week you start getting back into your trains. Yeah, Ravi. We reflect some on how we use practice to do what you're talking about. And one of the two practices that I've learned from you that helped me sort of observe this object.

[56:51]

One is to practice with the five skandhas backwards, starting with the fifth skanda, working backwards. And another one is observing objects not as objects but as activities. And to be aware of the activity of being surrounded. Thank you. Let me just say, rather simply, When you begin this practice and you recognize the obviousness of it, of, for example, seeing an object as six objects,

[58:10]

When you begin to take apart your experience of... your sensorial and mental experience of the world... When you begin to observe and take apart your sensorial and... mental experience of the world, you also begin to take apart the world. Because you see that your experience of the world is you're putting it together. And then you see the whole thing is just put together. And much of it is put together outside of our experience.

[59:27]

But it's still put together. Or, you know, what glues it together? Okay. Anyway, so this exploration of seeing things as mind and sense. There's something we want to, as practitioners, get used to. Until we're very, very familiar with it. And it begins to have its own fruit. Which Yashan, by sending the seat as he was requested to do, But then taking the situation apart, whether Yao Shan really did this or not, who knows.

[60:37]

What we do know is our Dharma ancestors used Yao Shan as a figure to represent thinking non-thinking and to represent this taking the world apart. And then how do the eyebrows know what's going on? So these distinct, just taking apart the senses and joking about the nose is in the central position, etc., is a way to begin to develop a coded language.

[61:41]

In the eyes it's called seeing. This is already coded. You don't just see. In the eyes it's not just seeing, it's called seeing. Also in den Augen ist es nicht einfach sehen, nein, es wird sehen genannt. What else could it be called? Could be called, I don't know what. Was könnte es sonst vielleicht genannt werden? Vielleicht flirten. It often is. In the ears it's called hearing. It's called hearing. What is it called called in the eyebrows?

[62:42]

So now we apply the word called in a category which it doesn't usually, it doesn't function. So we have now been practicing long enough together to use this coded language of koans, for example, to notice the world in its convergence and divergence. Free of any guarantor or primal glue And through the fact that we share this language, we know we're not alone in this exploration.

[63:51]

If you were in a rented room in a big city living by yourself and you were thinking about this, it might be a little scary. It might be better to do something else. When you think too much outside the envelope as they say, It's nice to have friends who live outside the envelope too. You know, Suzanne mentioned to me that I asked her about how it was in Moscow. And she said at least the smoke had lifted.

[65:10]

A very large percentage of Russia has been on fire. Which, as she reports, covered Moscow with smoke for some time. They wiped out much of the world's wheat crop. And if you're into investing in commodities, you should have invested in wheat about two months ago. And 20% of Pakistan is under water. And the Sunnis are still blowing up Shiite mosques.

[66:28]

And now much of southern Mexico and Guatemala and Belize are flooded. Guatemala and Belize, former British Guiana, I guess. Belize. And China is flooding and mudslides, etc. And pieces of icebergs four times the size of Manhattan are falling off the glaciers. And of course this has nothing to do with global warming. It was just predicted.

[67:30]

a little while ago, but still this has nothing to do with global warming. It reminds me of a story I told in the last seminar, but I'll tell it here. Marie Louise the other day, or a few weeks ago, recognized on the street her piano teacher from when she was eight or nine or something. Unsurprisingly, he did not recognize her at 40. But she recognized him, but he was quite a nut. Yeah, and I don't want to go into the details of But he's great, a wonderful nut.

[68:42]

I like him. I'm familiar with this kind of nut. He's a Polish-German who moved in second, etc., and he studied with Michelangeli, the Italian pianist. He's a wonderful pianist. Anyway, he told the story of his brother who was in an airplane that looked like it was going to crash. It was being thrown around by the wind and they were low on gasoline and they didn't know if they could make it to the airport. And the guy next to him was terrified. So finally, the music teacher's brother said to him, look, if it would help you, write a note and I'll deliver it.

[69:56]

So the guy got a piece of paper and wrote out this note. And said, will you promise to deliver this for me? Yeah. And the guy calmed down. This is the kind of situation we're in. We're writing notes to each other. I mean, the evidence is all around us, but we're writing notes to each other. It's all right. It's going to be all right. What is all around us? The evidence is all around us. We're all giving each other yellow leaves. Yeah. Thank you very much.

[71:00]

Vielen Dank.

[71:13]

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