initially as a way to develop this field of concentration. Okay, so what have we got now? We've got a foreground mind with a stick. What is your name behind the pillar person? Silke. Silke. Oh, that's right. Okay. We've got the mind of the foreground mind. We've got the background mind. And we have a mind that is the field of mind itself, concentrated on itself. Now that's not exactly the merging of the foreground mind and background mind. It's a mind that includes the foreground mind and background mind.

[01:04]

Now, why do we practice meditation? In adept practice, the reason we practice meditation is it's the only way I think most human beings can clearly establish, first of all, notice and experience, and then clearly establish this articulation of mind. Now, is that articulation of mind already there?

[02:04]

Yeah, I don't think so. The potential is there. And it's there to various degrees. And we all experience it. Notice yourself much. We all experience it to various degrees. But practice is to and the still sitting of meditation. Is to sit still enough that your mind stills itself. And then the mind can observe itself within this stillness. Okay, so then you can notice these distinctions.

[03:22]

Then you can articulate the distinctions. Then you can stabilize them. And then you evolve them, actually. You begin to create them. By noticing them and stabilizing them, you also start creating them. And then once you've created them, you evolve them. I have to meet in couple weeks in California at Esalen with a group of evolutionary biologists. And chaos theorists and things like that.

[04:23]

And I had to give a talk on evolution from the point of view of Buddhism. Okay. Okay, Julio? Another question that for me came up during the seminar that there's so much uncorrected mind, original mind, and the experiences of real realizations, small ones, always feel like this is my birthright and this is the most natural thing. At the same time, it's such an incredibly complicated crack. And to me, this is a contradiction to a certain degree.

[05:24]

It feels very natural in practice, as if it were the most natural world. But at the same time, the process of practice is a very subtle craft. Well, I don't think, I wouldn't worry about it being a contradiction. It's better not to try to make all these things fit together. It's a fact that these things feel fresh and like they're already there and like a birthright. It's also the case that it's a craft and that it evolves. I think it's debatable if it's so complicated. If any of you would put the energy into it that you use to learn medicine or write software or become a lawyer, you'd put us in the easy.

[07:04]

It's a different kind of energy, different kind of territory, but it's not so hard. Once you get it, it's clear and simple as Hong Ji says. It's what simple? Clear and simple. Good old Hong Ji, it's hanging in there. Hong Ji. Let's see. This, our catered lunch is coming at 12.30, is that right? Yeah. This is a classy seminar. Catered lunch in a palace. Okay, I think there's some things I'd like to, of course, come back to now because maybe we're doing better and getting closer.

[08:15]

I don't know. So let's take a break. All right, thank you very much. Thank you for translating. I have an idea that I live in a social dynamism life, and in this life I don't like to lose. I have the idea that there is a conflict between this world, social Darwinism, and the same way. And I don't want to lose this way of approach. I have the impression that we are in a kind of social Darwinism

[09:15]

What do you mean by social violence? It means that some people, not all, but some people try to win and the prize doesn't matter. I don't want that this is at my costs. Didn't you translate a little bit at the end of it?

[10:20]

I didn't understand that by social Darwinism you don't mean society is evolving or progressing, or do you mean the competitiveness of two people? With social Darwinism you don't mean that the society develops, but you mean this competitive character. Which? Everything? No, it's... I think... It's between companies, for example. It's globalization. You don't want to lose this world? I want to lose this world. Anyway, go ahead. I don't want to get lost in this world. And you feel, I'm joking, but you feel if you practice Buddhism, the social darkness would crush you like a little bug. I think Tibet and Dalai Lama and I think I don't know if he he's losing Tibet or um

[11:35]

It's hard to explain. I think he went away 45 years ago from Tibet and lost it a little bit. He lost the culture or lost the country? I think he lost people, he lost country, and I think he also lost a little bit of the country. Well, I'd say that what you said has two parts. Contemporary renunciation means Contemporary renunciation.

[13:08]

That you don't identify yourself through the outer directed society. But it doesn't mean you don't participate in the outer directed society. In fact, most people I know who practice participate better than they did before they practiced in the outer directed way. Whether they're getting their PhD or commodities speculators. Like potatoes, soybeans, oil.

[14:17]

It's the most dangerous market to speculate in. I knew this guy. He only wanted... I knew this guy who only liked to surf in shark-infested waters. Really? I know this guy who only liked to surf in shark-infested waters. speculating commodities and do meditation. He picked a particularly dangerous place north of San Francisco to surf. Okay. Not that I think you're planning to do that.

[15:37]

But you might. People surprise me. Anyway, I don't think the practice changes our ability to perform effectively in society, but it may change our desire to perform in society. Practice probably enhances our ability to perform in society effectively. But it might change our desire to perform in society. But participating in society is really the way we are compassionate with people. Since we're talking about the language of, the attempt to use language to talk about this experience of practice.

[16:56]

Hongji again, uses and calls this mind which includes both foreground and background minds, the jade loom or the jade machine. I don't know why he uses this image exactly. But he says the jade machine can lean over on its side. But he says that this yada machine can lean to one side. And then you can participate in ordinary consciousness very clearly and have the energy to return.

[17:59]

But that doesn't mean we have control over historical circumstances. And the Dalai Lama I haven't spoken to for quite a while, but I used to have quite a number of times had long conversations with him. And I think it was of course a difficult decision to leave. And I suppose if he was a military general instead of a Buddha, he might have made a different decision. And Mara tried to tempt the historical Buddha with such worldly power and so forth.

[19:18]

So you have to make a choice. Sometimes it's maybe best to be a military general. Anyway, that's not his choice. And I think probably he's certainly, if not the only, he's one of the main hopes for Tibet surviving in some way. And by leaving, he's been the... Certainly the centralizing force of this amazing presence of Buddhism through Tibet in the West. I don't know. That's my feeling. You had the accident yesterday with the appearance.

[20:49]

Appearance, yeah. And in my daily life, when I wake up, there's a person who wants to punch me off at my job. And she came in and I get blood pressure very high. And usually I should look at him every day new. But my body says something different. How should I look at this person every day with a new look? Yeah, and that kind of situation takes quite a few years before you can view such a person as a bodhisattva. Well, it's a good chance to practice. You bodhisattva. Come here, Bodhisattva.

[22:10]

But you know, it is possible. I know it's possible. But aside from whether you can view such a person with magnanimity, Magnanimous means that you are able to forgive in circumstances in which forgiveness is impossible. But another dimension of that is we also have to have some strategy to live. So if somebody wants your job,

[23:14]

You try to have to find... I've been in such a situation. Where you have to find some way to... Keep your job and get them a better job. Anyway, you have some kind of feeling like that when you try to accomplish what's necessary. Yeah, I mean, if you read Crooked Cucumber, you'll see there's a part in it where Sukhriyashi had to fight for the leadership of the Rinselen temple from his teacher, to keep it after his teacher died. When I think he felt ambivalent about his success in keeping the temple in his own hands.

[24:27]

And at a later time in his life, I think he would have probably tried to accomplish it differently. Okay. Siegfried Essen, who's a friend of mine and a former German theologian who's now an Austrian psychotherapist. And he usually meets with this group of Austrian psychotherapists I've been meeting with for years. But Marie-Louise has been reading, there's a book they've done, and there's one small section by me.

[25:47]

And Siegfried Essen has an essay in the book. It's a book on this, I don't know what they call the therapy. Anyway, it does constellations of people. And so Marie-Louise has been reading his section and translating some of it to me. And he says that people who are the actor participants in a constellation... And Arachino's friend has a piece in it, too. What do they call that kind of psychology?

[27:03]

I know it's Hellinger, but there's a systemic psychology. And do all of you know what this constellation thing is? You don't? Well, just briefly say we want to do a constellation on Senkin. About his family or something. So someone would pick Katrin to be his grandmother. You to be his great grandmother. You to be his father or something. And then you... Somehow, once you create a spatial field with these people taking on this person that they've never met, they have no information about. If there's information, it's in the field of Senkin himself, but he's just sitting watching.

[28:09]

When I've seen it done, immediately the participants feel they're in some relationship to the other participants. It's one of the most mysterious things I know about, actually. And then these actor participants, they're not professional actors, they're just participants, very quickly take on a feeling of, if not the exact characteristics of, the person they're representing. Now, what Siegfried says in the essay that Marie-Louise translated, is the actor participants are, and it's not their consolation, they're just participants in someone else's consolation.

[29:25]

The actor participants are surprised at how quickly their own story falls away and they can take on this other story. And then how good the actor participants feel afterwards, even though it wasn't their own constellation. Now, if I were to attempt an explanation of that, some aspect of that, in terms of our seminar, I would say that somehow constellation work being a spatial activity, spatial sculpting, creates a mental continuum and not a mental continuity.

[30:53]

And in a mental continuum, your own story can easily slip away. Now, I used this as an example to try to answer several of the questions yesterday. What's the difference between a continuum and a continuity? And I haven't forgotten that I have to help Ushi meet the Buddha. Okay, so let me try some more examples. As I implied before the break. If I just say things, I can't find them later in your mental continuum.

[32:20]

But if I create images, I can then feel, I can work with those Those images stay in your continuum and I can start working with them. Because I can feel when what I'm saying is making some sort of sense to you and when it's not. I hope I can. It seems to be I can. Okay. So another example, Suzuki Roshi's most common zazen instruction is don't invite your thoughts to tea. We can all understand that. It's pretty obvious in meditation When thoughts come in and out, you can either get involved with them or just let them appear.

[33:33]

That's also a way of saying what I say by saying uncorrected mind. Das ist auch eine Art, das zu sagen, was ich sage, wenn ich unkorrigierter Geist sage. And the basic experience of not inviting your thoughts to tea reaches throughout all of Buddhism. I can look at the lamp out there, out on the Schloss grounds, and not invite the lamp to tea. I, of course, know if I invited it to tea, it wouldn't come. But you know what I mean.

[34:45]

I can let everything just appear. Okay. So let's take this. So you're sitting in the mind of your house, the house of your mind. And there's some people wandering around the house because you left the door open. There's a tour. Buses have arrived sometimes. We ought to start charging. We might make some money. We have an expression, a penny for your thoughts. Yeah, so... You just let them wander around.

[35:47]

And they go out. But as you practice more, they just appear out of the floor. Yeah, no busting, they just appear and then they disappear. Yeah, whoa, this is magical. And then you sit there and, you know, you used to follow your thoughts to their source and you can see their cause. But you've got that practice down. You can follow thoughts to their source real quickly and see where it appeared from. But now they just appear out of the floor.

[36:51]

But they disappear back in the floor. Pretty soon you can start letting them all just keep disappearing. And then pretty soon the whole house disappears. And you have a wide open field. It doesn't feel limited to the mind and body. Dogen literally calls this dropping mind and body. Okay, so this wide open field we can call emptiness or the field of mind itself. Now, is it permanent? Is it woven together with form? Well, you can think of it that way and you can explore it in those terms.

[37:54]

Okay, but now I'm trying to answer the question that came up yesterday several times. What holds? Because Dharma means as a practice that everything is changing. But dharma also means what holds. The word means what holds. So here we have something that doesn't fit into language, but fits into experience. Because the practice of dharma is to let each thing appear and release it. Not just let it disappear by itself, but let it appear and intentionally release it.

[39:22]

And doing that, you generate a field of mind independent of the contents of mind. Well, is it independent? No, it's not independent. But it has qualities. I mean, I can say independent and not independent, both. It's both are true. So it doesn't fit into the categories, it doesn't fit into such language categories. So it doesn't fit into the implicit logic of the world that we find in language.

[40:27]

But to really start trusting the continuum of experience, you have to stop trying to make sense of the world. If you try to make sense of the world, basically you haven't renounced the world. So you just let these things appear. And if you try to say, oh, is it independent or interdependent? I mean, yeah, but those words don't really capture it. But this field of mind has certain qualities. It's not... It's free of causes. I would say... It's wrong to say it's permanent.

[41:50]

In Buddhist terms, it's wrong to say it's permanent. But at this point, you have to find out for yourself. The rival of the sixth patriarch couldn't pick up his robe. When the sixth patriarch was given the robe of transmission, some guy tried to get it from him. But the guy couldn't pick it up. It was so heavy. This means fundamentally you have to realize for yourself Das heißt im Grundsatz, du musst für dich selbst erkennen.

[42:59]

When you realize for yourself, I can give you a robe or something like that. Wenn du für dich selbst erkennst, dann kann ich dir eine Robe geben. Okay, so basically you have to decide whether it's permanent or not permanent or etc., I find on the whole it's not useful to try to think in such contrasting categories. Okay. But I can say about this experience that it's free of causation, or certainly free of causation compared to the foreground mind.

[44:00]

It seems to be independent of the causes that transform foreground mind. Es scheint unabhängig zu sein von den Ursachen, die den Vordergrundgeist verwandeln. So by contrast to foreground mind, it holds. Im Gegensatz also zum Vordergrundgeist hält es. It doesn't hold in my experience because it's permanent. It holds because in contrast to foreground mind, it's not subject to causation. Es... And as Hongji says, it shines through the gloom. Darkness, depression, discouragement, etc. It shines brightly even in suffering.

[45:24]

So those are ways in which it's said to hold or be... imperturbable field of mind. And this is discovered not through language, but through the language of experience or the continuum of experience. Now, in our mode of ordinary consciousness, by mode of ordinary consciousness, I mean, yes, our ordinary consciousness.

[46:27]

But the mode of consciousness, I use the word mode, that arises from this field of emptiness. Now I'm using the word emptiness, but don't get caught by the word emptiness. Sometimes I say, think of it in the direction of emptiness. In contrast to form. Okay.

[47:28]

It's hard to find the words to say something. But if I use the word emptiness... I'm using it to mean a word we can't say anything about. It's neither empty nor not empty. I just need a word I can't say anything about. It's empty of things you could say something about it. Okay, so I say this field of mind we can call emptiness. Yogacara identifies emptiness with the field of mind. Which is the root of the Zen school.

[48:38]

Okay. Now let me bring up one of my old saws again. Okay. Okay. It's very easy to concentrate your mind, bring your attention to your breath. It's very easy to do it for a few seconds and maybe even a few minutes. Very difficult to do it for any length of time. For what length? For any length of time. Why is that?

[49:42]

That's the question you should ask yourself. Why is that? Are my thoughts so interesting? No, I hate my thoughts. I want to just concentrate on my breath. But... you start thinking. If you hate your thoughts so much or love your... Why the heck can't we just concentrate on our breath? Someone said to me, the answer is easy because it's so boring to concentrate on your breath. Okay, but don't think of it as concentrating on your breath. It's more like the concentration or attention we bring to our stance. How you're standing, your posture.

[50:48]

You don't have any problem being a whip? basically aware of your posture all day long. It's not boring to be aware of your posture. So being aware of your breath is like that, it's like being aware of your posture. We still can't do it. Why? I think it's because, I know it's because, we need the continuity our thinking supplies to us. Okay. So what's happening when you keep bringing your concentration, your attention to your breath?

[51:55]

What happens when you bring your concentration, your attention, back and forth to the breath? Think of different kinds of minds as different liquids. So consciousness is a liquid which attracts the self. Or is formed by the self and formed by your personal history. And tells you the world is still here. Okay, by bringing your attention to your breath, the attention brings identity and self with it.

[53:08]

because attention is actually more powerful than self. But the self says, I don't like it here in the breast. It's not an interesting place. And it snaps back to your thinking. I like it here. I can swim here. No, come back to the breast. I can't breathe over there. You're trying to kill me. Plop, it goes back to the breast. Like that. How do you translate that? At some point, Attention wins.

[54:18]

And suddenly your sense of continuity comes into breath and the body. Yeah, you can still think, but you don't need to think to identify the world. You don't need to establish your continuity in the world through thinking. Your body has enough continuity. What happens when you pull the need for continuity and self identification out of consciousness. It transforms consciousness from a mode of continuity to a continuum.

[55:22]

It's a little bit like Ordinary continuity is like an engine. And it needs fuel. Or it stops. And the fuel is thinking, self, and so forth. And when you take the fuel away from the engine... Suddenly there's a shift from the car and the engine to the road.

[56:29]

And the mind becomes less like an engine that needs fuel. Exciting, interesting things, etc. And the mind of knowing becomes more like a road. and the knowing mind becomes more like a road. And the road doesn't care how many cars are on it. The mind becomes like a road in the middle of the night with almost no cars. Occasionally there's a distant light and a car goes by. Or the dream machine comes down the road. The entire circus. But mostly we begin to know our mind like a road in the middle of the night.

[57:49]

And if during the day things appear on it, it's okay. But even when things appear on it, we see that it's just consciousness has appeared on the road. And we see each thing quite clearly. And because we have this yogic skill of the four marks, And we're in a mind of pure subjectivity. Objective, yet pure subjectivity. And the things that appear on the road, we know that can disappear. And we feel very relaxed and at ease.

[59:21]

Because these cars not only drive off into the darkness, but they just absorbed into the road. When you need a car, you go, and the car appears, and you drive along. You don't need it, and it disappears into the road. So if you need to think, thinking appears. But you're not identified with it. And the more this is the case, the more there's a feeling of brightness, of blissfulness, because this field of mind is not Not some kind of mechanical empty thing like a radio turned off.

[60:37]

It's a live energetic thing with its own power, own... But its presence is so strong, it simply melts objects that appear into it. But kindly it can let things appear. And it melts it because of this, what Dogen calls, self-joyous samadhi. But it melts them because of what Dogan calls the self-satisfied, self-joyful Samadhi.

[61:42]

Ji-ju-yu-sam-mai. Self-joyous samadhi. So somehow this transforming the train or continuity or engine of consciousness The train engine of continuity. into the road in which things can appear but don't have to appear. And when the road itself disappears, we have a feeling of bliss. That's why the experience of emptiness is bliss.

[62:54]

You can also think of it in terms of contemporary physics as a kind of potentiality space. Now as we walk along in the mode of ordinary consciousness, And we feel the pure subjectivity of their appearance. Of their... Say you see a tree or a lamp, you feel the pure subjectivity of that appearance as your own experience. And that experience itself is always generating this experience. field of mind or emptiness.

[64:07]

Okay. So whatever you look at is appearing. As I say, in pure subjectivity. And yet because it's pure subjectivity, you know you're only knowing what the mind can know. The mind, the world we know, isn't occurring, the totality of the world doesn't occur through our senses.

[65:10]

Hongji again talks about exhausting the sense fields. He means to practice the vijnanas individually and together. Until you know not only how you know, but you know the limits of knowing. Okay, so within the mode of ordinary consciousness, not only is each thing appearing in pure subjectivity, you're also at least intellectually aware that only a portion of this world is appearing.

[66:19]

So you're also walking along in the light? And you're walking along in the darkness. The darkness of the limits of knowing. And this is central to the poem, the Sandokai, which we chant in the morning often. Where it says, darkness and light merge and do not merge. Much like you said earlier. And when we have this experience of darkness and light merging and also not merging because we know the limits of knowing experience actually the limits of knowing

[67:37]

the fullness and mystery of the world rises in this field of emptiness. So we don't feel anymore that this mind that we've generated somewhere inside our head and body. But it's also inseparable from the phenomenal world. Inseparable from the fullness and mystery of the world. untrennbar von der Fülle und dem Geheimnis der Welt, which touches and is part of this wide empty mind, which touches and is part of, das weite, den weiten leeren Geist berührt und ein Teil von ihm ist.

[69:13]

Okay. That's the best description I can give you of this field of mind or emptiness. Now we have back in ordinary consciousness, we have eight minutes to talk about the Buddha. In your own experience, Buddha, I would say, represents to discover the roots of the Buddha in your own experience. is to imagine the kind of person you would like to have exist on this planet.

[70:18]

Forget about Buddhism. What kind of person do you wish to exist on this planet? Better than the perfect husband or wife. Almost as good as the perfect son or daughter. Perfect son or daughter. Better than any teacher you know. Or a politician. Something like as a child we imagine, I hope there's this kind of person in the world. Keeping that feeling alive is part of, a good part of Buddhist practice.

[71:25]

And to let yourself really want that person to exist. And if you really want that person to exist, then you know you have to be that person. That feeling is the root of the idea of Buddha. Now, there's also a practice called maximal greatness. You notice that sometimes you're, you know, quite compassionate, say. And you congratulate yourself, hey, I'm not so bad.

[72:38]

You honor yourself. And at the same time you say, I could have been a little more compassionate. And in that way of honoring yourself but seeing, yes, I could have been a little more compassionate or kinder or more honest. That upward movement, we can call it an upward movement in us, is something like the movement toward the potentiality of a Buddha. Okay, now that's looking at the Buddha from the point of view of our own personal experience and vision. Okay, we can also look at the Buddha from the point of view of yogic practice.

[73:41]

The Buddha is the one who is awake. The one who has awakened. knows things through clarity. And this experience I've talked about is this mode of ordinary consciousness when each thing appears in tremendous clarity and brightness. We can call a... Buddha mind. Okay. Also, when through yogic practice you're free of mental and existential suffering, and the point of the

[74:50]

One of the main points of the Eightfold Path is to be free of suffering. And it's a promise and it's true. You can be free of suffering. So the Buddha is the one who's awake and also the one who is free of suffering. In that sense, yogic practice is the body of the Buddha evolving. Okay, that's the second way to look at the Buddha. The third way is to know there's such a person as the historical Buddha who's part of history. And there's also the lineage of Buddha ancestors, of Buddha mind.

[76:03]

Which Hongji is one of our ancestors. We're right here practicing this practice. and lineage of Buddha mind. In history. In history, actual history. Hong Ji practiced in the 12th century. In China. But his true mind, his true nature, It wasn't Chinese. It was Buddhist. It was Buddha's. In his mode of ordinary consciousness, what he saw appear is different than what we see appear.

[77:05]

But the fundamental mind and process of mind that he describes is exactly what we're talking about. So that's the Buddha in history. Then there's also the Buddha who has the ideal qualities of compassion and magnanimity, And then the Buddha sees everyone as his descendant and everyone as his ancestor. Exactly seven minutes. That was good luck. I think that's enough to say about the Buddha.

[78:30]

It's been a special pleasure to be here in Munchen with you all, with the Munchkins. You know what Munchkins are? They're like little elves or little people, you know. They're like little elves or little people. But you're pretty big, actually. Anyway, it's very nice to be here with you. And by special fiat, we let one or two from Berlin in. By special fiat, we let a few. I mean, Munich doesn't usually let people from Berlin in. Yeah. How about coming back next year? None of you would say, don't come back, would you? If you want me to, I'll come back. I'm at your service.

[79:33]

At least as long as you're at my service, too. If I can practice with you, I'll come back. That's a lot. I forgot, we let somebody from Vienna... Linz, yeah. Image of a... old-fashioned phonograph and a dog. Yeah, that's what I feel like here. Here's this big phonograph and I'm the dog. And then he goes, and the music comes out. Do with the remaining time we have. Yeah, I have some questions, comments from you if possible.

[80:38]

And now's the chance for those of you who haven't said anything yet to maybe say something. And also, I'd like to share with you a little bit of what a seminar means to me. Yeah, and also hear from you any ideas, any feeling you have about how you'd like to see the seminar, what form you'd like it to take, etc. might influence what we do next year. Okay. Someone have something they'd like to bring up?

[82:07]

Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Maybe somebody else can translate for me. Catherine can translate for you. She doesn't take her for that. In another context you once said that we need the form to experience emptiness. And my question is whether this system My question is whether to approach this field of mind, this field of emptiness?

[83:15]

Whether this is an active stepping away from... Or a detachment. Yeah, okay. Yeah. In terms of quantity, yes. But in the sense of form of any kind, form If I say the formula, form and emptiness are inseparable or not different from each other.

[84:26]

There's a passage in in whole page, page 202 in Enlightenment Unfolds, Tanahashi's translation of Dogen. Anyway, I think it's page 202. where it says, how do you grasp space? A teacher named, I think, Shigong, not Shigong, but Shigong asked, how do you grasp space? Shigong asked, how do you grasp space?

[85:28]

And Dogen says, he's commenting here on the Koan 54 of the Shoyuroku, of how many hands and arms does the Buddha have? Or why does the Buddha, Avalokiteshvara, have so many hands and arms? It's 54, yeah. in the Cliff Record. Show your book. That's the Book of Serenity. That's the Book of Serenity. Okay. Er hat ein Kommentar zu der Frage, how many of us Why does the Bodhisattva have so many hands and arms, hands and eyes? Yeah, Yun Yang asked this question.

[86:53]

And Da Wu says, it's like looking for your pillow at night. So this is actually an image of the world. Yeah, the world as really a field of connectedness. And how do you act in that? It's like reaching for your pillow at night. So there's various answers to this question people have given. How do you grasp space? One guy says, I grab you by the nostrils and pull. Yeah. Someone else said... something like, my finger grasps my finger.

[88:07]

Or if I, how do I grasp space? I pick up this glass. Yeah. Or I could say, how do you grasp space? I could say, maybe, take nothing away. Nothing to be taken away. So such expressions attempt to, such expressions attempt to express the identity of form and emptiness. But if, as I said in the seminar, if you move in the direction of emptiness, there's lots of ways to understand emptiness.

[89:17]

And we could do a seminar on the many gates of emptiness. Actually, I've touched on some of them during this seminar. But one way to understand things is in a world of relationships. Directionality functions like an end point. Does that make sense? In other words, if you have a lot of suitcases, if you're putting the suitcases down, that putting the suitcase down functions like no suitcases.

[90:22]

If you're picking suitcases up, that functions like lots of suitcases. In other words, if you do something in the direction of form ceasing, if you practice the four marks, although the practice of the four marks is things arising, lasting, dissolving, etc., the direction in form is toward emptiness and that directionality functions in you like emptiness it has to be that way or you have entities You have end points.

[91:30]

This is real and that's real, and that's not the case. It's always the relationship which is real. Yeah. I mean, emptiness is the most difficult topic in Buddhism and philosophy. But if you see emptiness as a practice and you see the alternatives to any idea, if you see the alternatives to having an idea of emptiness, and you see there really aren't alternatives, then understanding the practice of emptiness is not difficult.

[92:32]

I'm not suggesting that for next year's topic. Today's topic, this week's topic was difficult enough. Okay. Yes? Hermann? It might watch his mind. What you said about the background, we called it background mind. What is it that watches mind watching mind? Deutsch, bitte. Was ist das, was beobachtet in mind, mind? Yeah. Well, if you perform an infinite regression like that, you end up with a god or some big watcher.

[93:36]

Yeah. But in fact, Because mind, this is my own opinion, because mind, more than an opinion, because mind has the capacity to have structure, that structure then allows mind to observe mind. So a mind can observe itself because it has the structure of, you know, this hand can touch this hand. This is really one hand. It's just attached, you know, like here, right?

[94:36]

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