Another question about practice. You say that in Sufism a lot of work is done with pictures and ideas. In Zen, this is rather less, but you try to feel and build up this reality. Does this mean that when I work with pictures or visualizations, that I am then in concepts? In other words, basically your question is, do images encapsulate you the same way concepts do? No. Images are different from mental concepts. You can call them in language, you can call them all concepts if you want.

[01:04]

But in the sense that images and dreams have a different power than an image held in conceptual mind. Ideally, in Zen practice, we do work with images and concepts. But images and concepts which tend to be able to, no, just that tend to dissolve into formlessness. For example, although you don't probably wouldn't have noticed unless you know a bit about Buddhism. I've been speaking implicitly about the three bodies of Buddha. And Dung Shan was asked a question Among the three bodies of Buddha, which means a bliss body, a spatial body, and a body that is manifest through those.

[02:39]

I can't present everything to you today, but this is something you probably already know and have a taste of. So these are three categories. Three nets in which we can catch the ocean of the sea as a fish. Or three nets which we catch the ocean of the mind and it appears as a fish. I call this Schrodinger's fish instead of Schrodinger's cat. In any case, if I don't get so far out now. Tungshan was asked, among the three bodies of Buddha, Which one does not fall into any category?

[03:55]

He said, I'm always close to this. This is an answer which doesn't fall into any category. It doesn't further conceptualize the situation. So you see, it's an answer which is a concept or an experience, but it easily flows into formlessness. Among the three bodies of Buddha, which one does not fall into any category? Oh, I'm always close to this. So, So we use images in that way for sure, and concepts, but usually ones that have this flow between form and emptiness.

[05:10]

Now emptiness, I want to say in Yogacara and in Zen, is not a philosophical concept, although it does have that dimension. It's much more an experiential reality. It is much more an experience reality. And when you taste the stillness of the mind, you are tasting emptiness. And when sometimes in meditation you lose the sense of where your hands are or the boundaries of your body, you are tasting emptiness. So maybe that's enough questions unless someone has a pressing one.

[06:14]

Okay. How do I stay awake without entering trance? Nothing wrong with trance. I mean, this is a trance. So maybe we should say, how do I free myself from the usual trance of everyday life? Practice zazen. Okay.

[07:15]

So, what can we do before 12 o'clock? You know there's no such thing as 12 o'clock. Have you ever tried to measure it? It approaches 12 o'clock. It's half a minute to twelve. It's half a second to twelve. Before you know it, it's half a second after twelve. This is true. You cannot measure twelve. You can say it's approached and passed, but you can't measure it. When you decide, when something happens in you and you say, this is the person I love, My life is in this person's hands.

[08:27]

You cannot measure the length of that moment. And yet it affects the whole of your life. When you take the precepts, the basic precepts in Zen are what we call the precepts of basic humanity. Basically vow to be a human being. Or to be the kind of person you wish everyone else was at least. So you vow, for example, not to kill. Now if you stop and think about it and say, I can't take a vow not to kill. I sometimes have a Big Mac. Or... Even if I'm a vegetarian, the farmer's plowing kills insects.

[09:47]

In any case, sometimes I treat other people in a way that kills their state of mind. So I can't take this precept because I can't follow it. With that kind of thinking you can't get married, you can't take the precepts, you can't... You say, like a child, will you not kill? And you say, yes. And it stays as a view at the depth of your mind. Precept means what's held before.

[10:49]

Sept is hold and pre is before holding. So a precept is something that's present before the mind arises. So this will begin to inform everything you do. So if someone asks you, do you vow not to kill? And you simply say yes from the bottom of your soul and heart. It will begin to make everything you do in each successive moment different. you still may eat a carrot which killed a gopher.

[12:01]

But there'll be a greater awareness of your responsibility in the world. Now, when you say yes, you are acting in timelessness. When 12 o'clock can't be measured, it will be sort of 12 o'clock or we'll never have lunch. So from a comparative point of view, yes, we will stop this and have lunch. But the immeasurability of each moment of time is timelessness. These moments that you can't measure that change or convert your life. are a kind of... We have to call it something.

[13:27]

Let's call it timelessness. And there is a body of timelessness. As there's a body of time. And you're ecstatic or or insights occur usually in the body of timelessness. And the more you know the body of timelessness, the more these experiences And your answer yes to the precepts stays in your life.

[14:30]

Just as 12 o'clock can't be measured, so because it's approached and passed, we will break for lunch. And in the sense that it can be approached and passed, yes, it's measured, compared. And it's time. But when you look at it from another point of view, feel it from another point of view, it's timelessness. It can't be measured. There's no such thing as 12 o'clock. It has no dimension. So we live all the time in both timelessness and time. Or we live all the timelessness, both in time and timelessness.

[15:35]

So we live in a dimensioned world and a dimensionless world simultaneously. And perhaps you Conceptually understand this. But you can also feel and know this. This is called living in form and emptiness. Or we call it thusness. That was quite a lot. Now the problem, rather than go into the three causes of the timeless body of Buddha nature,

[17:00]

And to show you what these three causes are and how you can practice them and how you already are practicing them but probably don't notice it. And if you change the causal aspects of each moment, you begin to create a different body. So I think I have another meeting with everyone once more, is that right? So maybe I will come to that in that meeting.

[18:04]

Or maybe I'll do it before 12. Because after all, there's a lot of timelessness between now and 12. We might be able to cram quite a bit in there. It's so pleasant to sit here with Eureka translating because I always feel she's making it better. And although I try to be feminine, she does it much better than I do. It's almost effortless for her. Okay.

[19:12]

This question of mind and heart and soul and so forth. Yoga culture has not developed such concepts. Yoga culture has not developed such concepts. But of course, the humanness of these things, the naturalness of this is present. But different is different. In other words, if from childhood you divide the world up into some categories, and another culture into another categories,

[20:21]

For example, noticing the specificity of things or noticing the relationships of things. It's going to influence everything. For instance, when we write our letters, our letters depend on the connectedness of the lines. When you write Japanese or Chinese, it depends on the space in which the lines are formed. So two things are connected. If they're in the same space, they don't have to be touching each other. But if we took an R, for instance, And we put a line here and a circle over here and another line down here, we wouldn't see it as R. But a yoga culture would immediately see it as R because they'd see the space as connecting those things, not the lines.

[21:49]

So what I'm saying is that I'm not trying to say that everything's the same. And I don't think all religions are the same truth or lead to the same place. I usually say there are different paths leading into the same mystery. but ending up at different places in the mystery. So the categories in yoga culture are that mind and heart are one thing.

[23:05]

The word shin in Japanese can be translated either as mind or heart. And it doesn't mean the heart as a thing. The heart as a thing has a different word. Nor does it mean the mind as a thing. It means the activation of this relationship between heart and mind. And that means this relationship which allows the flow of emotions and feeling into it. But since you practice realizing this connectedness of what we would call heart and mind through the mind in a larger sense we generally speak about mind.

[24:12]

But in this way of speaking about our existence, mind and heart are interchangeable. And body and mind are interchangeable. We often say body... We can say... a bliss body or a bliss mind, and it means basically the same thing. Because the word body means that which makes the materiality alive. A corpse in this way of thinking is not a body, it's stuff. What makes a corpse alive that we call a body. So when I'm emphasizing the experience of non-graspable experience of the fragrance of our shared mind, I would generally use the word mud.

[25:48]

But when I'm emphasizing its own organizing qualities, And its persistence as wholeness, I would generally call it a body. And I would feel it through my body. So, I think I'm always talking about heart. Maybe I should just use the word more. I certainly Feel a flow of caring and connectedness with you all.

[26:59]

Which I could say is that you're opening my heart. Someone had their hand up in the back. Yeah. Can you say what she said? Why speaking about the heart when you are speaking through the heart? Thanks. I don't know what I'm doing, actually. I'm having a very good time being here with you. It's this wonderful Sufi atmosphere.

[28:00]

I think all Zen should be in a setting of Sufism. Zen gets so rigid and badly taught. Yeah, I just wonder if Atum would And I could teach together all the time. I'm sure it would make Johanneshof and Crestone much better places to practice. Ulrike is doing her best to substitute for Atum. Okay. Something else? I'd like to ask something about mind.

[29:10]

In addition, could you say that there are no values, no evaluations in mind? No value judgments? No right or wrong? Yes, because that mind is already established through freedom from wrongs. You can understand wrongs as limitations, exclusivities and so forth. Negativities, obstructions, deluded perceptions at the base of consciousness. As long as you have such obstructions, There's no mind free of right and wrong.

[30:16]

Okay. Then it's the German word Geist, maybe? Spirit? Spirit is really something else. There's no... Let me say again, there's no word in English or German for what I'm talking about. If you try to encapsulate it in concepts, known identities from your own language, you cannot practice Zen. You can practice as a therapy and it will make you feel better. But you have, as I said in the beginning, it's not the truth that makes you free.

[31:21]

It's the power to come to the truth yourself that makes you free. So you have to discover what these words all mean again from yourself, from within yourself. And all of Buddhism rests on the belief, the trust, that each human being can discover for themselves what's wholesome and what's unwholesome. And not only that what is wholesome at the present moment, or unwholesome, unwholesome means it tries to close you down or to hurt somebody or something.

[32:49]

that not only can you know in the present moment what feelings, thoughts, states of mind, etc. are wholesome, and which are unwholesome, but you can also know what conditions lead to wholesome states of mind and what conditions lead to unwholesome states of mind. And do you understand that the importance of this is it frees you from culture? Because it's not your culture or some teaching that tells you what's right or wrong. You yourself make the decision what's wholesome and unwholesome. So it's a profound trust in each human being to determine for themselves.

[33:56]

And also it means you participate in your culture and so forth. But when your culture begins to affect you in some areas in an unwholesome way, you know that. So Buddhism is based on a profound trust in each person deciding for themselves. And beginning this, and so then you need a technique or means to determine what's wholesome and unwholesome. And that's primarily the practice of meditation and mindfulness. To begin to know an inclusive rather than excluding state of mind.

[35:16]

And then from that finding out for yourself what the usual categories mean. For example, the example I usually use in English is the thorough confusion between feeling and emotions. The way we say anger is a feeling. Or we feel anger. It's true, but feeling is actually quite different than emotions. Emotions are actually concepts. They have a beginning and end.

[36:18]

And feelings don't. There's a feeling in this room that's non-graspable. If I try to apply a concept to it or identify it, it disappears. So feeling is essentially non-graspable and is present with all mental and physical activity. So it's good to be able to discover for yourself feeling separate from emotions, and then feel the word blue, which is not an emotion. So we have to discover, you have to re-parent yourself.

[37:40]

You have to discover for yourself what these words like mind mean. And all you have to do, I think at least, is to re-mind yourself that there's the words you usually use often have very little overlap with what they really mean in practice. But you discover that through your own experience. And trusting your own experience. Now let's trust the sound of the bell. Where is the sound of the bell? Is it in my hand that's going to hit the stick? Is it in this metal?

[38:41]

Is it in my feeling right now? Will it be in your hearing? Where does it exist? And in your hearing, is it graspable? Sorry for all these silly questions. It requires a lot of participation. One reason Ulrike said she didn't know when she touched that person is because he was also participating in it.

[39:47]

Is it the sound of the stream? Is it at least also the sound of your own hearing? You're hearing your own hearing. You're hearing your own mind manifest as hearing. So there's no estrangement. We're always hearing and seeing our own mind. Our own heart mind. And how lovely it is indeed.

[41:28]

Thank you very much for translating. And thank all of you. And I hope you have a nice lunch. And 12 o'clock is passing by unnoticed. And someone else describes this incredible capacity of something large to move. And they begin to argue about their different interpretations of what's in that room. And in the midst of the argument someone comes in and turns a light on. And lo and behold, there's an elephant.

[42:56]

And each one of them has been describing an aspect of the elephant. But only seen through their relationship to that particular piece in the darkness. So I feel what Richard brings from Zen is that capacity to turn the light on and then to see clearly what's there. Now, Richard also in a rather... It's okay, Richard. Your seats are here. No, it's fine Richard, come. Great.

[43:58]

Please come. A couple of times Richard has made reference with slight embarrassment about the practicality of Zen or the language of analysis. A couple of times. Richard has mentioned with slight embarrassment the practicality of Zen and the language of analysis. So I also have my place of embarrassment. I think compared to Zen, Sufism can sound incredibly romantic.

[45:03]

Embarrassingly romantic. And so I'd just like to honor that shadow piece. And also, Sufism holds in deep regard a state called bewilderment. It is a state actually on the path and a state even sought. So it's to hold bewilderment as something to be sought as opposed to clarity just offers a different note. I'd like to begin to introduce Sufism particularly to those who are new by just saying some of the words that are key elements to the path.

[46:07]

Because the language itself conveys something of the path. And all of the great traditions have many multiple facets to them. But today I'm going to accent what I feel is the very central stream of Sufism, which is called the path of the heart or the path of love. And particularly to work with the poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, who I think has come to exemplify that aspect of Sufism more than anyone else. Now, if I just say a group of words that don't have a response in you, then they're just concepts, as Richard said earlier today. Wenn ich einige Wörter sage und die haben keinen Widerhalt in dir, dann sind es einfach Konzepte.

[47:25]

To enter into the landscape of Sufism, you have to allow the reality that the words represent to touch you. Um in die Landschaft des Sufismus eintreten zu können, musst du dir erlauben, diese Realität dich berühren zu lassen. And to sense what is your response from the depth. Heart. Longing. Sehnsucht. yearning nostalgia

[48:28]

Remembrance. The beloved. The beloved. In the presence of the Beloved. The face of the Beloved. The secrets of lovers.

[50:09]

The veils that both conceal the Beloved and reveal the countenance of the Beloved. Burning. Brennen. consumed. Absorbed. Nearness to the beloved. Nearness, closeness.

[51:36]

To be called by the beloved. to call out to the beloved. The intimacy of lovers, The death of the lover in the beloved. To become the beloved. and to return with what we began with, the heart.

[53:23]

Now, if you like, just sigh and relax for a moment. This is the landscape or the language that's used to describe the landscape of Sufism. And Sufism has seen the very basic essential human experience of love as the spiritual path. With many different layers and dimensions to that path or that journey.

[54:27]

So I would offer a kind of core teaching at the moment, which is something that is called Fana. Fana. And Fana means to dissolve or to die or to be absorbed or to disappear. And Fana is, has, it's one half. It's like the crucifixion and the other side of that is the resurrection and that's called baka. So there is a process in the spiritual path in Sufism where one dies and out of that death re-emerges with the new identity, is born again. And in the traditional path there are stages of that.

[55:36]

The first is called . And that's a stage in which in a sense one dies in one's previous identity in order to become the experience of one's deeper self that one finds mirrored in the teacher. So it's not become who the teacher is as a person, it's to become the experience of the self, yourself, that the teacher mirrors for you. But in order for that to occur, one has to die to the previous identity.

[56:40]

Does that make sense, generally speaking? And each of these has a, we could spend a whole session on each of these, but I'm trying to give a general outline. And the next is called Fana Fi Rasul. And there one discovers an even larger dimension of one's deepest self, of the beloved, in a figure like Buddha, a figure like Christ. A spiritual archetypal figure in which one discovers a kind of root archetypal identity of one's own being. And a little later in the week when we look at the work of another great Sufi teacher, Ibn Arbi, it has in part to do with discovering the divine name, which is the core of your spiritual identity.

[58:16]

So once again, you die to the image you have held of yourself as you gradually become or incorporate or realize what you find of yourself, your archetypal self in the figure of, for example, the Buddha or the Christ. Now, I want to make this part really clear. It depends upon the level of the teaching in which you're talking about. On one hand, it appears as if they are other, and the deeper aspect, it is self-discovery.

[59:24]

Now the third stage in this process is called Fana Fi Allah, which is the same process only in God. And the teaching is that each stage represents a fuller encompassing. And in this stage one dies in the sense of one's self-identity, one's sense of self, in order to become what one imagines the beloved to be. Now, later on in the course of the week, I'll speak about how the term imagination is used in Sufism.

[60:42]

It is very different than fantasy. In this sense, imagination is deeply real. Imagination is very real. So that one becomes one's God, one becomes an expression of one's God's ideal. And in that sense one becomes one's beloved. And then there is a fourth stage in the process. Which is, it's at that stage that the Sufis speak about self-realization. And it's why the Sufis say that God-realization leads to self-realization, that you don't do it the other way around.

[61:47]

Because the self that's being sought is not the personal self. So at the fourth stage, it means that God is realized through you. The emphasis is no longer on you realizing God. God is realized in you. And what is meant by that is that the beloved becomes a reality that is you, expressed in you, lives in you. Now, each of these stages in this four stage process, each of them has a series of steps in them.

[63:03]

It first starts with an I-Thou relationship, with the relationship of two. So for example, the teacher is perceived as being someone other than myself. The Rasul figure is someone other than myself. And God is other than. But I am in relationship with the other. And I am affected by the other because of that relationship. And then as the relationship deepens, I discover that the other is not out there only. That in fact the teacher is really inside me and so is the Rasul figure and so is the beloved.

[64:08]

So the next stage is to discover that I have an inner relationship independent of the outerness of those figures. So the teacher is always with me. And In fact, sometimes the outer form of the teacher is a shock because at a certain stage the teacher is such an inner reality, it's a shock to see them outside. But it's still a relationship, it's an inner relationship, an inner dialogue. The next stage has to do with discovering that the teacher or the rasul or the beloved can speak through one, can express through one, can live through one.

[65:34]

And in that sense, one becomes an instrument, like in the prayer of St. Francis. So there are moments where the A Christian may experience, for example, something of Christ speaking through them or embracing another. But then the deepest phase has to do with the union with that reality, the total internalization of it. The becoming it. So maybe it would help if I gave the story of Rumi and his teacher Shams Tabriz to illustrate some of this.

[66:36]

Before Rumi became a poet, he was a theologian and a very respected figure in his community. His father was a very respected teacher. So you'll find sometimes in Rumi's poems a kind of put-down of respectability, a put-down of social position. And put down in a certain way of the intellect. What's not meant is the true intellect, but the kind of role of intellectual. And we have this sense before his meeting with his teacher Shams that he has a lot of knowledge or perhaps concepts about God, but not necessarily the kind of in-depth experience that emerges and shapes him in his later life.

[68:00]

So he knows a lot, but doesn't necessarily have the experience to go with it. Now Shams Tabriz is a very interesting figure. He is the archetype in Sufism of a dervish. Which is a kind of wanderer. It's also referred to as someone who is God-intoxicated. Derwische werden auch in Bezug gebracht mit jemandem, der vergiftet ist oder betrunken ist durch die Gegenwart von Gott. Shams Tabriz hat einen Lehrer gehabt und viel studiert. Aber er hat eine große Sehnsucht, die in ihm brennt. And he feels that he has never been seen, even by his teacher.

[69:13]

There is some deeper reality in him that has never been seen. And his living prayer, his continual prayer, is that God leads him to one of, what in Sufism is called, one of the friends of God where he can experience being seen. And I believe we all share something of that longing to be seen in the sense of to be truly known. And the gift of having someone see us, whether it's a teacher or a friend or a beloved, is that we get to sense ourself in a way that we can more fully claim it. So we want to be seen so we can feel who we are and become who we are.

[70:18]

So he is in a desperate search to be seen. So er ist in einer verzweifelten Suche, gesehen zu werden. Und der Weg dieser zwei Männer trifft sich. Rumi gibt eine sehr interessante Antwort. All that I conceived or thought of as God in the heavens, I encountered in a human being today. So he moved from the level of conception to the level of experience.

[71:21]

There's a very beautiful line by Rumi which says something like What I thought was the world of reality dissolved in your laughter. In your laughter. So that's a profound change in Rumi through that relationship. And I'm offering this because when we look at Ibn Arabi, also the great core of his teaching comes out of a similar encounter and a similar relationship with a woman. And relationship is essential to Sufism. And the relationship is essential for Sufism.

[72:36]

And what happens for Shams Tabriz is that he is seen. And then you have in their relationship, they live out and offer for us a modeling of the archetypal inner experience in the Sufi path. So as David was sharing with us yesterday that the stories in the Bible are really all our stories, I'm offering the story of Shams and Rumi because it's all our story. And if it's just about two guys from the 12th century, so what? But it's our story. Now here you have in their relationship, they go through a period of time in which they are drawn incredibly together and they spend periods of time in seclusion together and then they are separated.

[73:53]

Sie haben eine Zeit, in der sie sehr sich angezogen fühlen voneinander und sie verbringen auch Zeit zusammen, abgesondert von den anderen. Und dann gibt es Zeiten, wo sie sich trennen. Das ist eines der meistwiederholten Themen im Sufismus, die Vereinigung mit dem Geliebten und die Trennung vom Geliebten. So what they model in the relationship between the teacher and student is a reminder for us of the inner experience of the beloved, the ways that we unite with the beloved and the states that unite us and when we are separate from the beloved. So what they show us as a model is the time in which they are together, the union with the beloved and the phase of separation from the beloved. Now, eventually, Rumi's students, some of them, become quite jealous of Shams Tabriz. And one theory is that it was his disciples that killed Shams Tabriz.

[74:58]

part was jealousy, they think, and another part was it didn't match their image of what they wanted Jalaluddin Rumi to be, to see him hanging around with a character like Shams Tabriz. Now, I would offer that The death of Shams Tabriz is an inevitability in this story if it's to be an essential teaching that relates to all of us. That the death of Shams Tabriz is inevitable. It has to happen. In order for it to fully convey So Shams Tabriz has experienced union with the beloved through the relationship with the friend Shams Tabriz.

[76:22]

He knows what it's like. But imagine the pain of separation to be taken out of that state. And when Shams Tabriz is killed, where they believe he was killed, for a long time they don't tell Rumi. They're afraid what will happen to him. So Rumi goes searching for him. Just like when we've been touched by the experience of the divine, we have felt it deeply and it has passed, it kindles our searching for it. And eventually he finds out that indeed Shams Tabriz has been killed.

[77:23]

And out of his search for Shams Debris, he begins to whirl, he begins to turn. That becomes one of his central practices. Because he's looking for Shams through the universe. Now the word Shams means sun. And this is the key point in the story. It's in his turning that he finds the sun within. That Shams is no longer exterior to him. Whether he is dead or alive in a certain way is irrelevant. Because what has been encountered, what has been met in Shams Tabriz, Jalaluddin Rumi has found in himself.

[78:40]

So the story is a powerful articulation of the lover encountering the beloved. Being in relationship with the beloved and experience union and separation, union and separation. And then ultimately finding that the beloved is within. And that's why in Sufism it says ultimately where the path leads is that the lover is a dead thing. Und schlussendlich, wohin Sufismus führt, ist, dass der Geliebte ein totes Ding ist. Dass der Liebende aufgesogen wird in den Geliebten. Und in diesem Prozess muss der Liebende sterben.

[79:40]

Der Geliebte. Which is why Rumi says, become the beauty that you love. It's not, it's wonderful, it's incredible to be able to see the beauty that you love, to receive the beauty that you love. It's a whole other thing to become the beauty that you love. And one other key word I didn't say in the beginning is the word beauty. Because for the Sufis, just as a man named Joseph Campbell said, follow your bliss, the Sufis would say, follow your beauty. Wherever the beauty is that comes in and grabs your heart, follow it.

[80:55]

That's where the beloved is. And in following it, you will be changed into it. This is the ultimate promise. Okay. What I'd like to do is to ask if there are any questions on that piece that I've given so far. And then when we come back, I'd like to amplify it further. And then this evening when we meet, I'd like to take what I'm attempting to create as a teaching and then move it into the practice of Sama so that we do it experientially through the practices.

[82:03]

But I'm trying to build a framework of atmosphere and of teaching for us then to go into the practice. So just close your eyes for a moment Close your eyes for a moment.

[82:27]

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