I thought the best way to try to finish our seven days together was perhaps not to start a new discussion with new questions, but to continue from where we left off yesterday and continue from the Tay show this morning. But, you know, I would appreciate any comments, questions, statements you want to make in relationship to the koan this far or my tesha this morning, etc. I'd like to report from our group from yesterday. Because in our group it was about what does it mean to speak.

[01:28]

How does it work, speaking in context with this koan and speaking within our practice? And what does understanding mean? And how is the relationship between that understanding and understanding ordinary stuff like understanding a bus schedule? And what's that to do with Prajnathara's recommendation of a breath practice? and as breath as a posture, and then as an axis to understanding.

[02:47]

In our group there is at least a discussion about this. In our group we at least had a discussion about that. What is speaking about terms and then understanding terms? And then the joy about understanding a term. And then the joy about understanding a term. My feeling towards this is that my conscious understanding doesn't work there.

[04:11]

And it's always happy or relieved if it can understand sometimes something. But there is a different kind of understanding. And in my own feeling, it's about that and about breathing in the koan. Now I want to say something how I want to practice with this. So in the core it's all about closeness, proximity. And this closeness gets to be possible through a posture. which is breath or which is enabled through breath.

[05:24]

Does someone else want to say something? Thank you. Yes? I don't exactly remember the examples, but I'd also like to say what happened in the group. And there were two main points that I noticed. Dealing with the inner judge. So if you lost track of breath or you have a reaction which you don't like to have had or you drift off into thoughts.

[06:40]

I said you deal with yourself in a kind manner and pick yourself up that place in a Nice way. Many of us use phrases in everyday life. Take it easy. Stay calm. Already connected. Is he soft-wired? More or less, everything is okay. Okay, thanks. Yes, Peter?

[07:47]

I would like to go back to what Frank mentioned, because he very generally presented how we talk or interact in those small groups. We uttered in the group that we'd like to speak about the background mind. And of course I can't repeat the whole conversation, but to bring it to the point, for example, if I report that I consciously work with the sentence Just now is enough.

[08:58]

So I can't recall everything, just want to summarize it, but if I recount that I'm practicing the sentence, now is enough. Just now is enough. Und ich mache die Erfahrung, dass die Aussage dieses Satzes sozusagen So if I may get the recognition that this phrase is like a kind of foil in my life that gives it direction. that it just appears. Especially then when my old consciousness signals the opposite to it. In our group it was an exchange of how do we share our experience or exchange our experiences.

[10:24]

And to my experience or thinking, you can only talk about these things if you already have some experience of it. Or is it about in this group to speak about the inner experience of the very moment while I speak to speak about that. That's at least how I understood one aspect of that.

[11:49]

Yeah, I think that, let me just make one comment there. What some of us try to do, maybe most of us, is we try to speak through an experience of understanding. In other words, we don't want to speak until we have a feeling we understand and then from that feeling of understanding we speak. And that's natural and we have to do that sometimes. But that's playing it safe. And this koan is a lot about the heroic, this and that, the heroic sensibility. And that's more like what you seem to be trying to express.

[13:19]

Can at this moment you say what it is without it being understanding, but just what it is? If understanding emerges, or some coherence emerges, it emerges through the saying of it and through the hearing and participation with it. And sometimes, the other day, a couple of days ago, we had a great discussion, partly because we were speaking ahead of our understanding. And understanding was running behind trying to keep up. Yeah.

[14:20]

Okay. Someone else? Yes, Fritz? What you got this morning, the AAA mode. The AAA mode. Mm-hmm. Deutsche Spanien. Yeah, the 3A mode. Frank und Peter sprechen sehr willkommen zu sein. Ich habe die Erfahrung für mich gemacht, dass ich, wenn ich akzeptiere, absorbiere und gewahr bin, wenn diese drei Sachen zusammenkommen, wie wir an dem Punkt und wo aus As you just mentioned, as we were yesterday, from there I can speak, hear and especially read the writings.

[15:23]

So from this triple A moment is, I think, exactly what Frank and Peter were speaking about, but what you also said. So when I can accept, absorb and be aware, I can start speaking and hearing and understanding. A little story. At the end of my work, I swept up and put the room aside. And I swept in a manner as just described. And suddenly I saw a line, a sweeping lineage. And I saw the sweeping lineage.

[16:28]

I saw the care line. There's the handle that's in correspondence to the spine. There's a way how to sweep, the rhythm and the breath and the mind and everything is there. And I could go into it and say, wow, this is really the everyday experience in script quality. And the final blow was bringing the piano up. If we do it in that way, we can do it differently. We are in it. Okay. Thanks. Yes? We didn't send him. That was bright. Oh, sorry.

[17:29]

We were... in the unknown of what we will achieve and what we will not achieve, accepted, went in, and so to speak, absorbed, with our whole being, let in the situation, how does it look, where does it stand, where does it go, and with awareness, in one spirit, brought it up. It was a completely different quality of experience for me, and that is now. That was the description of carrying a piano. Yeah. Okay. I'd like to say something to my arrival yesterday here. You'd been away for three days? Yeah. Many facets of this koan suddenly were present in that room.

[18:36]

It was an overwhelming experience of immediacy. I felt my own body points, which you described, and I felt that I am able to share this with people in here without speaking. and it was so obvious to me because I also came from my group, which is my schoolhouse, you know, with many people on it. You spoke out exactly what I felt, and that probably helped everyone

[20:02]

So I really felt this coming together of Buddha and Dharma Sangha and you verbalized exactly what I felt in this room and I assume it really helped that you made it sort of conscious for everybody at the same time in the world. That's a little bit ahead of my understanding. That it was somehow a background situation in the foreground, where the individual people or the individual linguistic expressions appeared, So then this kind of background mind sort of came into the foreground so that the participants you referred to when you were speaking were floating around.

[21:20]

And they say this because it's so unbelievable that at home this coin was so difficult, inaccessible. I said, this one I will not be able to deal with. And I also say that because of that text that we just received, My experience is I can very quickly adjust to the group and when the group is in a different place. Okay, well, I think I appreciate you bringing up that in relation to it, but we're going to talk about that after this.

[22:38]

I understand. I think you mentioned this here, but we'll talk about it later. Okay. Yes. Assessances to find Peter's group out of my perspective. We had decided to speak about the background mind in our group. Then we had three or four longer statements about it, how one understands it. And these explanations or talks We explained this in the feeling that it is describing our experience.

[23:46]

Shall we close the door between the two things? No, we should ask Sophia not to play the piano. I'm going to light it up again. It needs dynamite. I'll blow out the piano. Were you through, Nico? No. After these statements were made, there was a criticism that these were just talks that were not based on experience. Means, within your own group, it was talks not based on experience. That's what some people said of those people. This created such an emotional problem that we actually, the rest of the time, tried to show each other that we're still friends.

[24:53]

Why this was so emotional? It led to such an emotional confrontation that the rest of the time was used Just from another angle to what Peter and Frank... Well, maybe we need some instruction in Dharma combat. Yeah. Combat, yeah. Okay. about talking about that what one understands and talking about things If one doesn't understand, I'd like to tell you a little story.

[26:03]

Is it on it? If you close the door to the staircase room, it might help. Yeah. When I started in Creston a few years ago, I was in charge of the service. And you've noticed that with the Patriarchs there are always different restrictions. When I first started learning how to do service in Creston, you might have noticed that during the patriarchs there are different types of bowels. What only the doshi does in the middle. And at the beginning I saw it as a sportive exercise and I threw myself down like wild. And then someone said to me, this is not a sportive exercise, you actually have to hit seven or eight patriarchs with your forehead on the ground. Something like that. So I saw this as a workout situation, so I did this like a workout, and then somebody told me, or a workout opportunity, and then somebody told me, but you have to, you know, meet at least eight or nine patriarchs with your forehead on the ground.

[27:17]

You were bowing for everyone? Well, I bowed a lot, yeah. Do you have your weights there? Somebody told me to, you lift them up, you don't just throw them behind you. Yeah, you lift the Buddha up, you don't throw him over. Somebody told me to, you lift them up, you don't just throw him over. Maybe I shouldn't even say that, but it fits here. I received this list where all the ones my head had to be on the ground were underlined. For me the problem was I had to learn the name of the one ahead of the one because I have to get down in time to reach it. I could never coordinate that.

[28:25]

And then I gave up. And since we're working in the winter branches with the koans, And since then I have the feeling that I am just connecting a physical act and a physical understanding with something that I don't necessarily understand in the koan. And it feels like I'm combining a physical doing with something I not yet understand in the Quran. And also a physical understanding, by doing that. Sometimes I still don't meet them, but more and more often I get them right.

[29:25]

And this is something where, as I see it, there is not necessarily an understanding of koans, or a lot of things that I don't understand yet, but it is a connection with a physical doing. And the connection is what brings me closer to understanding, bringing me closer to the physical, without being able to understand how we really want to understand. Yeah, and that's now sort of understanding this body and combining this understanding and showing the understanding with the body through a physical act, and it's just an understanding. And it doesn't necessarily mean I understood the koalas, but it's sort of a head of a mental understanding, and that helps me a lot. Good. Yes, Krista.

[30:35]

You know me by now that I always sing in praise of the work of koans and I really like working with koans. But there's one level which I think is extremely challenging. It's not about understanding. I just feel this power that's so direct that demands an answer. And there I feel like I'm kind of thrown back onto myself and I feel I failed.

[31:52]

It's difficult. And it's so difficult for me because it throws me back into my patterns, always questioning myself. And I think that might be another of those points, the challenge. Just one kid, one year, of course. That's ours?

[33:16]

For me it's just voices. Yeah, someone else? Yes. Oh, Christa wasn't finished yet. No, I just want to say something to what Christa said. All right. Yesterday I had a tough day. In the end, when it was over, it was good. And then I got up and all the self-parents came and self-pitying the whole drama. And I attacked myself again.

[34:27]

And then being angry about attacking yourself. And then I went walking and then it was very strong and walking with you guys. And then this Buddha, Dharma, Sangha just let yourself go feeling. And you really all managed very well because I'm standing again. Thank you very much. And you can really let yourself drop and nothing is actually happening. It just gets better at the end. Yeah. Let me say something about the shifts.

[35:27]

And then we say, for example, awareness, we have these categories, awareness and consciousness. And we may think one's better than the other. Or we may think that one has one territory of functioning and the other has another territory of functioning. But that's just counting them as two. Because there's at least four. Because there's awareness as relationship to consciousness and consciousness as relationship to awareness.

[36:38]

That's two more. And that shift is the dynamic that makes both significant. And if any of you have studied the five ranks of Dung Shan, the key to it is understanding the shift So the shift you have from feeling a power in the koan to falling back in your old patterns, this is exactly what is the dynamic of the koan. You know, there's certain pieces of music sometimes

[37:46]

Popular music, just a funk. Or Bach. Sometimes when you're... Sometimes when you're... unexpected or open a certain way. It's like some kind of power of a typhoon is moving through you and through the music. And a koan has this kind of meta dimension of the power of just alive people functioning in the midst of everything that's so horrible and wonderful about being alive. It's not exactly there in the words.

[39:07]

But it's there in the realization of the people who put these teachings together. And sometimes we come to our face pressed up against the power of human intelligence and realization. And it's wonderful that we can feel that now and then. So with a little rising mind, we come back for another encounter. Yes? You were going to say something?

[40:30]

Yes, it goes in the same direction, but it's a little more childish. That's all right. I think I was being... Anyway, yeah, go ahead. Childish, too. Frank mentioned proximity, closeness. And Atma said, spoke about understanding, understanding of something which not yet can be put into words. And I am in this state of being able to breathe in a different way than I have ever been before. And this week I got to be with my breath in a way very differently than I've ever been.

[41:35]

And I had this image with my breath, it's like a baby of which I don't know if it is born or not even yet born. I am together with my breath the same being. Brought me closer to breathing and to feeling. There were very many feelings and much less words than usual. And it also brought me closer to Roshi and to the group. Sometimes also with anger. in your simple statement, and that your experience brought you together with your breath as the same being, I feel a lifetime in that and practice in that.

[43:20]

And I think maybe all of us can feel the richness of that. But if you said that to somebody outside the context of practice, I, yeah, I'm practicing Buddhism because... I feel breath is part of my own being. Oh, really? I think I'll try a different religion. There's so many things like that that you just can't, that you can only understand in a certain kind of context. Es gibt so viele Dinge dabei, die man einfach nur in einem ganz besonderen Zusammenhang verstehen kann. Even simple statements like, this is it.

[44:28]

Eine einfache Aussage, das ist es. With what mind do you know that? Okay, someone else? Yes, Beatrice. So you mentioned in this phrase, there is a jewel in the mountain of form. And some years ago at practice was that. And when I read the Quran, this sentence came to me in a different form. When I read the Quran, this phrase came up to me in a different shape. The same shape. But today, practicing with absorption,

[45:32]

acceptance, acceptance and awareness. This whole phrase makes very different sense to me now. I think before this phrase was always something outside of me. It's something inside me. It has a completely different quality. Since four days, I've been trying to bring the Buddha tray to lunch with the gong. I can't do it.

[46:33]

Since four days, I try at the lunch service to coordinate the Buddha tray and the gong. And I just can't manage. Today, Today it actually went well, but then the incense wasn't lit. So usually the procedure would be the self-accusations with all the things I know. There was this feeling of acceptance and absorption. Buddha and the whole group somehow forgave me this thing. It helps just to pretend the incense is lit. It only helps to imagine what the incense is like.

[47:51]

I also presented the incense three times. I did it three times around the spread candle. The whole food was rich. And the whole meal, during the whole meal, I was so happy and I was free from this, oh, again you did something wrong. Oh dear. Yeah, I'm glad. Could you maybe close the door now, Frank? Well, since, contrary to expectations, we don't have all day, is there someone else who wants to say something else?

[48:52]

We have. I'd like to say how I experienced this week as a cooking process. In the beginning I thought the corn is attractive but to most parts completely un-understandable. So the image was you aren't cooking there, you're in the pot and all the bones are all over the place around you. It has this sort of kind of polar ocean feeling with the Ice brush all around you.

[50:01]

It was that cold. No, not that cold, but a little edgy. So that went out of the attention, sorry. At some point I noticed that some things or the things the Roshi said somehow made some sense. I'm ashamed. I had a feeling that the group and I got into a kind of resonance with the text. And the understanding is not a kind of conscious understanding like with, ah, now I got it.

[51:21]

Also the soup turned into a different soup. Soft, transparent, still with some more things floating in it, but altogether more fluid. And this shift sort of unnoticeably took place in those difficult spots. Yeah, thank you. Well, I'm actually a little surprised that the... that the corn belted and started to flow as well as it did. Okay. Maybe I should say something, a little something.

[52:46]

So let me tell you a little anecdote. When I was practicing most intensely, probably, I was working at the University of California. And at lunchtime, on a spring day or some sort of day, I went over to one of the science buildings and sat on the steps, an entrance that's not used very often, and sat on the steps and had my bag lunch. This is a kind of nothing story, but what's interesting is it stayed with me and stayed with me all my life till now.

[53:50]

This was quite a long time ago. This is like 62 or 63. It might be before some of you were born. Anyway. So I'm having lunch and there was a tree there. And at one point, one side of the tree had grown over to a wall and then turned a corner. And the other side, the tree had continued where it didn't come to a wall. I since know through a botanist friend who teaches at Carlsberg, who lives next to us in Freiburg,

[55:06]

He's doing research on this very point. How do plants know to grow up or down in relationship to other plants, walls and so forth? How do they make decisions? So it was clear to me that the plant had made some decisions when I asked myself this question. How does it make decisions? And it's not really explainable what I did, but I'll try to say something.

[56:17]

But I had this question very strongly as I was eating my lunch. And suddenly I felt a kind of intelligent field. I'm not saying plants have intelligence in some sort of New Age way, but I felt a kind of field of knowing in the plant. And it was clear that the plant did not have any central observing function. Yes, I can observe the fact that my one arm is here and one arm is here and so forth.

[57:28]

It didn't feel to me like the plant had any central nervous system. But the plant somehow was functioning in relationship to its environment and making decisions. No. It osmotically or mirror neuron or something like that in me a similar, at least felt similar, field of knowing. So maybe osmotically or as a neural mirror it has in me a similar feeling simulated or produced. which I don't say had anything to do with the plant.

[58:48]

It might have something to do with the plant. It's just that wasn't what... isn't what my interest is. I'm not a botanist. But what it did in trying to feel this field of intelligence of the... or knowing of the plant. It made me feel that in myself. Okay. No, this is an... I mean, I would say this is sort of nothing experience. I mean, I had similar questions and similar kind of prognostications when I was much younger.

[59:58]

Whenever there's a big word, the Germans have the same word. The basic words, mutter, futter, water, etc., and then prognostication. Um... it would not have had the same effect on me, and never did have the same effect on me, until I had the sensitivity of practice. And that kind of... This feeling is carried in a variety of ways in this koan.

[61:07]

For example, it says a subtle breeze blows in the dense pines. But heard from close by, the sound is even finer. And some of you, one of you said just a few minutes ago that it made you feel, Frank, close or close by or something like that. There's a There's a territory of knowing that's not quite the senses.

[62:18]

And sometimes I call it an undersense and sometimes I call it an ubersense. I'm an empty lingual, you know. And it's similar to, I don't know if this makes sense to you, but I'm just trying to say something ahead of my understanding. It's the way sometimes if you hold a baby or a cat or you touch another person, you can feel their metabolism flows right into you. Something like metabolism. You can hold a cat and you can take your consciousness away. And the cat can suddenly become this kind of electrically charged thing with stuff flowing through it.

[63:42]

I mean, unbelievably alive, like you're holding on to something that's unbelievably alive. It's a level of understanding we can't function. Could you bring your cat over here and let me kind of get it charged up here? The cat would get all excited and your host would say, let's get that guy out of here. Because the cat would feel it too. Because the cat would feel it too. And I find that if you have two points of contact with another person or an animal, the flow is much more powerful. You have to wait a minute, but then it starts to flow.

[64:43]

This is not conceptual understanding. And it's a head of understanding. And if you need understanding, the flow doesn't happen. Because such experiences have so much immediacy, they deny any categories of understanding. Okay, so this koan is proposing something very similar to the Yogacara concept of the three natures or three ways of perceiving the world.

[65:46]

Three natures or three ways of perceiving the world. Or a simultaneous mind. Now when it says here If you want both eyes to be perfectly clear... Now, both eyes to be perfectly clear is code for a simultaneous mind. Okay. Now... Okay.

[67:01]

The cat. We're in the cat. You understand. Okay. Where is that cat? Okay. In Buddhism we sometimes say, in Zen we sometimes say, the first principle and the second principle. And sometimes we say, you'll see in the koans a phrase like, he fell into the secondary. Okay. He fell in the secondary means that the fundamental mind of a realized person is emptiness or awareness, or let's say emptiness, awareness.

[68:14]

And when you lose that or change that, it's called being in the weeds or falling into the secondary. And that means you've fallen into comparative consciousness. So the first nature, or the first way of perceiving the world, as mentioned, is a comparative, discriminating, discursive, etc., consciousness. Now, the first koan in this book turns on the phrase, what is to be done about Manjushri's leaking? Which means Manjushri has fallen into the secondary.

[69:23]

And his third koan answers the question. And the third koan answers this question. What do you do about falling into secondary? Why? You establish a simultaneous mind. So, but they also, the teaching in this first koan is this entire book is leaking. If Manjushri didn't fall in the secondary or leak, there'd be no story.

[70:36]

He'd be just as silent as the Buddha. But because... He's willing to fall into the secondary. We have teaching. And everything we're doing here is leaking. But what this koan, all three koans, is can we know it's falling into the secondary? Can we know it's leaking? Okay, now let's just take a simple example of what has brought up today and yesterday about falling back into old habits and things like that.

[71:37]

Where do these old habits exist? They're in habituated patterns in our body, which are sometimes partly released. You can feel them when you have a massage or something. Yeah. And they're held in language and consciousness. Now, the common pattern in Western psychology is all of this stuff is, you know, stuck together in consciousness and etc. Yeah. You know, the wisdom tooth is when it won't grow out, right? So you have a lot of impacted wisdom, which you call suffering.

[73:00]

It's all kind of stuck together in consciousness and you can't get it apart. So when you go to a good psychotherapist, they get you to unstick it back in the past. Find out where the log jam first occurred. And that's sometimes very helpful. And instead of examining past lives in zazen, which is also a basic practice, you can just examine past logjams. Yes, but Zen says, and Zen and this psychotherapeutic approach work very well together, I think, often. Poor boy, poor girl, you have endless log jams from centuries of bad karma, you know, generations.

[74:28]

Just get out of the log jam and quit showing off. By standing on the spinning log, you know, trying not to fall in the water. Poor boy, poor girl. You have endless stares of past karma. Just get out of all these stares and stand on a tree of tears. Yeah, isn't it amazing how those guys can do that? Yeah, it's kind of amazing what we do with our suffering too in the mind continuum. But Zen says, just jump out of the log jam. If you can.

[75:31]

Because usually this is also not just mental, there's a lot of physical stuff in there too. But if you can sometimes get your attention out of it and away from the logjam into what? The field of mind. You just get the habit of interrupting the psycho-impacted logjam with a shift to the field of mind. All the logs fall out of the river. And the continuum becomes quite clear. For a moment. One of the logs turns lengthwise and knocks you right back in.

[76:42]

Or anxiety just gets a grip on you and pulls you right back in. Now, we don't want to be anxious. But you cannot solve psychological problems unless you realize you also want to be anxious. That I didn't understand. It's helpful when you want to solve psychological problems to also realize you want the problem. It serves your purposes somehow. Okay. So your anxiety gets hold of you and says, what the hell are you doing in the field of mind? Get your ass back into your problem. Excuse my language. So you're in the problem and you say, well, at least this is me.

[77:56]

And you feel much better. I didn't know who that was up there in the field. But if after a while you keep having this experience of going to the field of mind, it begins to also feel like you. And it becomes easier to actually shift out of the comparative consciousness, out of the log jam, And it will be much easier to come out of this comparative consciousness, out of this tree trunk stifling. And that something is in order. That you say, I feel okay when I don't feel like this, So you feel okay about just letting your problems be there?

[79:30]

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you don't feel okay when you think your problems are you. So you think that to really be me, you have to go back there and solve those problems? You don't need to think that. Well, you may need to think it. I said, if you really want to be you, you think you have to go back there and solve those problems. But if you know they're just like everything else, empty, everything that created the problems is gone. Okay, there's some things you do have to do.

[80:33]

I have to fill out my tax forms. You go back and you just kind of look at the logs and you find your tax form and you do it and then you go back into the field of mind. The logjam becomes more and more problems you have to solve but not solve in order to be really you. Now, I've vastly oversimplified human experience here. But it's another point of view. Okay, so we've now taken not the mantric continuum, but the awareness continuum, this experience of an awareness continuum.

[81:50]

Where there's nothing to do and no place to go. Where the sun and moon are hung in a shadowless tree. Shadowless tree, there's no time reference. That experience you know through Zazen begins to be more and more a part of your life. And pretty soon the log jam is, you know, there, it's maybe still there, but it's now in the middle of a big lake or an ocean. It's no longer in a narrow stream. And you begin to have a lot of perspective on the larger, more perspectives, multi perspectives.

[82:55]

And one is you can just start trusting the logjam will probably free itself. I can just leave it alone. So there's a combination of kind of leaving it alone and also saying, hey, that one log there is the one that's holding all of them together. And you kind of give it a nudge, and the water starts to flow. And this is throwing such images in here quite a bit. The flowing water doesn't go stale.

[84:13]

A door hinge is not worm-eaten. This means it is active. And a hinge nest is something like, it could be a log jam or it could be emptiness. So the vertical dimension of the images in here, not the horizontal in the story dimensions, begin to work in you psychologically and emotionally. Can begin to. So you start practicing zazen. Zazen, just the physical posture, etc., begins to give you a different way of experiencing your body and your mind. When you start out, zazen begins with consciousness.

[85:32]

But already with the bell and things, you're kind of dropping out of consciousness. And you drop into associative mind. The fourth skanda. Things appear and disappear and you're not trying to make sense of it, just things pop up. And then if you're still enough, you enter into perceptive mind and you hear things, you sense differently. And this already begins to reorganize how your personality and psychological habits are put together. It's funny, eventually everything looks still. It's strange. Now, I mean, I don't know what I mean.

[86:55]

It's no difference. It's like the baby breath that you're holding. Of course this bell is sitting there still. Yeah, I mean, it's twirling with the earth and all, but from my point of view, it's still. And I haven't rung it. But it's still in the context of being ready to move. Does that make sense? It's not a dead stillness. It's a ready-to-move stillness. It's the focus, actually, of thousands of years of experimenting with bells and how you make them and the tone, etc.

[88:10]

Some bells are even signed. I don't know which one you... Because there's a history of activity which has led to this bell. And a lot of activity comes out of this bell. If I hit it, you're all going to start crossing your legs and sit up, you know. So the bell is still in the midst of a profound network of potential activity or activity. So if I see the bell and I see its stillness, in everything I see, I see its stillness.

[89:18]

To see the rug stillness is not quite the same as seeing the rug as an entity. To see the right stillness is to see its emptiness. Did you say it's not? It's not to see its entity-ness, it's to see its emptiness. To see its stillness is not to see it as an entity. To feel its stillness is to feel its emptiness. So if I look at each of you and I see your stillness, I see your Buddha nature.

[90:46]

I see something from which you will always move, but also always return, even if you don't know you're returning to me. Shall I go on a little bit? Because maybe you're getting tired. The unfamiliar makes us tired. Das Ungewohnte macht einen müde. We need some air. We need some air. Open the door again. Well, we can stop and... Okay, so you've developed a habit or a new habitation of noticing the field of mind rather than the comparative consciousness.

[91:53]

Now the field of mind is to notice an experiential noticing of interdependence. Experiential knowing of. Noticing, knowing of, and of interdependence. Okay. Now, like any habit, the more you inhabit the habit, it becomes more and more familiar. And after a while, you actually don't have to live in the mind stream continuum of consciousness, of comparative discriminating consciousness. It's a tool, an important tool, but it's not your identity.

[92:56]

Your identity becomes more this kind of field of interconnectedness. Okay, now this is expressed in a number of ways in the Quran here. When will you find the spiritual light shining alone? A wood horse romps, as I said this morning, romps in spring, swift and unbridled. Durch den Frühling, schnell und ohne Halfter.

[94:09]

This is, as it says, such a wooden horse leaves no tracks. So ein hölzernes Pferd hinterlässt keine Spuren. Under the eyebrows a pair of cold blue eyes. Unter den Augenbrauen ein paar kalte Augen. This of course refers to Bodhidharma. Das natürlich bezieht sich auf Bodhidharma. Because he's the bearded blue-eyed foreigner in China. But it also means to see interdependence or emptiness. One who has only understood himself, his consciousness continuum, one who has only understood himself, Which means your continuum consciousness. And has not yet clarified the eye of objective reality. Is someone who has only one eye.

[95:10]

I don't see much perspective here. If you want both eyes to be perfectly clear, then you simultaneously see comparative consciousness and interdependent awareness. and the yogic adept develops this skill and you can make a shift between them also the teaching of the two truths okay If you want both eyes to be clear, you must not dwell in the realms of the body or mind. Yeah.

[96:28]

You know, many times the early Buddhism says, you know, free yourself from thoughts and you have bliss and everything's going to be fine. But the Bodhisattva doesn't hang out in this. The Bodhisattva has this simultaneous engagement with the world. The Bodhisattva has this simultaneous commitment in the world. He or she does not dwell in the realms of emotions, thoughts, etc. and does not get involved in myriad circumstances. Now, I think that's more or less, less or more enough.

[97:54]

Hanshan and... Hanshan and Shite. Hanshan and Shite. Shite or Shite. Shite. Hanshan has forgotten the way from which he came. And so Shite, the local boy, leads him home and says... Okay. So now we have three ways of perceiving the world. Emptiness or not knowing. Let's call it not knowing. And knowing through awareness is the second. And third is, let's call it understanding through consciousness.

[99:14]

So Hanshan is the one, is us. We're Hanshan when we look around and say, this is absolutely unique. I've never seen any of you before. You look familiar somehow, but it's absolutely new. Where are we? We are Hanshan. We see everything as That's an exciting mind. That's Hanschan. He doesn't know how he got here. He doesn't know how he got home. He says, geez, I hope Katrin will feed me. He says, I don't know where I'm coming from, and I'm here, and hopefully Katrin will feed me, give me something to eat. Yes, do I have a shisha? My gosh, I mean, will Frank take me home? If I have a shisha, will Frank take me home? So Frank is shite.

[100:18]

Hanshan is shite. Is shite, Hanshan and shite. And so Hanschan, Frank, I mean, Siddhe, Frank says, oh, don't worry, Roshi, you don't know where you are. I know, you know, I'll bring you upstairs. So that's knowing the situation. Well, let's call it knowing through awareness. And then there's the usual knowing of comparative understanding consciousness. Now this koan is asking us to come to this understanding of knowing and noticing Through the door of the two hails. But there's also a kind of door between emptiness and awareness.

[101:19]

And between awareness and consciousness. And the central Yogacara teaching is to become familiar with these three ways of perceiving the world. And this koan is trying to give us a taste of that. In the way it's presented and the way it doesn't seem to be stuck together. And when you start perceiving in fields, in gestalts, You can't know in the usual conscious sense of grasping through understanding.

[102:48]

You know through participating with the participants. And then each moment is changed. So you know non-conceptually. You know, but it's not a conceptual knowing. You know, but it's not a conceptual knowing. So it's a way of, as it says, the whole earth is the student, the adept's eye. It means that when the subject-object kind of distinction, etc., is dissolved, you know in I don't know what words you use, fields.

[103:57]

You know through awareness. Ahead of where understanding can go. It can kind of then return and transform understanding. But it's not the same as when you're ahead of understanding. So it's a shift which is continually transforming understanding while being ahead of understanding. In some emblematic way, it's somewhat similar to my suddenly feeling the field of the tree. Or at each moment, feeling the field of us, these winter branches about to bud. Because in a timeless time, the winter branches are also spring and autumn.

[105:14]

There is this moment only in the stillness of winter, Spring and autumn are the past and future of the tree. And the stillness of the winter branch is not a dead branch. The stillness of the winter branch has everything in it. This silence of the winter branch contains everything. Has the field of the whole tree in it. Has the field of the whole earth in it. So I feel the field of the whole earth in you.

[106:16]

Thank you. Thank you for helping me unfold or open up this koan. A phrase transmitted outside the scriptures.

[108:35]

On the lip of the mortar. Auf der Lippe des Mörsers blüht eine Blume. It's five o'clock.

[110:06]

It's five o'clock. Seventeen hundred. Seventeen o'clock. U.S. military time. Seventeen hundred. Five o'clock. We'd like to have a short, I hope, 15 or 20 minutes meeting, partly about the next step in how we do the winter branches. because maybe we should change it a lot next year. And the winter branches program isn't anything like I originally imagined. Because you've made it your own. Yeah, so I can't change it without asking you. So maybe should we have a 15-minute break or a half-hour break and then come back for a short meeting? Half-hour. Okay, so 5.30 we're back.

[111:08]

Thanks a lot for this seminar. Thank you very much for this seminar. I love this scroll. It's a kind of messy moo. Yeah, maybe. I didn't say that, but okay. It's moo and a log jam. Yeah, or you could say that the dharmasangha where you study the messy moo.

[112:30]

The garden fence that meets in your place. Yeah. It's a broken garden gate, yeah. Hey, look at you all. Thanks for translating a lot. She told me over and over again she couldn't do it, she'd lost her touch, etc. It wasn't so bad, was it?

[113:15]

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