You are currently logged-out. You can log-in or create an account to see more talks, save favorites, and more.

Zen Friendship: Embracing Empty Wholeness

(AI Title)
00:00
00:00
Audio loading...
Serial: 
RB-01258

AI Suggested Keywords:

Summary: 

Seminar_Zen-Practice_and_Dharma-Friendship

AI Summary: 

The talk delves into the intersection of Zen practice and the concept of friendship, exploring how true friendship transcends both intimacy and alienation. It further discusses the impact of Zen practice on relationships, emphasizing the development of a space of emptiness where feelings of completeness arise, unaffected by being alone or with others. Additionally, the discussion touches on the non-duality of form and emptiness and the importance of establishing such a space through practices like zazen and extended retreats (sashin). A koan on true friendship is used to illustrate these concepts, connecting the idea of individual enlightenment and the communal aspects of practice.

Referenced Works:
- Huayen Teachings: Presented as a basis for understanding interpenetrating worlds where each particular, such as a flower, embodies the whole. This philosophical framework underpins the discussion on how individual and collective enlightenment coalesce in practice.
- "Plum Blossom Koan": Used to exemplify the simultaneous existence of form and emptiness, suggesting that a fully blossomed tree represents enlightenment and the interconnectedness of all.
- Dharmakaya Practice: This concept is used to denote taking away dimensions, aligning with teachings that emphasize emptiness and the interpenetration of all phenomena.

Zen Practices:
- Zazen and Sashim: Highlighted as essential practices to develop a mental space where social connections and personal solitude can coexist harmoniously, allowing for a deeper experience of emptiness and completeness.
- Bodhisattva Practice: Mentioned as a means of achieving openness and compassion towards all individuals, reinforcing the ideal of universal Dharma friendship.

AI Suggested Title: Zen Friendship: Embracing Empty Wholeness

Is This AI Summary Helpful?
Your vote will be used to help train our summarizer!
Photos: 
Transcript: 

It would be secret if you would find an answer to it. In our group, especially in this group of four, astonishing, we had a very intensive and kind of good talk and no real graspable result in it. In those we spoke about many of those things For me the main thing was that friendship or types of friendship kind of overlap. Good friendship in everyday life and dharma friendship, whatever that is, that they're not separated things, they have gradations. Yeah, okay. Gradations. Gradations. Gradations. They have graduations, too.

[01:01]

Yes? Group number three, we also tried to find out the secret. The best of the friendship is the secret about it. Oh. This was clever. Anything else? I think we also, I mean that Christian said it, but... Are we, from a Dharma point of view, should we be capable to have friendship with everybody? Even though we can notice that it feels good with some and it just doesn't with others.

[02:05]

I think Christian has already mentioned it, but we have asked ourselves, from the point of view of the Dhamma, should we be able to make friends with everyone, even though we feel that it is possible with some and it does not feel so good with some? I understood it a little bit different. Not this kind of leveling it out, that there is friendship near, but how can I practice friendship in a situation where this isn't given? What isn't given? The state of ease, openness, and people which you really want to call friends. Okay. This latter point that the two of you have spoken about, and Christian and others, is maybe a place of entry for us.

[03:14]

How do we enter, you know, how do we enter this territory of other people? So you mean this field of the other person or just the territory? Just the territory of, you know, in many ways we're connected to other people. We can almost say we... Our mind is made by other people. You know, I have a good friend. One of the things he gave me was the ability to feel comfortable in a restroom. It may seem like not much. But I was, I would say, intimidated by anything other than a cafeteria when I was young.

[04:54]

At some point this friend made me feel comfortable in a restaurant. I didn't have to do everything right. Now I feel that so strongly I can do everything wrong in a restaurant. I've never been thrown out, but, you know, close. But that has allowed me to feel comfortable in a lot of situations, not just restaurants. So, I mean, in lots of ways, if I look at this person, for example, lots of the way my mind works has been created by him. Yeah, I picked that example because it's kind of a small example on the surface.

[06:08]

So what I'm getting to is that I think our mind Our mind, our story belongs, our story is closely connected with other people. And in that way some friendships work and some friendships don't work. Okay. Now what is a common experience, as I said earlier, of people who practice? You'd have to tell me if it's so noticeable now, but when I started it was very noticeable.

[07:09]

That your practicing makes your friends nervous. They are afraid sometimes they are losing you as a friend. You are becoming different. Or they can't quite understand anymore the basis of how you are or what the friendship might be. That's actually good in practice. It's a little hard. And it makes you not feel lonely. And one of the aspects of practice is to come into a very big aloneness until it's actually okay to be alone.

[08:42]

It really doesn't make any difference whether you're alone or with other people. That might sound strange in a bodhisattva practice. But I think it's central to practice. To discover, to feel equally comfortable being alone or with people. some feeling of completeness. And if you feel complete, you'll find one of the things that happens

[09:50]

people will be attracted to your feeling of completeness. I wouldn't say it's all good, but it's okay. What time are we going to eat? Six. Oh, God. So maybe I'll try to say a few things. I don't know what to say, so I'll say something just because that's my job. So one of the things I'm pointing out is this coming to a place in yourself where it doesn't make any difference whether you're alone or with others.

[11:19]

That's useful to know. Now I just state that as a kind of possibility and potentiality, experience. And you can come into this. And if you know it's possible And you know, maybe because I say so, it might be valuable. When you feel that territory in practice, you can be more open to it than... Okay, so that's one thing.

[12:21]

Now, you need a break in your friendships in practice. Break a space, an interruption. Now, Sashim serves that purpose. A three-month practice period serves that purpose. Zazen serves that purpose. But it's pretty hard to establish that breaker space in such a short time as, you know, just sitting once a day.

[13:24]

So at least sashinas are needed. So at least sashinas are needed. Now, three-month practice periods have been chosen as a length of time because it seems to be a length of time which allows a real feeling of break to occur. You know, I'd say it takes six or seven sashins over two or three years to make a feeling of a break. Pause, do you think break like a school break or is like a break something which... Both.

[14:34]

Do you re-establish yourself in a new way? Now here, the fifth thing here, practice can actually separate people. And it can bring them together too. As Andreas says, most of his friends now have some kind of practice. So you don't have to, everyone doesn't have to practice Zen, but you can have some kind of practice. Something that brings into some interiority. Or some other way of finding continuity in your life.

[15:44]

It's not the continuity of language and culture and usual friendships. So if you do feel your friendships changing or being threatened by practicing, you can accept that as a stage, but not something that's permanent. Okay, so some kind of space like that again is necessary. Where you make your life your own. And making your life your own is somehow virtually the same as feeling comfortable being alone or with people.

[16:54]

When you have this power, and it is a kind of power, you can be in very busy, complicated situations and virtually the same as sitting in your room by yourself. And being by yourself, you don't feel lonely, you just feel connected somehow. You don't miss anything. You might miss talking to someone or something, but not deeply. You're functioning from completeness all the time, not incompleteness. This is some of the kinds of things that practice brings you into. Das ist eine der Dinge, in das Praxis einen hineinführt.

[18:26]

Now let's speak about this, can you be friends with everyone? Jetzt sprechen wir mal darüber, ob es möglich ist, dass man mit jedermann Freund sein kann. Of course not, but in some ways, yes. Natürlich nicht, aber auf gewisse Weise doch ja. There are So what do we mean by, what is one of the qualities of friendship? One of the qualities is you feel at ease. Accepted. Comfortable. And accepted. And that you can find a way to feel that with everyone.

[19:34]

Maybe it's a kind of tuning. Or maybe you learn it by tuning yourself. I don't know how to hint you in that direction. Sometimes I say jokingly. It doesn't make any difference where you are. Your heart's beating. Your lungs are breathing. What difference does it make where you are? I can be here, my heart's beating, my lungs are beating. You can pick me up, put me over in the forest, it's okay.

[20:41]

You can put me in an airplane, it's okay. You open your eyes, oh, there's a stewardess. Close your eyes, open your eyes, there's a tree. Oh, you're a tree today. Oh, hello. Could I have some orange juice, please? Instead of an acorn. Well, I don't know, that seems silly, but yes, something like that you try to come into. So you can meet somebody, perhaps as I have from the past, who you had a horrible relationship with. They may have tried to destroy you. I'm not kidding. Threaten to kill you. You see them. It's a sunny day. He could just be there at the level of lungs and heart and breath.

[22:04]

It's okay. You don't have to be in that story. So that's an extreme example, maybe, or exaggerated. Not exaggerated, but unusual, perhaps, I hope, example. So there, you know, you can find a way to have a feeling of ease and space with anyone. And then... And usually if you can find that, they feel... almost involuntarily, an ease and space with you. So bodhisattva practice, we could say, is to discover that with each person.

[23:07]

Also kann man sagen, dass Bodhisattva-Praxis bedeutet, dass man das mit jeder Person entdecken kann. With each person you feel this openness in space. Dass man mit jeder Person diese Offenheit und diesen Raum spüren kann. Now, as soon as you may do something together, it all closes down. Also vielleicht sobald man was mit der Person zusammen unternimmt, dann schließt das alles wieder ab. This person might immediately put down someone. Since Andreas is sitting in front of me, and he's beyond criticism, I can use him as an example. So I'm standing beside somebody. And I feel this open field, or openness.

[24:17]

And then they make some, I've never heard anybody do it, but they make some deprecating, stupid remark about Andreas. I don't like it. I want to defend Andreas. Yeah, okay. But somehow you allow the person to say it. But you don't support their saying it. You might even support them saying it. And turn it back toward them. But there are ways in which the person you're with can close down the connection.

[25:19]

By their way of speaking about it, others are even speaking about you. but somehow you can find a way just still to remain open with that person now when you can find that openness now if I said to you Dharma friendships are based on emptiness You'd say, that sounds like Zen or something like that. But that doesn't help me. I don't know anything about friendships based on emptiness. But practically speaking, I've just given you an example of a friendship based on emptiness.

[26:24]

You could say that if you could be with somebody that you have a very bad history with, it might be your mother or father. Or someone you have had a quite bad extended experience with. Justified or unjustified. There was an old tradition, you know, when you wrote your, in the Middle Ages, when you wrote your will. You not only left your property to somebody, but you apologized to everybody you'd hurt during your life. And as Beate pointed out, some people had longer wills than others. If you can be with a parent or a friend with whom you have a very difficult relationship, which is actually open as if no history had occurred,

[28:01]

History starting at that moment. Then we could say that's a kind of relationship based on emptiness. In a way you start from zero. And then all the old history comes crashing in. But in zero it sort of disappears into a pond of zero. And then another zero appears. And eventually you can wear the person down. If you don't react to their old history, eventually they get harder and harder for them to keep bringing it up.

[29:13]

If you get caught up in it, then you're finished. And the old karma, you're both then strengthening karma. That's how karma works, and you keep strengthening. It doesn't mean you ignore the karma. It just happens in another kind of space. Now, once you know this space in which you can be alone or together and and the same with everyone as a kind of starting point.

[30:29]

Even an old friend. Even an old friend who you have a great relationship with. You still can start from this place that you also start with a person you had a difficult relationship with. And you can bring that then to your former relationships, which changed because you started to practice. Now in a funny way you accumulate this space. Let me say... Let me say it this way.

[31:44]

I don't know if it really makes sense to say you accumulate space. But I'm trying to make sense. So every time you do zazen, and you practice uncorrected mind, and you don't have to fill your zazen with something distracting or interesting, You don't have to turn your internal car radio on. You can just be there. And it should be boring, but it's not. Every time you can be in that kind of neither interesting nor boring space, Which strangely, the more you can be there in that space which is neither interesting nor boring, that's the space in which bliss arises.

[33:08]

And that's one of the reasons bliss and emptiness are identified. So every time you have that experience, you actually are slightly more established in emptiness. Now we could talk about the Bodhisattva, define the Bodhisattva as one who is established in emptiness. Now what I'm making clear now is this is not philosophy or theology or something far away. This is something quite normal to experience.

[34:25]

It's not so normal to notice it, but if you start to notice it, you accumulate this establishing yourself in emptiness. Also es ist etwas, das nicht so leicht zu bemerken ist. Aber wenn man das bemerken anfängt, dann kann man das anhäufen und sich darin etablieren oder befestigen. Wenn ihr eure Zazenhaltung macht, und ihr den Raum eures Körpers spürt, Und ihr euch mehr mit dem Raum eures Körpers identifiziert als mit dem Zeug eures Körpers. Oder ihr identifiziert das Material eures Körpers als Raum. Dann beginnt ihr die Erfahrung von Raum anzusammeln.

[35:28]

when you feel the field of a person rather than the... I don't know how to say rather than, but when you feel the field of a person And the field of a relationship. They're also accumulating an establishment in space. And that's what this break in friendships is about. To give yourself a break from, give yourself a break, until you're reestablished in a big space that's quite inclusive. Bis man sich wieder neu etabliert hat in einem Raum, der viel größer ist und einschließend ist.

[36:55]

Der schließt all eure alten Freunde mit ein. Euren Partner schließt das mit ein. Eure Familie. Und ihr könnt sehen, wie eure Praxis ist. Ihr könnt sogar fast eure Praxis daran messen. by whether you can include anyone in this space now. If you still can't include someone, then a family member or somebody from your past or some new person you might meet at any point, then you can see you're not fully established in emptiness. Now, again, take this as a big deal, established in emptiness. It's something quite natural for anyone who practices.

[38:03]

Okay, that's maybe enough for now. Yeah. So let's sit for a few minutes. Well, the service has started. So the territory of friendship becomes the territory of our practice and expression of our practice and measure of our practice and satisfaction.

[40:23]

and also the satisfaction of our practice. This human flesh mind world And friends can alter time and space for us. And through friendship we can find ourselves in new time and space.

[41:42]

then often we feel truly friendly at friends with the world. I don't know. I think I don't know anything more satisfying than that. As you said, nourishes the heart. and the whole of living.

[43:16]

Even now, if you bring your attention to the tiny movements of mind and body, you may find these tiny movements open into a big space. This also is establishing emptiness. Thank you very much for spending the time together, the day together.

[45:07]

Gathering acorns. Thank you for... Someone's gathering them. Good morning.

[46:08]

Why should we be good? Why should the morning be good? Good. Yeah. You know I wander around in a topic like this with you. Yeah, on the surface of the topic. And I try to find some entry into the topic with you. But a lot of it has to do with your giving me permission. This idea that the teacher is the relationship is real.

[47:15]

Mm-hmm. And one of the expressions of the reality of the relationship as teaching is that certain... The more fundamental aspects of teaching can't be taught unless the relationship is there.

[48:21]

Yeah, now some of you may think, oh, he's a Zen teacher or something like that. He already has permission. Yeah, I have a certain permission to sit up here and up. Act like a fool. And say nonsensical things. But if they're going to make sense, I need some permission from you. And you may think you've already given me permission. I gave him permission. I'll just sit back and see what he does. But I need active given and re-given permission.

[49:40]

There's some energy in that that allows us to talk work our way into things. Yeah, not that I have anything special to say. But still, I'd like to speak about Dharma friendship and Dharma friendliness in as fundamental a way as we can. Yeah, of course it's good to be friendly. And I feel friendly, so I try to be friendly. But is that reason enough? Someone else may feel unfriendly. Yeah, so they might as well be unfriendly. That's what they like. Why is friendliness more fundamental?

[50:47]

We love each other. Sometimes we don't. And we'd like the world to be governed by love. We'd like that better. But is the fact that we like it better mean that that's the way the world is? Maybe it's more brutal than that. How do we come to how the world is? How do we get to the way the world is?

[52:14]

How do we get, understand, or how do we walk? How do we get there? How do we find it's true? Maybe we don't care whether the world, what it is, Maybe we can create the world the way we want it to be. I mean, I think that's a genuine position, to create the world the way you want it to be. Genuine position, yes. And I think we can trust, usually, the way we want things to be. But my own experience is that the way we want it to be doesn't work unless it's based on, at least, based sufficiently on the way the world is.

[53:32]

Now, I don't know if I'm making sense right now. But I have some feeling I'd like to get somewhere, and I don't know if it's going to make sense to you or not, but I'll try. So, you know, in a practical, social sense, I hardly know most of you. In some dimension of... More fundamental dimension and dimension of practice I know many of you quite well. But some of you are quite fairly new to me. So how can we find in just a short time since Friday evening

[54:38]

And Friday evening is always in some ways the end of the seminar. I start the seminar with the ingredients I need for the rest of the seminar. Yeah, I don't mean that those of you missed Friday evening are lost and bad. But it's such a short time, Friday to Sunday afternoon. And I think this is already Sunday, isn't it? And afternoon will soon be upon us. And what time are we supposed to stop? Five, what it says?

[55:51]

Who cannot stay until five? What time do you have to leave? At dinner? You mean at lunch? Yeah. At dinner, fine. That's 7, 7.38. And what time do you have to leave? Okay. Okay, so I don't know what time we'll stop. Maybe 5. If only two people have to leave. Only one person has to leave at 3. You have to leave at 3? Lunch? Oh. Lunch, we're going to serve lunch late today. Lunch, it wanders around. Okay. So, So how was, you know, with you, who I know in various ways, can we find enough common ground and openness to kind of speak about practice and friendship?

[57:22]

Now if we look at this poem between true friendship knows neither alienation nor what? Intimacy. Intimacy. Between, how does it go? True friendship transcends alienation and intimacy, okay? So when a poem like this is used as a Zen practice teaching,

[58:38]

Andrea has spoken, mentioned a couple of times to Marie-Louise and I about her work with dyslectic children and people. Using something she calls pacing. And I don't know exactly of course what she means, but there's some feeling of pacing or changing a pace to enter into the field of another person. And in a poem like this you cannot just kind of let your mind rush ahead at the speed of language. All Zen practice and all Zen study occurs at another pace than the usual pace.

[60:19]

If you catch this pace, you'll catch something about how to practice and study Zen. So you may read this poem and like it. Did you write it down by saying it once? Because in the book it's a little different than that. Yeah, no, I have the book, so I don't. Yes? No, but I like it that you got it from me and not the book. Because I always change him around a little bit, you know. It's alive, it's dead in the book. It's alive in our conversation. Mm-hmm. It's a very small difference, but it's different.

[62:02]

It's reproduced, translated in a book. It doesn't give the full statement for each branch. The poem in the book says, as does also the southern branch. But that's not so good. Because each branch should be fully blossomed and fully stated in the poem. So the northern branch owns the whole of spring. It's wrong to link them linguistically. It's just a separate statement. Then the southern branch owns the whole of spring, period.

[63:06]

No, what I say often is a poem like this is meant to be enacted. So you may go through the poem and like it. And it gives you some feeling. Maybe some little feeling. But a very nice feeling. I hope it gives you a very nice feeling. Of some possibility. But what are the dimensions of that little feeling? It's usually kind of not graspable. You can't give it too much attention. But it can stay with you for a long time. Years. Mm-hmm.

[64:06]

But I also suggested yesterday you find the state of mind that rests in very, very tiny particulars. And so, if you bring attention to this tiny feeling the poem gives you, It can begin to cover heaven and earth. After all, we make decisions about life, marriage, jobs, very tiny feelings, and then they are what we do for years. When the tiny feeling has a clarity, when it feels like it is as it is,

[65:20]

So there's some, let's say, you read through the poem and there's this tiny good feeling comes from the poem. Okay, but now let's go back to the poem as practice. True friendship transcends intimacy and alienation. So stay with this sentence for a while. Friendship, true friendship, what's that? And transcends intimacy and alienation? How are you still friends with friends you're alienated from?

[66:47]

What depth of conviction transcends intimacy and alienation? So to practice with a poem like this, again, you have to let yourself into each line. And the second line, between meeting and not meeting, there's no difference. That might sound good to you. But is it true? And certainly if you and I want to practice together, We have to meet sometimes.

[67:51]

We don't meet sometimes. It's pretty hard to practice together. But even if we meet sometimes, it's possible that simultaneously between meeting and not meeting there's no difference. You have to get used to the idea in Buddhism, get used to the idea in Buddhism, that it tries to speak about things in Oppositions. Like form and emptiness.

[68:51]

Not there's form and there's sometimes emptiness. Or later there's emptiness. But yes, of course, experientially we know the world of form. And through practice we may come to a sense of emptiness. But finally, form and emptiness are a simultaneity. For example, as I've mentioned to a number of you, the word Sokure in Japanese is translated into English as detachment.

[69:58]

But it actually should be translated as detached but not separate from. Aber es hätte eigentlich übersetzt werden sollen, unangehaftet, aber nicht getrennt von. Schafft ihr es, euren Geist da herum zu biegen? Detached yet, not separate from. Also unverhaftet, aber dennoch nicht getrennt. It's not a question of trying to think about it. Es ist nicht eine Frage hier, über die man nachdenken muss. It's the question of discovering a mind in which it's true that you're detached and yet not separate from. There's a mind of detachment. There's a mind of engagement.

[71:04]

We know those two minds. Now they're put together and they're simultaneous. You have to get used to that kind of way of thinking. If you get used to it, the mind that knows this way begins to appear. That knows the world this way begins to appear. Thank you for making such an effort to translate this as carefully as possible. and we say one and not two we can't you know if you say it's one it's wrong if you say it's many it's wrong so let's say what we can about it yes it's one it's

[72:22]

But it's many. So here we have it in the poem, intimacy and alienation. Meeting and not meeting. On the old plum tree fully blossomed, Now what's that? On the old plum tree, fully blossomed. A plum tree has a meaning in Asian poetry of transcending the seasons. Because it's supposed to be the first tree that blooms in spring.

[73:29]

So it often blooms while there's still snow on the ground. So the white blossoms are often fallen on the snow and invisible. So if you're at a Zen teacher's temple, it's happened to me once. Everything in that world is done sort of by indirection. I was at Kaboriroshi's temple. And he had, in February sometime, out around a corner, not even where I was, a scroll of a plum tree blossoming. So I like to play. So at some point during the tea he was giving me, I said, the tea is very fresh, but it's really not yet spring.

[74:36]

And he knew I was referring to the scroll. Because the next time I came, there was an even more extraordinary scroll. Now, this is partly what I mean by enacting the poem. If you've grown up with plum trees, if you've grown up in a world of, you know, where it's dark at night, where you walk home by the gathering evening, You notice things like, the plum tree's the first one out.

[76:08]

Most of us wouldn't know that unless we're gardeners or something. But if you know that, then you really feel the plum tree is somehow different from other flowering trees. And then you have, in addition to it being already still, I mean still winter, you have the sameness of the plum blossoms on the snow. which is expressed in lots of different ways. I mean, one of the famous ones is snow in a silver bowl. It's like the gilded Buddha we have, 500-year-old Buddha at Johanneshof. The clothes, the robes, and the flesh are both gold.

[77:21]

This is the sameness. Mm-hmm. Then the old plum tree, an old plum tree. They take care of these trees like mad in Asia. A lot of the aesthetic is just taking care. I think, if I remember correctly, there's two 500 year old plum trees, something like that, in Japan. I think it's a plum.

[78:28]

It might be a cherry tree, but I think it's a plum tree. But they do it by, they take care, I mean, every branch stretches out in the ground, has a little crutch underneath it. You've got about a hundred crutches, each one getting shorter, carrying the branches out. It's charming to see. It's hard to get under the tree, though, because all those things are... But here's then the old plum tree, the ancient tree. Which can barely support itself now, so old. So it needs all these crutches. Mm-hmm. Like the riddle of the Sphinx. Mm-hmm. And yet it's fully blossomed.

[79:46]

And fully blossomed has to resonate with enlightenment. What better image of enlightenment could there be than fully blossomed? I always have a problem with the word blossom, though. Because I have an older half-brother who always used to, when I was a little tiny boy, tickle me. And I still hate to be tickled. And he would come in and say, my little blossom. I didn't think I was anything like a blossom.

[80:57]

But part of practice is to be able to take associative mind and put it aside. So I try to restrain myself from feeling tickled when I read this poem. So the old plum tree fully blossomed. The old plum tree has the feeling of lineage in it. The lineage of our teaching. And it's, as I say, resonant with the idea of enlightenment.

[82:06]

Because you want to ask yourself if you're touched by this poem. And you're not reading it like, oh, a flowering tree, some flowering tree. No, it's an old plum tree that's blossoming. And so you, are you yourself fully blossomed? So fully blossomed also has the sense of the Dharmakaya, which is seeing the space, the wide dimension of everything, the all at once-ness of everything, which interpenetrates this moment.

[83:23]

It's the condition of this moment. In fact, it is. Scientifically, it is. But it doesn't have to be just science. It can also be the freedom for you in this moment. Of an All at onceness. Some inclusive feeling. Yeah. The sky of spring. That makes everything bloom. So this fully blossomed has the sense of... the dharmakaya, of dharmakaya practice.

[84:40]

And sunyata means more than emptiness, it means without boundaries. It's completely so expanded there's no boundaries. Okay, so Dharmakaya practice. What is Dharmakaya practice? To take away dimensions. What does this poem done? Taken away dimensions. Intimacy and alienation. Meeting and not meeting.

[85:47]

So when the tree is fully blossomed, If you yourself want to be fully blossomed, you take away dimensions. And now, before the break, let me just finish the poem. I can't finish the poem, but we can go to the last two lines at least. You have the northern branch. And you have the southern branch. And each owns the whole spring. Now the root of this kind of expression is the Huayen teaching, where everything interpenetrates.

[87:09]

The Dharmakaya teaching brings everything in very wideness. It's all inclusive. And the Huayen teaching brings us down to each particular as including everything. Yeah. In the specific. One is more the emphasis like the ocean includes everything. The other emphasis is the drop includes the ocean. This isn't just philosophy.

[88:15]

It's a way of knowing when you yourself take the dimensions away. It's as if this flower and this flower grow on different planets. Or maybe from the same garden and same forest. But somehow, yes, and they belong to the same world. But even two flowers. Particularly a desert flower in Crestone in a... damp flower, northern Germany. Draw on different worlds to bloom. So the Wayan teaching is this interpenetrating, non-interfering worlds. The world, they're interpenetrating worlds here.

[89:37]

Maybe tiny cosmic systems and magnificent cosmic systems. All interpenetrating. And they don't interfere with each other. They don't hinder each other. You can't unite them into a common system. It's something like string theory or something like that. In physics that there are dimensions beyond three curled up in tiny, tiny Planck length distances. If you look at the world that way, it works better mathematically than thinking of the world as three or four dimensions.

[90:46]

But they're dimensions we can't see. But there's a strange parallel with Buddhism. Which is to take away the dimensions you normally see. We act in the dimensions we see, but we can have an inner freedom in the dimensions that we don't see. That's the best I can say it right now. So that both own the whole spring, has been chosen for this koan because it emphasizes the non-comparison of the two.

[92:08]

Each is separate and equally owns the whole of spring. So it means also that all of us now, if we're practicing together, have the same root in the tradition. And yet each of you own the whole screen. Each of you, in the way you are blossomed and blossoming, if I can tickle each of you later, if I can enlighten you, I can tickle you, you'll find out each of you is your own fully blossomed, full blossoming of this.

[93:18]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_74.06