as part of recognizing how we exist in ourselves and with each other. Okay, so if you take these four, whatever they mean, And you might as well take them at whatever level you understand them. And then you think about whether, wouldn't it be nice if you could feel this way all the time, or feel friendliness, compassion, etc. ? But the question is, you don't want to feel it as something you're forcing on yourself or something you should feel. So the first level of presentation of some idea like this is, you know, is this possible or is it something artificial or is it forced on us or something?

[01:21]

Or is, well, the teaching of Buddhism is it's possible to feel this way all the time. And not in a way that excludes other feelings, not in a way that excludes anger and so forth. But it becomes more and more the base of how you feel. And the reason these are chosen and emphasized... is because they have the qualities of a continuum of mind or mind-body. Now, how do you get a continuum that you feel is present throughout all your activity? Now, this is one of the challenges of practice.

[02:32]

And probably the most direct way for most people is the practice of Sashin. And for most people, the most direct way is the practice of Sashin. Because if you do a sashin and you're too much in a comparing mind, you're thinking, I wish the bell would ring, I wish it, you know, etc. You can't really sit the sashin with equanimity. Pretty soon you're kind of pushed around and panicked inside. So to just get through seven days of sitting, period after period, and following a harmless but horrific schedule,

[03:38]

Without complaining too much. You're not hurting anybody except yourself, so you just do it. This kind of effort is the first stage of finding a continuum. I mean, we have a continuum going on all the time of some sort. But our sense of location or where we exist isn't in the continuum. Mm-hmm. Otherwise we wouldn't have moods and wouldn't get upset about things and so forth in the same way.

[04:55]

So what happens in Sushina, if you've done a few, is you begin, as many people anyway, begin to have almost the same state of mind through their sleeping and through their waking. Or it's as if your different states of mind are connected by a deeper, clear state of mind that's underneath your other states of mind. Now, if you don't have sashins to do and you're practicing as a layperson, you have to have some kind of mindfulness practice or some way to keep bringing your attention back to something. And one of the points in doing this, bringing yourself back to paying attention to your feet or resting in your breath and so forth, is to develop this continuum.

[06:14]

If you do develop this continuum, let's call it a continuum, sometimes it may be experienced as a stream and sometimes as a field. But I'm calling it now a continuum. When you begin to feel this continuum that you feel as a physical ease in your body, a sense of well-being in your body, and a similar sense of ease and well-being in your states of mind basically everything feels all right some terrible things may happen but somehow underneath that basically things feel all right

[07:34]

And this kind of continuum of being is possible to realize. Possible to taste, certainly. And every time you decide to practice, you enter into this a little bit. Every time you look out the window and draw the sky into your body, you've entered it a little bit. Now, if you do realize or begin to have a sense of this continuum within your activity, And within your body and within your states of mind. Then these four immeasurables are right at your doorstep.

[08:44]

they're the borders of your stream mind. They're the expression of your stream mind. Because if you express what these are, it's the kinds of feelings we have that maintain the continuum. It's like if you feel hate suddenly You're immediately out of the continuum. And that's just simply what's... If we want to say hate is bad, from the point of Buddhism, hate is bad in the sense that it's not possible in a continuum. But in Buddhism it's not... viewed so much as bad, but as an interruption of the continuum or your spiritual being.

[10:01]

And if you live in the anger only, then you're in physical and mental trouble. But if you see anger as just a response to something and not where you live, then it's quite different. And if this sense of continuum is there which you relax into, Because you've decided to use your energy in some way so that you're relaxed in your energy. Now, then that feeling of returning to the continuum,

[11:03]

or relaxing into this continuum, tends to melt or change the anger. So again, it's not that you repress anger or something like that. It's that through recognizing this continuum, you more and more rest there in your kind of in-between moments, you're resting there. It's like that's your water. And you have various boats or various moods. And sometimes you're in this boat or that boat, but then you return into the water.

[12:17]

And you find that the water, you can always express any one of these and not leave the water. So the same thing that might cause, if you're in a boat, might cause you to feel, oh, my boat's going to fall over and, you know, etc., you react with, I've been insulted or something. But the more you reside most of the time or have a feeling of being in this continuum or in this water, in one sense you might still feel insulted. But at the same time you can feel this water, which you can't insult the water exactly, it's always changing, moving.

[13:25]

So when you begin to practice in such a way that you emphasize this stream of being, Or this field of being that you discover in yourself, you are also subtly and then radically reorganizing the way you respond to the world. I think that's enough to give you an entry, one possible entry anyway, into this sense of the relationship between self, identity and emptiness. Now, I don't know if we're at a point where we can discuss this very fruitfully. Because sometimes we have to just hear these things and hear them within ourselves and not try to express them or do something with them right away.

[14:46]

And you also have to sort of separate the kind of schmaltz of this kind of teaching from actual the courage of really wondering about how we exist in this world with others. For example, wouldn't it be nice right now if in Yugoslavia they all had these ideals? Is that possible? So is there something you'd like to bring up or share, discuss? Yeah. I have a question. What about the continuing and suffering, your own suffering and the suffering of others?

[16:14]

Okay. Well, there's a difference between your own suffering and the suffering of others, although you may suffer through others. But if you're involved in your own suffering, then you're not in a continuum. But if you can feel your own suffering without complaining about it, then it's not suffering in the same way. It's more something you're experiencing.

[17:24]

I mean, the real suffering is when you don't like to suffer. But then it's also kind of weird if you like to suffer. So, it's just, you know, we have some suffering in our life. And sometimes we live in it more than at other times. And that's where this compassion comes in, the ability to relate yourself to others' suffering. What means compassion? Passion means, literally translated, I think from Latin, means to suffer. And home means with others. It means suffering with others.

[18:26]

With others. Yeah. Yeah, but you always translate compassion with meaning, which means to feel that suffering with others. So there's a difference. What's the difference? Excuse me, if I translate it correctly, from Latin, it means to come together, and passion means to lie. So it means to lie to others. But you really always translate compassion with compassion. In German, the difference between like and compassion is a translation problem. And it is not only a problem with the position, but it is also a problem with the attitude towards compassion or to the suffering of others and their own suffering.

[19:32]

We already had the discussion in Austria and in Germany. My feeling is that when I feel pity, or the feeling of pity, that's what I presented to you at that time, pity is more something that I separate myself from. and to let me down in a state of non-suffering and to feel compassion for someone and that's not what compassion is about in the Buddhist sense but you feel with someone without you suffering or letting yourself down and maybe the others also have the same feeling the feeling is also greater it contains that you can also be happy for example The German word that is an exact translation is feeling of feeling pity for somebody. What we feel is when you also feel joy with others.

[20:51]

And this is not only those meditative feelings you participate, but also if somebody is happy. That also would fit into compassion, though, in Buddhism. Because this really means, this joy is non-referential joy. It also means you can feel this joy with others, but really the feeling with others is in this category. A residence? Resonance. Resonance. Yeah. Yeah. Well, compassion... I mean, I think... You know, it's a little... If we try to explore this, first we have to get through our resistance to have strong feelings, to recognize strong feelings in ourselves and to recognize strong feelings in front of others.

[22:24]

And I'm not suggesting we turn this seminar into a bathhouse of undigested emotion. Bathhouse? It means... It's like pathos, but it's more. It's a... B, not P. Yeah, B, not P. Kind of, anyway. Pathos means exaggerated or schmaltzy pathos. What? Yeah, it's... He doesn't mean pathos, he means pathos with B. So pathos with B. Good, very good.

[23:40]

But I'm bringing this up to see where we can go with this during these two days. And there's no question that the topography of our emotional life And the topography of our attitudes that form our emotional life have everything to do with everything that happens around you. And it is happening to our society here in Europe and Germany and so forth. So if you make even small changes in your, let's call it an emotional topography, a change in your tone of voice,

[25:09]

In your usual tone of voice, it's always present. Not just when you're trying to be charming. But some base change in your tone of voice. Such a small change as that in the topography of your emotional life. can change everything. People start relating to you differently. So I think having some discussion within yourself and even among each other, what do these words mean and what do we feel about them, is important in getting past at least the schmaltz barrier. And this, I can remember once I, somebody asked me, hi, in the Sierras, why are you practicing?

[26:23]

And I said something like, I don't know where it came from, I said, to see if it's possible to be sincere. And my friends who I was hiking with, sincere, what kind of schmaltz is that? They said, Sincere. So I would hope that these four teachings, which are so important in Buddhism, And why these four are picked and not some others. And how these four can be almost like a musical score. Musical score. Like written music, the music for a song, the score.

[27:59]

So it's like four notes, and actually these four notes are many notes within them, that you can begin to hear this music in your own actions. Yes, somebody else. You're supposed to help me with questions. or statements, not because I need help, but that's also true, but because it helps me, it helps all of us take responsibility for this topic.

[29:06]

While I'm wondering and pondering a lot about the meaning and how much is there in this question? In what question? But is there meaning? Is there meaning in which? In anything? Is there some purpose in what we're doing or in being alive? I'm so sick of seeing that. I think he was trying to say if the question of this room was useless.

[30:30]

Oh, yeah. Fundamentally, I think so. I mean, sometimes we need to have meaning in things. But the fact is we're all in this room. That's a much stronger statement than there's some meaning to us being in this room. And when you were first born, you didn't say, hey, what's the meaning of me? You know, the fact is, we're stuck with being alive. And we may try to find some meaning, but the fact is there's something we call existence.

[31:37]

And within that you try to negotiate a life with some meaning. But sometimes you have to step away from that meaning and just live without explanations. And the more you can live without meaning or explanation at one level of mind at least, then you're practicing emptiness. So you can practice emptiness with your friend, for example, by not always requiring meaning from them. By not always requiring explanations from them. letting your friend be.

[32:43]

And again, these are attitudes you try to enact. You're talking to your friend. In your continuum mind or your background mind, You have the feeling, I'm just going to let this my friend be. I'm going to listen to my friend without any ideas in my mind. This actually is one of the meanings of the practice of generosity in Buddhism. And emptiness, because you give everything away to this person. So it's that kind of feeling, being without meaning or explanation. It doesn't mean that you don't need to know the way to the movies, if you're going to the movies with it.

[33:55]

But that's another level of mind. Okay, something else? Yeah. My experience is that it requires constant, intense practice to maintain this uprightness. On the other hand, it is depressing to stand outside most of the time. I have a feeling I know everything you're talking about, and at the same time I can see it requires a constant effort to maintain or to stay inside this, and at the same time it's somewhat depressing to then experience to be outside most of the time.

[34:56]

Yes, I understand. Yeah, join the club. The club of those of us who are outside most of the time. But now look at all the new friends we've just made. Yes. Yes. For me it is like this, in my relationship, in my normal, I think I know it well, or at least I have an experience of it, that it has already happened, but for me it is like this, for me it is like this, I always ask myself the question,

[36:07]

whether this being outside of the other, as he is, does not then ... somehow ... impoverish ... Can you translate all of it? At the end I didn't quite understand what you meant, but I'll translate the first half.

[37:20]

I think it's an important point. I can say that I can experience somewhat of something what you said, but I often wonder also in the relationship to my husband that this attitude to let someone be, just be, whether it's at some level just a hindrance, because I feel somewhat hindered by it in a certain kind of feeling of fulfillment. And then I didn't quite get it. Because it seems that the other person doesn't feel this in that way, just letting be. Letting you be. I mean, this attitude of letting be, of letting a person be as they are, and letting them be as I am, this also sometimes causes problems, because there are so many possibilities in it.

[38:50]

That's why I called it the dance of love and emptiness. Did everything get translated into German? She translated into English the part I didn't quite understand what she meant. Well, I mean, I'm a firm believer in engagement with each situation and with life in general. And I would like to make it clear how the teaching of emptiness increases your engagement with the world and makes possible the survival of these differences between human beings. Because you're developing, when you communicate a feeling of letting go, say, in relationship to your husband,

[39:57]

And he doesn't understand. Or reciprocates in some other way. Then you're just speaking a language to him that he doesn't fully understand. Or doesn't want to understand or you're not speaking clearly enough. But I also think that we have to be attached and possessive too. No one would want a spouse who isn't attached to you. I mean, if they're too detached, you think, geez, why is this person my spouse? It's really a case of attachment and non-attachment are languages. You speak one and you speak both. And in ordinary states of mind you have attachment and non-attachment.

[41:22]

But in the deepest state of mind you have non-attachment. And that allows you to be quite freely attached. And not so painfully attached. Does that make sense? But so what you're doing in this kind of practice is you're actually developing a skill at a language of views, vows and vision that you express not at a level of language, but letting these views or your vision of how the world might be be present in your language, but not expressed exactly in your language.

[42:28]

As I've said, you're learning to speak about a Buddha land while you're talking about ordinary lands. The real possibilities of our human existence which are interpenetrated with all the difficulties of our human existence. And the bodhisattva or the religious person is the one who learns to speak both these languages. And sometimes you're heard and sometimes you're not heard. And sometimes you don't hear yourself. Again let me just say the word compassion I think best we can just say is the ability, capacity, willingness to experience things.

[43:51]

To be strong enough to actually experience what happens to you, your friends and what happens in this world. We could call this the capacity for compassion. Which most of us, by necessity, shut down. Otherwise you just get drained and destroyed. Or you feel you could never take a vacation because someone's suffering in the world. No, you have to be able to take a vacation and yet still be open to how this world is. This isn't a tight picture where because you feel this, you have to feel that. This isn't, as I say, a picture with a vanishing point, perspective, where everything fits in a hierarchical relationship to everything else.

[45:13]

As I've been saying the last couple of weeks, this is a very loose picture where everything moves loosely in relationship to each other. So sometimes you feel this, sometimes you feel that. And you don't criticize yourself for which one you feel or should feel. You practice an openness to whatever you feel without discriminating you should or shouldn't. And you kind of relax into this feeling. And this, what I just said is a pretty accurate description of Zen practices. Ultimately, it's a kind of relaxation. Which I can't... There's no word I know which conveys in any way the depth and profundity of this sense of relaxation. And the immeasurable benefits for yourself and your society and your friends.

[46:52]

So it's now one o'clock. And I am rarely so on time. So what do we think, one hour and a half or two hours? And I feel they're very other-directed, like equanimity, like towards emotions coming from other people, love, friendliness toward others, compassion with others, joy. And I, through kind of wonderful experience having lunch with my three friends and feeling very nourished, I realize now that I replaced this other directedness in these four terms with something that was self-directed and played with a little bit.

[48:01]

Like I replaced equanimity with softness, friendliness with self-acceptance, compassion with... I mean, I was playing like this. And... was felt very good and maybe you can say something about it or but it's also love I mean certain things in Buddhism are very other directed and sometimes I feel this self-directed just a little lacking Do you want to say that in German? Yes, I had a very lovely lunch with Helga. It was very good for me. I rested a little bit. I was sitting here in meditation, and these four immeasurables came to me, that they are very much related to others. Yeah, so Gleichmut, Liebe, Mitgefühl.

[49:03]

Also, I see the aspect of the other. I noticed, I started to play with it, in the sense that I related it to myself. And I started to replace these terms with other words. So, for example, Gleichmut, more with softness. with kindness, with self-acceptance. And I also noticed that in Buddhism a lot of things always refer to others. And then I asked him if he could say something about how to take care of the aspect of yourself, if you could bring it in a little more or give it a higher place of importance. Does anyone else have anything to say about that? You would do it your own way. I said you would do it your own way. For me, this is the only way to feel compassion with other people.

[50:09]

I think that is the way I can come sometimes to compassion and joy and all of these expressions. First by experiencing myself and then later on, That is my way of experiencing how I could sometimes, not always, keep compassion with other people, through compassion with myself. Anyone else? And I guess, what is the trouble we have with these? Yeah.

[51:10]

On the one hand, it is a matter of course. On the other hand, it is a matter of course. The problem is that if you let yourself go like this, that is to say, if you let yourself go like this, then there is also a difference. How can you not have this spray of wax? On one hand, I have emptiness, and on the other, just letting go, letting things just be what they are, and then out of this arises kind of liking or not liking. And how do I separate the grains from the...

[52:30]

Like love to others also feels to attachment and bonding with others also on the material plane. Mm. Someone else? I'm having a little discussion with you. Yeah, go ahead. Yes, I think there's a quality of courage which I thought then I could understand that as a profession, being really open to it was important. But for me, when we talk, it's important that I feel, not to be courageous, like in the journal, I have two more advices for myself, and one is courage, mood, and the other is being moved, and not being, sleeping by myself, everything.

[53:44]

And I thought, so how can one realize all these virtues without the courage or maybe grace, Gnade? I don't remember that. Yes, I felt the action of the moon, where I first thought that it might be under confession. For whatever happens, I have to go for something new, which is also very important for me. In short, I have courage and against courage. I have to be brave. Sometimes I think, you can't even imagine it, it's not a reality, it's just in your head. Maybe that's what the mind can tell you. Of course, courage is needed. Yes, I was also afraid.

[54:48]

But at the same time, I didn't feel that way. It's difficult to keep up with things, because you can easily be distracted by events or thoughts. And so it's the same with the other political views and feelings. You follow certain things. It's difficult to just leave things as they are or just accept them as they are. It's very difficult to maintain equanimity. It's very easy to be distracted. To be distracted is the same with all the others. When you get distracted, then you just start running after things, and it's difficult to just let it be. Yeah. Anyone else?

[55:49]

I had two days before when I saw that someone had fallen into death. And it was just about time that I realized what had happened. And I had a feeling, I felt pain, which I now somehow feel through my heart. What I at the moment as quite impersonal feel. There was no more pain in me, but there was still this feeling. Since it happened, I have not sat anymore, because I know what will happen to me, that I will actually be sad. We could have sat here today. and it happened that I was sad and I have the feeling that this sadness that I am now has a very personal connection to my sadness in contrast to what happens when it happens to me.

[57:11]

And the question is how can I make a connection? Beate witnessed two days ago how somebody jumped into death or committed suicide. It was a very intense experience for her in the sense that she felt this compassion, but it was very impersonal. And then she realized since then she hasn't been sitting. And she started sitting today here and a lot of sadness and grief came up.

[58:17]

also starting to feel a personal involvement and connection with this. And so her question is how do we kind of put the impersonal versus the personal? How do we find the territory in between or the connection? A woman or a man? A woman. And how did she commit suicide? She jumped down the house. From a window? From a window, yeah. And did you see it? Yeah. Were you in the building or on the street? I was in the theater, just preparing for work, and it's just like I'm next to the window. And I looked out of the window, there's something which you don't expect, and it was quite a lot of time just to realize the situation, and don't decide anything, I just...

[59:26]

She was all by herself in the window? Yeah. Do you want to say that in German maybe? I went to the theatre to see my work and it was right next to the window. I looked out and, as you wouldn't expect to see something like that, I had just had enough time to see a woman standing outside on a window sill and then she fell into the water. I didn't want to open up. I'd like to sit here for a minute with this woman Does somebody else want to say something?

[60:46]

Do all those horns mean somebody's getting married? Or is it just a traffic jam? It means someone's getting married? Try to understand why in some ways this is the hardest part of Buddhism to teach. It's almost the part you have to let people do on their own and not talk about. So, I mean, I can try to make... One thing I should maybe point out is that this is not understood to be the way we should live.

[62:26]

This is understood as... Well, there's some truth to that. It's better if we live this way. But the main emphasis of this is this is the way we actually exist. It's not really a matter of should as a matter of, hey, this is the way it is. Why isn't it this way? And I think you talked about what's personal and not personal. Did you say that? Yeah. You don't have to say it again.

[63:37]

The personality disappeared in that moment and now it's my personality which thinks on this moment. And Ulrike brought up, you thought of this, why isn't it directed toward yourself or toward the individual? I didn't think about in a sense why, isn't it? But the way I understand, whenever I hear something like this, I feel it kind of like direct to others, actually less toward myself. Yeah. But, well, you can say that in German. In Buddhism, there's not such a clear distinction between... It's not the kind of distinction we have between self and others. You are one of the others. And whatever you realize can only be realized in yourself.

[64:57]

The arrow of Buddhism always points this way. And the arrow in Western culture maybe always tends to be pointing this way. Now I think that contemporary psychology has kind of turned that around and made us pay more attention to individuation and the self and so forth. But still there's the sense of this arrow pointing toward how we're supposed to relate to other people and so forth. And I've spoken about this in the past, but I think, and I should bring it up again, that I think that the idea of humankind in the West is a somewhat coercive idea. And the kind of time that comes up is when you can notice it.

[66:13]

Somebody says to you, aren't you wasting your time doing meditation? With the idea that you should be doing something for humankind. And just staring at your navel. Do you hear those things sometimes? But if you go to a beer garden, no one says, why are you just staring at your beer glass? Depends how much time you spend. So you can go to a restaurant, you can go out with your friends, but if you meditate, they say, hey, how come you're not helping humankind?

[67:16]

And I think that the idea behind this is that we distrust, there's a built-in distrust in our culture in experience that's not public or shared. And one of the first experiences of people who start to practice meditation has been in the past. People come to me and say, has anybody ever experienced this before? And often there's quite a lot of fear if they fear they're going to experience something no one's ever experienced before or they fear they may have experienced something. And they feel if they experience something no one else has experienced before, they might be going crazy.

[68:48]

Don't you think that's a very strange idea? That if you experience something that others don't experience, that could be craziness. Perhaps only crazy people and geniuses are allowed to experience something no one else has experienced. The rest of us better know somebody else who has the same experience. And there's the fear that we'll get out of control or out of whack or out of something. But all of us will have experiences no one's ever experienced before.

[70:07]

There is no, I mean, just your fingerprint is something no one's ever experienced before. I think there's one chance in 64 billion or something that there's a similar fingerprint. And virtually impossible that you'd have a whole hand matched. So each of us, in the uniqueness of your personal history, at a particular time in history, at a particular time on the planet, you are a unique experience. And it may be in our emphasis on individuation we don't recognize enough our uniqueness. Which also means exploring things that aren't part of your story necessarily.

[71:21]

But if we have some experience that we can't pin down, we say, well, then it has to be a past life. It has to be someone else's story that we don't remember, but it's something else. So I think if you're going to practice, you have to be open to... entering yourself in a way that's completely private to yourself. And there's no magical barrier where you pass, where you suddenly say, okay, here it's safe and here it's not safe because this is the place at which it's shared and not shared or something.

[72:28]

One of the qualities of emptiness is that Let's take a chair. Which is a standard example. There's no chairness there. There's chairness when you use it. And when you put the parts together, the legs and the seat and the back, you have a chair. But there's no chairness in the legs. Or in the back. They could be used for various things.

[73:42]

But when you put it together, momentarily, there's a chair there. But as it's said, it's a chair by imputation. It's a chair by definition, but not in any real sense. There's no essence of chairness in the legs. If there was an essence of chairness in the legs, the leg would be a chair. And if there was such an essence in the legs, then the chair legs would already be a chair. How can it become a self if there is no self in the legs?

[74:45]

Well, the, yeah. It's like a gestalt. Well, Plato's idea, there were ideal forms behind the chair, and the chair is a manifestation of this ideal form. Buddhism doesn't have any such ideas, ideal forms. So there's no chairness, let's just leave it at that for now, in the legs.

[76:02]

But you put things together in a certain way, and for a moment there's chairness. But even that chairness is there when you sit on the chair. I don't know if you used it for something else, like to pile books on, then it's a bookcase. So when you practice this and you keep seeing things that are momentarily there, Now these things you have to keep doing over and over again because they go against our ordinary common sense.

[77:10]

So if I see a person, they're there for a moment as I see them. Now I expect them to be somewhat predictable, but not perfectly predictable. When I see a chair, I'm not holding my mind to chairness, and there's a shape of a chair in my head. In fact, I don't think we actually think that way. I think it takes an awful lot of energy to think that way. And if you relax more, what you see is wood, shapes, colors, but it doesn't have a chairness till you think of it as a chair. Now, what I'm trying to say here is that this threshold between what everybody believes and what

[78:17]

or what everybody experiences and what only you experience. In the way I'm speaking, this threshold is when you put it together as everyone sees it and when you let it go. In other words, I'm doing zazen. Or maybe I'm dreaming and I'm present within my dreams. And it doesn't fit together. But it doesn't puzzle me that it doesn't fit together. It's okay this way. I don't have to try to fit it together and find a meaning for it. But I know I have the ability, if the bell rings... Or if someone speaks to me.

[79:50]

For it to come back together the way most of us think about it. So I can live most of the time in a world that I don't put together very tightly. If you ask me a question, then I have to put it together. So I have no fear about it being a part. And I have no fear about experiencing something others don't experience. Because reality isn't isn't determined by what other people experience. For me, reality is determined by my being able to put it together the way other people put it together. But I know it's not that way. It's just I put it together that way so we have a shared experience. Anyway, so I'll come back.

[80:59]

Something else? Somebody else wants to say something? Yes. Yes. The example with the chair, if I understood you correctly, to see the emptiness of the chair is like seeing this independent of the chairness. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Or to see another person without connecting this with memories. That's right.

[82:00]

This is this emptiness? Yes. Emptiness doesn't mean things don't exist. It just means you let go of thinking it's real in a certain way. So the qualities of emptiness are that there's no inherent existence. And to get this, you actually have to practice it. Now, there's no inherent existence means there's no essential seed in this person like fate that makes them be a certain way. Of course, our past history influences us quite a lot.

[83:03]

A railroad train is going up the tracks. Mm-hmm. But let me just finish here. The railroad train is going up the tracks. And it's very likely it will continue farther down the tracks. But a chestnut might fall off the nearby tree and hit the engineer on the head and the track train might derail. At the restaurant today, the trees were literally shooting chestnut. The chestnut fairy was sitting up in the tree, aiming... And it could easily derail a train.

[84:21]

So you don't actually, even though you're on these tracks, you don't actually know moment after moment what's going to happen. That means there's no inherent existence. To come back to the example, an object without seeing the idea, that is, without seeing the idea of the stage. It's somehow connected to seeing, too. So not only to see things together, but somehow to see things and that the picture is gone, that's right. Well, coming back to this practice to see the chair, I mean, without this chair, in my opinion, it's something to do with seeing or a different kind of seeing.

[85:26]

Is that correct? Yes, that's right. It's a different kind of seeing which you literally have to train yourself to do. Das ist eine andere Art des Sehens und man muss wirklich, also wortwörtlich, sich das beibringen. If we leave emptiness sort of like in the background of Zen Buddhism, it actually functions fairly accurately and people have a kind of sense of it. Now, if we take it on though seriously, then it's actually quite difficult to understand. And in fact, it can't really be understood. You can infer it. What's inference? You can understand it by inference. It must be so if everything's impermanent. You know, it's a

[86:27]

So the first stage is you understand it by inference. And then you practice it, you practice it, you enact it, you try it out. And then you have a direct cognition of it. So I don't know whether it's, you know, I sometimes wonder whether it's useful to try to talk about these things, but I think I should, and it is possible to understand it. To understand it well enough to practice it. So that's one is... Inherent, no inherent existence, which talks about existence going from the past to the future.

[87:40]

So no permanent existence means, well, we're not going to live forever, we all know that. But it means the world is not predictable. And third is that existence isn't a separate entity against a neutral background. We're not a little pocket of existence which exists in a passive environment called the earth. The clouds, the weather, the sun, it's all our existence. And in a fundamental sense, you can't make any clear boundaries between the phenomenal world and you.

[88:48]

As soon as you eat a meal, it's clear there's no clear boundary between the phenomenal world and you. But to keep reminding yourself of that, so you... Anyway, go ahead. So I have a question. You just talked about the things that you've been going through. someone perceives them. So, but what's, what I'm struggling with is the sentence from the Heart Sutra, all around us, I'm up with emptiness, I'm not appearing, not disappearing, so I sometimes, I don't understand this sort of,

[89:52]

With perception. Most with perception. Yeah, okay. I hear what you... Do you want to say that in German? As Roshi had said before, things arise in the moment when they are real. and I can not understand the sentence clearly. The sentence is from the Heart Sutra, that things arise and pass away, that things do not arise and pass away. All things are marked by appearance. All dharmas are marked by emptiness. In other words, when you talk about the world as Dharma, you're talking about it from the point of view of it neither disappears nor appears.

[91:08]

It's not in those categories. But when you perceive it, it appears. But that's not its fundamental existence. Its fundamental existence neither appears nor disappears. And the fundamental existence does not arise and does not disappear. There are problems with what I just said, but I will point it out. Let's see if I can approach this from some other point of view. Somebody else want to say something, though, before I say something? Would you talk about the phenomena time a little bit more?

[92:10]

Time, yeah? Well, maybe I will. I can't do too many things at once here. So I will tell you an anecdote. After much struggle, I finally came to the conclusion time didn't exist. And I said to Sukhashiva, I was driving him somewhere. And I said to Suzuki Roshi, while I was driving him somewhere, and we were driving and trying things out, and I said to him, time doesn't exist. And that's pretty much what he'd been teaching, and I was sort of repeating back to him what he'd been teaching.

[93:18]

But I'd come to it on my own through much work and practice. So I said, time doesn't exist. He said, yes, it does. So I had another year or so there, right? This line is a little crooked, but this line is, there is, it is said that this Buddhist teaching is an original teaching that every person has the opportunity to learn, somehow a very normal, natural experience.

[94:33]

But at the same time, this phenomenon of time, I am not talking about authentic masters, but about scientists, so to speak, so that there is a sense of reverence, but also that this experience of time is necessary, if you look for the experience, then you can see that it is a point where really Maybe from our point of view, you can't say, be happy if you can learn something at all, because you don't ask yourself at all, do you want to learn anything at all? Because it is any loss of orientation, any reality, someone dissolves everything, there is no understanding, there is nothing for me, maybe you can learn something from me. If you could kindly show us a little more. Well, I mean, you want to get out of this time business quickly, but I'd really like to ask you to spend a little more time on this, because, I mean, you may say, well, we should be grateful to experience certain things or certain unique things, but, you know, being in the midst of this and everything kind of falling apart and then getting it together in the time dimension, I hope I understood you correctly, is really quite difficult.

[95:59]

Please explain a little more. I was going to come back to it, but now you're making me stay with it now. How do you understand it?

[96:10]

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