So an imaginal field. An imaginal space. Which we could also call a field of potentiality. And one convenient example is mentioning again my friend who is a Pure mathematician. Yeah, I should look him up. I can remember his name. Yeah. In any case, pure mathematician is just somebody who's trying to solve problems that haven't been solved. But I think he has to imagine that it's possible.

[01:01]

He has to be somehow pretty sure that a solution is possible. So sometimes it takes centuries to come up with solutions. And that attitude is very important in personal Zen practice and probably in one's life practice. Which is you come up with I mean An idea that I can get... There are some times when I feel, say you feel bad, anxious all the time.

[02:05]

But there are moments when you feel free of anxiety. The moments could convince you it must be possible to be not anxious all the year instead of anxious all the year. But if you don't have that belief, which is like be love and be life, it is etymological. It's related to the word love and life. It's related to be life, L-E-I-F, like in German, I guess, and be love. No. Yes? Be life, be love? In the early English etymology of believe, part of the etymology is life.

[03:11]

Okay. Not that that's important, it's just, you know, random information. And good belief also, belief comes from to have confidence in. So it's used in religion too, but that's different. So you have to sort of believe within your life that it's possible that you can be free of anxiety. Like the pure mathematician has to believe, feel there's a potentiality that this can be solved.

[04:13]

Now it's in that context, which I presented in Hanover, that the four criteria for a Zen practice which I think should be or could be interesting for a therapist is the first criteria for Zen practice is all the teaching assumed then enlightenment is possible. Even if in any generation there's only a handful or less people who actually are really enlightened.

[05:15]

Even if there are only a handful or a few people in every generation who are actually enlightened. Still, it's possible. And not only is it possible, the potentiality of it is there. And not only is it possible, but the potential for it is there. And so the teachings assume the potentiality of enlightenment. Or, sorry to put it in more accessible words or concepts, the potentiality of real transformation. Or awakening at least in incremental steps. So that's a kind of imaginal field.

[06:55]

Okay, the second criteria for a Buddhist teaching is the assumption that it is possible to be free of mental and emotional suffering. And a transformed relationship to physical suffering, too. Okay. Now, if you don't assume that somehow it is possible to be free of mental suffering, You won't get there unless you have the right kind of bike accident or something. Things do happen when people have bike accidents sometimes. Yeah. So the teachings assume that the soil in which they are placing their roots in the soil imaginal field of the practitioner

[08:20]

is that it's possible to be free of emotional and mental suffering. And if you believe that or feel that, then the teachings start showing you little nuances where you can move into those nuances and things get different. And one of the nuances is not to care whether you're suffering or not. Okay, I'm suffering, so what? Oh, it's a suffering day. Well, okay. Okay. The third criterion is, is it possible to practice, to live in a way that's beneficent for oneself, for others and the planet.

[09:40]

This is important because if you don't have this as a ideal and an imaginal space, one always feels kind of a little crappy because of the suffering of others. You can't do anything about it and so forth. So the clarity of establishing the precepts in the background and foreground of one's activity the ethics or precepts is a part of what makes it possible actually to to Be free of mental and physical suffering.

[10:58]

And to be gradually more and more wise, compassionate and awakened. Okay. Now the fourth criteria is that it's possible to live close to how we actually exist. Not rooted in a belief or mythology. but rooted in how we actually exist. That, the rigor of that view, rigorosität, rigorosität, rigorosität, das wirklich zu tun, is that, is, is,

[11:59]

probably the most essential reason why in the Buddhist time practice started with the inhale and the exhale. Now, I mean, you do have to put these things in the context of their alternatives. We are not starting with tribal myths, national origins, you know, etc. Creation stories. We're starting with a simple fact that our life begins with an inhale and ends with an exhale. And that you can bring detailed attention and you develop detailed attention through noticing, not breathing, that's a generalization, but each inhale and each exhale.

[13:37]

And that you can bring in detailed attention and develop detailed attention by not noticing the breath. This is a generalization, but every inhale and every exhale. So that's an example of living close to how we actually exist. And I think in the East Asian languages, having the languages suggest impermanence and suggest indeterminacy is the language we use to describe the world has already wisdom in it. Okay, now let me bring up this koan as I said I would. If you want to look it up, it's colon 22 of the Shoyuroku, the book of equanimity.

[14:52]

Yantou, in Chinese. differently romanized it's Ganto in Japanese comes into the room and his teacher Deshan is there and Deshan in Japanese the name is Tokusan it's interesting Sukershi always used the Japanese terms my teacher So I know all these guys through the Japanese names, but I now know them all through the Chinese names.

[15:57]

And for me, they're sort of different people in Chinese. Because I had different associations over the years with the stories. But they're kind of made-up people anyway. I mean, this story of Yantou and Deshan is set in, and they were actual human beings, we know their birth dates and all, the late 9th century, the mid-9th century. In the Tang Dynasty. But all these stories were created in the Song Dynasty, between the 10th and 13th centuries. And if you look at the most famous of all Zen masters is Matsu.

[17:08]

And if you look at his actual lectures they've discovered, transcribed somehow, from the Sungtang Dynasty, they're very conventional Buddhist lectures, but the versions in the Sung Dynasty are full of shouts and dramatic stuff. When you look at his actual lectures that were discovered and then transcribed and so on, from the Tang Dynasty, when he actually gave them, and then you look at the version in the Zong Dynasty, where all these koans were written, there are all his lectures full of dramatic stuff and screaming and so on. So what Yuan Wu, the compiler of the Hekigan Roku, the Lukely Frequence, And Yuan Wu, who put together the inscriptions of the Smyrna rock wall.

[18:12]

Tian Deng and Ong Jie. One song did, compiling the Book of Serenity, is they created an imaginal teaching space. And they took actual people and stories of those actual people and developed them into teaching devices. So it's a historically rooted imaginal wisdom space. Yeah, okay. So Yandao comes in and Darshan is sitting there. And as he comes in, he says, ordinary or holy? One of these Zen stories. Ordinary or holy?

[19:14]

Deshan has... It was bigger than that. If you'd been sitting back a little further... So then the story goes on. And Jan Dau was very sharp and had the reputation of being a very sharp intelligent student and Deschamps' best student probably. He had a lot of students and two or three of them were outstanding. But this story is also as a kind of literature and it relates to a story about the Buddha. Aber diese Geschichte ist auch eine Art Literatur und bezieht sich auf eine Geschichte über den Buddha.

[20:29]

Und es heißt, dass ein Nicht-Praktizierender einmal den historischen Buddha besucht hat. Und er hatte einen Spatz in seiner Hand versteckt. And this outsider was named Schrödinger. And he said to the Buddha, is this sparrow alive or dead? Like Schrödinger's box. Schrödinger. Schrödinger. Is this sparrow alive or dead?

[21:33]

So the Buddha supposedly then straddled a doorway, standing sideways in it, with one foot in one room and one foot in the other room. And said, am I entering or leaving? Okay, so that's the kind of core of the story. There's a lot of other references, but on a koan seminar we could have fun with those too. Okay. And then this story sort of makes fun of people who think this is a situation of a choice. And the koan tries to fool you into thinking that maybe it's about entering or leaving or ordinary or holy.

[22:38]

Now there's a concept in Japan, I don't think it's so prominent in China, but a concept which is romanized as MA, M-A. It's a concept very clear in Japanese architecture and temple carpenters and stuff like that. And it means to basically to experience the world as proportions. In proportions. In proportions. So that if we are, as I said earlier, creating space all the time, that space has proportion.

[24:09]

Now, one thing, again, if we go back to the kanji characters, ideographs, They're often just in space. They're just this, this, and then this. And what they're held together by is space. But all Western numbers and letters, you could make up pieces of wood and nail them together, you know. So the spaces between words in English are blank. And we don't think of the letters as creating space. They create a form. So if you're an East Asian person and you're learning kanji or ideographs,

[25:20]

You make them in the imaginal space of a square or a rectangle or sometimes in a circle. I can always recognize his calligraphy because if you look carefully at it, it's always a circle around it. Okay. So we call the eating board in our new Japanese wood joinery Zendo, which we recently finished.

[26:41]

And we call that board, and it's all planed and not sanded wood. Dieses Brett nennen wir, es ist alles gehobeltes und nicht geschliffenes, danke, geschliffenes Holz. Es ist ungefähr 24, 22 Zentimeter breit. Und unsere Orioki S-Schalen, die passen gerade drauf. But it's also considered, and I call it though, they don't in Japan, a ma board. Because like in a zendo, you don't traditionally, if you have enough space, you don't have a Buddha in a zendo. Because the practitioners are the Buddha.

[27:59]

At least the potential Buddhas. They're in the imaginal space of potential Buddhas. So the meditation platform, the tan, is considered an altar. So what divides the altar from the slate floor is this eating board or ma board. So on one side is Zazen and Samadhi or something like that, and the other side is the activity of walking meditation and whatever else you do. So you cross that board very carefully. If you can, you lift yourself over it without putting your feet on it. So this is an example of the concept of ordinary space and holy space.

[29:01]

You could consider a functional space and a somatic or dharma space. So in Chinese culture as well, even though they don't have the term Ma as far as I know, there's this sense that you are creating space, so you're moving in proportion to things, how close you are to a person, etc. And one of the basic teachings of Buddhism is the teaching of the two truths. There's the fundamental truth that everything is changing, impermanent, and so forth.

[30:25]

And the conventional truth, and it's also called a truth because it is the way we live. Things have a duration that's close to permanence and so forth. And we function in the world as if it was semi-permanent. But if you want to have Deep in your meditation experience, you don't function as if things are suddenly permanent. Function as if anything's possible at any moment and you're ready for it. Yeah. Deshan Yandao brought his medication cushion and things. I was going to sit down. and Deshan his teacher kicked it down the stairs and so he just gathered up and went somewhere else and the next day these are the stories the next day Yanta went to where Deshan was and just stood beside him very firmly

[31:47]

And Deschan said to him, What is this foolhardiness? Hardiness? of foolishness, the stupidity. And Yandao said, I'm not fooled by anything. So there. I don't let anything mislead me. Okay. So in the koan it says ordinary and holy but it's really more like realisational space or conventional space is what it's really about. And so the koan tries to make you think this is about this basic Buddhist teaching of is it conventional space or dharma space.

[33:11]

But the point of the koan, it's not about And both, either, neither. It's not about a choice between alternatives. So when the Buddha stood in the doorway, what he was communicating within the tradition of the teaching was not am I leaving or going or is the sparrow alive or dead but what is the reality that's in between any measure And I feel that actually a little bit with the word high.

[34:48]

Yes, sometimes it means, yes, I'll do it, high. But sometimes it means, we don't know what will happen. It's not there's a choice, it's just we're in another space, another dimension. I often say use a turning word to pause for the particular. To enter into your attentional stream this phrase to pause for the particular. So you feel particulars. But sometimes I say to pause for the pause.

[35:51]

To pause for the field which includes everything, the allness of all. Yeah. So, you know, if we go back to the, you know, looking at science again, is it an electron, is it a wave or a particle? Within yogic thinking, Yes, it may sometimes look like an electron, it may sometimes look like a wave, but it's something beyond anything we can describe that occasionally appears as a wave and occasionally appears as an electron, and we can enter that space where it's neither and nothing. In yogic thinking, the question is not... Is it a wave or is it... Yes, yes, there was a whole tail before.

[37:16]

Yes. Shall I start over? Please. I can get the second part, but not the first part. All right. I don't know if I can start over, because I'm in that space where there's... I have to bring my back. Sometimes it's an electron. I mean, sometimes, yeah. Sometimes it's a particle, and sometimes it's a wave. But from the point of view of yogic practice, these are just two things that can be noticed. And whatever is really going on We are part of it, but we can't know it. So we can be in the imaginal space of knowing we're part of it, but not knowing what we're part of.

[38:24]

So that's disguised in the Buddha's supposedly statement, am I entering or leaving? Well, he could be either entering or leaving. Er könnte entweder das eine oder das andere machen. But it could simply be neither. Aber er könnte auch weder noch. And what is that space of gone-ness or neitherness? Und was ist dieser Raum des verschwunden Seins oder des weder noch? I'm particularly fond of a Bodhisattva called Samantabhadra or Fugim. Ich bin ganz besonders, ich habe ganz besonders gern diesen Bodhisattva mit dem Namen Samantabhadra oder Fugim. Manjushri, for instance, is the bodhisattva of wisdom.

[39:25]

But Samantabhadra is the bodhisattva who enters without taking a step. Samantabhadra is always entered. Okay, so that's my little riff on the koan, which maybe is useful to you when you think about the potentialities of when you're sitting with somebody, maybe what's going on is beyond anything you can identify. Can you locate yourself there perhaps with the client? It's a good starting point, sometimes a good ending point. Right now it's an ending point.

[40:35]

Okay. Thanks for your patience with my, you know, going on like this.

[40:39]

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