By attending your attention, it's like you go along with your attention where it goes. You stop. You're not directing your attention. Your attention has now... I mean, there's the attention we can give to anything outside. And now you've developed a beginning skill and maybe an articulated skill in bringing attention inside. So-called inside. And And you're practicing now the main practice of Zen is uncorrected mind. Although sometimes we direct things and explore things, the big framework is uncorrected mind.

[01:04]

So you don't try to control or direct your attention, you just attend your attention, you stay with it. And wherever it goes, you let it go. Now this is called sometimes a visualization based on the body. It's kind of within Zen the way we do visualization practice. Because every place your attention goes, there's a little light shining. Or feelings or something rather come to our attention. And while your attention is on something, you bring your attention to it, you make it brighter, but if it moves, you go with it.

[02:15]

And it's really funny. It must be why these games have such power, you know, kind of computer games and things. Treasure hunt. It's a kind of treasure hunt. And it's really funny. It must be why these computer games have such power and attraction, this search for treasure. And it's really a search for treasure. Because there's a kind of, each one is a clue to the next thing. It's rarely actually random. If you don't think too much about it, you begin to see there's a pattern that you felt this one, and then you notice that thing, and then you notice this thing, etc. Yes. And often one of the first things you notice is it points out patterns of tension in an area of your body.

[03:26]

Once you feel the pattern, as I've said, an itch here and a... something else here, you begin to see almost invisible strings tying up one part of your body. Or blocking in your back or one side of your back may be more a weight or light feeling than another side of your back and things. So what we're doing when you do this is not only you're getting to know your body, you're opening your body to your attention, and you're opening your body then thus to your mind, and mind and body can start flowing unimpededly. And this is sometimes again characterized by a kind of evenness of body temperature and so forth.

[04:42]

So this kind of practice, it's like maybe it's, I don't know what, you want the water of your mind to settle. But it settles better if there's some clear sand, clean sand for it to settle into. Or even an empty glass. But in any case, working with your body in meditation like this helps your mind settle, gives it the conditions which allow it to settle. Now, to use the example I've been using in the last two or three weeks, when you look on the A windy day, you look at these pine trees or leaves moving.

[05:58]

If you're a practitioner, you see two things. You see the leaves moving and you see the mind that allows you to see the leaves moving. And the mind that allows you to see the leaves moving is by a nature or definition or requirement still. It's the still mind which allows you to see the moving of the leaves. If that still mind wasn't there, you wouldn't see anything. Okay, now noticing the still mind is a big step. And being able to separate it out and say, ah, there's a still mind there and moving leaves.

[07:15]

But that still mind still keeps getting drawn into the leaves, getting drawn into this and that. Now, once you notice it, if you work with your body in the way I'm saying, it's much easier for that still mind to separate out from the movement of the leaves, and you can experience it in its own, excuse me for the word, luminosity. Or it's its own clarity or stillness. Now, of course, what I've just been talking about is present in this koan when not producing a single thought.

[08:26]

You can't even imagine not producing a single thought unless you're resting in this still mind and can feel a thought be produced or not. Now, it takes... What I'm talking about is not so difficult. It requires probably for most of us a bit of time. Patience, generosity, things like that. But Patience not that you measure, like, well, I'll be patient for this length of time. That's not real patience. A kind of timeless patience. And that way it might be very quick, it might be a long time, you're not measuring.

[09:26]

It requires timeless patience and a very clear intention. Very clear intention. If your intention is clear and you have this timeless patience, almost anybody of any talent can realize this way. In fact, if you get more patience than brains, you're probably better off. A lot of brains and not much patience. Hopeless. Because this is our, as I said the other night, our fundamental endowment, not a matter of, that most of us will reasonably healthily share.

[10:40]

Is our fundamental endowment that most of us, if we're not incapacitated in some way, share. Okay, so now I'd like to have any suggestions from you what you'd like me to talk about. Today and tomorrow. Or rather what we could practice together. You are not listening to the message, but you didn't do it. Yeah. The breath is breathing you.

[11:46]

You want to say that in your people's language? Nobody can hear it. Well, I can talk more about breath, but the sense that breathing breathes itself is a good stage in breath practice. And it's not something you can do, it's something your breath has to do by itself. So it means breathing breathes itself. So it's not something you can practice exactly, but you can notice when it happens.

[13:16]

And noticing when it happens, you can begin to remember with your body what that feels like. And that physical knowing will allow it to happen more often. Okay. Yeah. I want to go back to something you said several years back, a technical question you made about the way you sit and meditate. I think it was the first or second year that you made a point of to keep our eyes slightly open during the Satsang practice. And you said something to me that closed eyes tend to trigger state of mind that is closer to sleep than to Satsang practice.

[14:23]

and I've since you haven't mentioned the sex like coming back to drama I've always found it more difficult to what I think was bring up attention in the way I understand it with my eyes half open than with my eyes closed and then you go I'm hardly aware of anywhere near a state of sleepiness during psilocybin. So there seems to be a problem for me if I keep my sports and I'm wondering about that. And connected with that, there is my second question, and it doesn't go back as long as the first one, two or three years now. You mentioned a student of yours who acknowledged she couldn't go to psilocybin. much like an insomnia cannot go to sleep. But what you said last night about doubt being able to place fear over, the practice can shift your fear over to doubt instead, which is more fertile than fear.

[15:37]

I was wondering if This not being able to go into satsang, even for perhaps for many years, how do you measure that? How I can overcome my fear that I might be in another case in point, you know? Okay, Deutsch. There are two questions. The first one is a technical question, whether you should keep your eyes closed during the operation or keep them open for half an hour. And I said to myself, I don't know what I'm going to do about it at this time. And I observed that the danger, which he called it at that time, is that you automatically come closer to a state of sleep with your eyes closed than with your eyes open. What I mean by that is that the danger doesn't seem as great as the distraction and my eyes open, as my attention to it.

[16:40]

That was the first time. The second time I mentioned it Schülerinnen, die da waren, praktizierbar und trotzdem niemals in die Redaktion gehen konnten. as one of the words of sleeplessness weaves, cannot fall asleep. And for me it is very difficult to judge that, to judge myself. I often ask about the meaning of the doubt that can dissolve horror in the middle of the practice, whether you are not yourself, in concrete terms, where I am not myself, except in case I am. Because I can't see exactly where I am now. In my own practice, am I deep enough in the meditation or It's like in my first tea, as you said earlier. It's like you said earlier, this state basically encompasses the idea of not getting up and just staying there, as if you were guests.

[17:45]

And if that's enough, I don't know for myself, I can't judge where the limit is. I say, where you are, I'm here, where you are, I'm just sitting there. The clear side of this statement is, you just sit there and don't do anything else, just sit there, but that's meditation. Well, on the first question, you're completely free. I mean, there's no Buddhist policeman around. There probably are in Singapore. They say they have toilet police that check up on whether you flush or not, and if you get a 45-something fine, if you are caught not flushing. That was just in Singapore, so it was on my mind. Anyway, there are no Buddhist police checking in whether your eyes are open.

[19:01]

You can do anything you want. These are just suggestions. So whatever works best for you is fine. The sense of having the eyes open is to not trigger either to have a physical position of the eyes, which is not characteristic of waking mind or sleeping mind. And if you have a light, awake feeling with your eyes closed, it's fine. Now, some things like putting your tongue on the roof of your mouth actually have more effect if you don't do it.

[20:08]

It actually is an energy connection and also inhibits saliva coming up when you're in a certain stage of meditation. Now, I hope you're not a meditational chondriac. Chondriac? There's a hypochondriac. I said there's a meditational chondriac. Do you know what a hypochondriac is? Oh, so I hope you're not a meditational hypochondriac. is that every bad case I mention, you think, oh, I'm just like that. I can't mention any more bad cases because you're like that. Yeah. So don't invite those thoughts to tea. Yeah. And even this person I was speaking about learned a tremendous amount through meditation, even though they couldn't get, they were always outside their consciousness.

[21:28]

But at some point, it was like 10 years, the benefits from that kind of meditation were pretty much realized, so I suggested that this person stop meditating. But this person continues to practice mindfulness and study the sutras and so forth. Something else? Yeah. Anything else?

[22:31]

Well, that's what is this emphasis on faith and on this and an emphasis of this koan. Also die Betonung vom Vertrauen in diesem Koan. So I will be as well as I can talking about it during the time, and I'll thank you for giving me permission to continue. Do you mind my patting? I'd like to pat the translator. You're welcome. Thank you very much. It's okay, Eric, if I pat the translator. Thank you. I feel confronted with the idea of samsara. And in the West we have the strong belief into evolution and development. And my impression is that the Buddhist samsara excludes the development, evolution, the Western idea.

[24:07]

Yeah, okay. So that's a rather big topic, so maybe I can come to it during the seminar. Mm-hmm. Related to it is the idea of, I think, progress and so forth. What's his name? The mother who was in India, I can't remember the person's name now, who emphasized bringing the various teachings together and all in the context of progress. A French woman was called the mother for a while. What was her teacher's name? Anybody know? Nobody. Anyway, it's very common.

[25:22]

I just, my mind is not producing it. Okay. And that's, I've thought about that in relationship to Buddhism quite a bit. Okay. The next step would be the clear mind and the clear mind is seen as ever existent, always existent. Does it mean we have to come back to this clear mind because it is always existent? Or is also the clear mind developing and in It's an interesting idea but it's also part of this question when not producing a single thought is there any fault or not?

[26:31]

So I can say to you Matterhorn but I'll try to not imitate too much Something else? Yeah? I'd like to talk a lot about compassion and about that light compassion. I mean, not to have some practice, but how to live it. Okay, I'll do my best. Yes. Okay.

[27:33]

Okay. Yes. In addition to talking about faith, maybe you could also say something more about intention. I would be interested in how to find that intention to stay with it and think about it. Okay. Deutsch. Yeah, okay. I should stay for two weeks. Ask Giorgio and Cecil. Now I have to ask Ulrike.

[28:56]

Um... It's a nice idea, though. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Yes. Um... I saw you stretch. Um... We've already started to talk about the thing I'm interested in. Because, or you already gave the answer to my question, so it's difficult for me to... Which one? The bubbles question? Yeah. I mean, maybe you could translate it. Sure. Well, it seems to me it's a bit of a German expression. Maybe it's not very Swedish. Do I have to say it in English because you already know about the bubble? It burst. Looks like it.

[29:59]

No, go ahead. In Deutsch is okay. No, it's not a question anymore because it's somehow a statement which came up for me during meditation this morning because I had struggled with this It's the big mind and small mind and how they are related. Because I can identify with my small mind and I do that all day long. But I can also get a taste and a feeling of the big mind. And then I was meditating and I thought, well, you just have to jump and it's not severe. You just sit and you are not severe. So there is no question anymore about, because small mark is somehow, it's in this coma. Because this was a phrase which struck me very much.

[31:07]

The green mountain is the father of the white cloud. The white clouds are the children of the Green Mountain. The white clouds hanging around all day, the Green Mountain doesn't notice at all. So that's the feeling I had during meditation. Yeah, now do you want to say that in Deutsch, or do you want to say it in Deutsch for him? No. I think you speak German quite well. I think you speak German quite well. and with the big mind that you can experience in meditation or get a taste of it. And yesterday I asked him, how can you come to terms with this difference? And for me, today, there was a solution through meditation, That's how you sit, that's the state of sitting, and then the problem is no longer there, because you can jump, you can identify with the way, then there is no longer this tremor, and that was for me a bit like a proverb, this phrase,

[32:34]

Der grüne Berg ist der Vater der weißen Wolken. Die weißen Wolken sind die Kinder des grünen Berges. Die weißen Wolken treiben den ganzen Tag um ihn herum. Der grüne Berg schenkt ihm überhaupt keine Beachtung. Also wenn man sich mit diesem grünen Berg identifiziert hat, dann sind die Gedanken nicht mehr das Problem. Also das ist keine Frage, das ist ein Tipp gewesen. Okay, last night Eric asked me about the kind of bubble of clarity or space you experience in meditation and how to explore it or something like that. And I said, I don't know what the word bubble in German means, but in English it implies extreme impermanence. And it has the feeling of it's certainly going to burst and there wasn't anything there in the first place.

[33:38]

So I said, I hope this inner space or clarity is a little more stable than that. And so this morning he turned it into a mountain. The bubble burst and there's this... I feel I must be a great teacher. If I had such an effect, the bubble burst. Though I don't think I did anything. So it says here also in this koan, the soul body revealed in myriad forms. Then it says something very interesting related to what Florian brought up and what we're talking about, intention. Only if people themselves accept it will it be near.

[35:06]

This is also faith or intention. You won't see this soul body revealed in myriad forms unless you first have faith or accept it. And then somehow accepting it, it will be near. And I think that was partly the sensation you had in Zazen this morning. You just sat down and it was near. Now, since we have to stop pretty soon, I would like to look at one little part of the koan. So after the case in the middle of the commentary, haven't you heard it said that three phrases illumine one phrase? One phrase illumines three phrases.

[36:21]

And so forth. So I should tell you what these three phrases are. Because then you'll realize I think more context of young men's teaching and what he's doing. So, let's see if I can see it. This is pretty good. Okay. In the middle is the best. What? In the middle is the best? Yes. Okay. The architect has spoken.

[37:23]

Okay. The three phrases are... Now, there's poems associated with this, various things, but I'll put it down very simply. The first one is, contains everything. Or, covers everything. Or we can say, one taste. Oder wir können sagen, ein Geschmack. Okay. And the second?

[38:25]

Und der zweite? Is das Durchschneiden unzähliger Ströme. And the third is... The third is... The third is to follow the waves. Some vows can be waved Now, Yanmen was famous. He's one of the people who developed the dialogue practice in Buddhism.

[39:27]

There's something like, in the Blue Cliff Records, I think 18 koans are on umman, or young men. There's about six in the Mumonkan, and I didn't count how many there are in the Book of Serenity. And he's very characteristic of the, when you look at him and know him better, of the whole process of looking at koans, studying koans. Okay. So he's famous for what are called one barrier or one word responses.

[40:50]

So what's the Four Noble Truths? That there's suffering. samsara and it's not to be gotten rid of it's got to be changed your relationship to and the second noble truth is cause and there's both a cause of the suffering and there's a cause of freedom from suffering And so the third noble truth is that there's an end of suffering. And this is called a cessation.

[41:51]

Now, let me say again, Buddhism is, in my understanding of it, profoundly practical. Now this may not sound practical to you, this may sound pretty far-fetched, but it actually is practical because it gives you a way, a path, a way to do it if you want. So if we're talking about an end to suffering, we're talking about cessations. When do you experience cessation? How do you experience cessation? Are there degrees in the experience of cessation? Is the experience serial, one thing at a time, or continuous? These are all the questions our ancestors asked. Just like you're asking.

[42:54]

So, and the next is... There's an end or there's cessations and the fourth is there's a path. And then there's the path of the eightfold and so forth. Many teachings. But let's stay with these first four. There's a cause of There's a cause of the third noble window into the reality of that there's an end to samsara, to suffering.

[43:54]

And that cause itself is a cessation. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So the latter two, cessations and paths, are called true cessations and true paths. And someone asked me yesterday, how do we know if something's true? How do we know if something's real? And a whole, this is obviously a question those, the ancients, our Buddhist ancestors asked. And so then you have to ask yourself, what is a valid cognition? Again, it's very practical.

[45:12]

I mean, okay, what's real? Well, how do you have a cognition that's valid? What is a valid object of your intention? Now there's considered to be two valid objects. One is true cessations and one is true paths. And this is, you know, sounds like funny words maybe, but it is something that you, if you get a feeling for it, you see that it's actually quite practicable. Okay, now, Yan Men's three phrases means that each time he says something, the ideal response to a question does these three things. So he asked this, the monk asked this question, when not producing a single thought, is there any fault or not?

[46:24]

So first, young man wants to give an answer that covers everything. So he says Mount Sumeru. It covers everything. It's the center of the universe. Second, he wants to give an answer that cuts off myriad stream. So somebody asks you a question and they say Matterhorn. It cut off all the streams. And then your answer should follow along with, follow the ripple. So when the monk asks a question, when not producing a single thought, is there any fault or not?

[47:28]

What is he doing in fact? He's producing a thought. The sentence is a thought. So Yan Men does the same thing. He doesn't not produce a single thought. He goes along with the ripples and the waves and produces a thought, Mount Sumeru. So this perfectly fits the kind of style of Yan Men to cut off myriad streams, to cover everything, and to go along with what's being said. So you can use the phrase the same way. You start, you know, your mind gets caught in its mental space, you say, Mount Matterhorn. I like Matterhorn because it's a kind of double Buddhist pun.

[48:40]

Because, one, it doesn't matter. And two horns are usually used to mean the horns on a rabbit's head. Which is not a valid cognition. So I love the examples they use. One is the horns on a rabbit's head is another cloak made of turtle hair. Could be great if somebody asks you, what do you want for Christmas? A cloak made of turtle hair. Makes me think of, diverging a bit here, of the ferryman monk who hid in the bushes after his temples, the temples were destroyed.

[50:02]

And when people would, he became a ferryman because he was unemployed as a priest or monk. So when somebody would come to take the ferry, he'd jump out from the bushes and say, which shore do you want to go to? And we were talking about this, Cohen, or related to that, that when I took this little ferry from Travamunda, And I wished at the time this young boy who took the money had said to me, which shore do you want to go to? But these Zen stories are full of people who, you know, occasionally you meet somebody who asks something like that.

[51:03]

Like, what do you want for Christmas, a cloak of turtle hair? So here, Youngman answers Matterhorn. And you can bring this phrase, Matterhorn or Sumero, into your own thinking when it gets, you know, going here and there. And you can use it to cover everything. And you can use it a way too of just bringing your mind and body along with what's going on. So this practice of this phrase of young man's is a cessation. And simultaneously can be a cause of your realizing big mind. So I think I should say a little more, but not right now, about what's behind this way of thinking.

[52:39]

And how this is pointing at the true practice of emptiness. And I think something you can understand and we can do together. So now we have lunch in a few minutes, but can we sit for a few minutes before lunch, please? Please sit uncomfortably. Or comfortable. Now these recent koans we've been looking at this month or so in Europe, with several of you, have brought me to trying to describe or give you an understanding of the experience of emptiness.

[54:22]

I suppose we could say Buddhism has the two big E's, enlightenment and emptiness. And enlightenment, we can't do too much about it except stand in the way and hope it strikes us. Actually, there are certain things we can do to increase the likelihood that we'll recognize enlightenment and experience enlightenment. But emptiness we can do something more about. And it's the central idea and practice in all of Buddhism. But most people practice with, it's kind of a nice idea, but most people practice around it or ignore it or think it's for someone else.

[56:00]

I suppose it's a helpful idea, but I don't think most of us really understand the idea of enlightenment in our practice. The idea of enlightenment? The idea of emptiness. So let me try to say something about it. Now what things are empty of this thermos? Is it empty or full? This thermos has a reason. You can see there's a reason for it in its making. And you can see that if there's some tea in there, there's a use for it.

[57:12]

Oh, yes. Quite good. It's full. I mean, it's empty. Okay, now what is the usefulness of saying it's empty? That's what we're trying to look at here. And that's at the root of this monk's question without producing a single thought. We can say that emptiness is really an openness of your mind. So maybe we can avoid the word emptiness and talk about openness, perhaps. Now, how is your mind most open? The emphasis in Buddhism is, one of the ways it's most open is if you don't have the habit of substantiating.

[58:40]

Now, I hate to repeat myself, but some of these things I have to bring up again if I'm going to talk about... We have to have the same ingredients, some similar ingredients. So, although some of you have heard this before, Actually doing this is not so easy. And at the same time, it's pretty easy, actually. Which is, again, I have this as a thermos. Or let's take the word thermos. If I mix up the letters, It's just M-O-T-E-H, et cetera. It doesn't have any experience of the word thermos.

[59:44]

But if you put the words near enough together, suddenly you have, oh, that's the word thermos. Now that act where you put it together is called in Buddhism an act of substantiation. And you in effect give your consent to the word thermos. Or you affirm that this is a thermos. But it's a thermos in that somebody made it with a certain purpose and I use it a certain way. But it's really a collection of parts that are arising. We say it's dependent arising. Now this is a kind of philosophy.

[60:53]

And it's an interesting philosophy but it's a lot more important than just that. This is emphasizing again everything's changing everything's interdependent And each moment where something exists is a dependent arising. I suppose if Giorgio is designing a building, there's a client and himself and they talk together and something is put together. And then you find a location, you hire a contractor and something dependent arising occurs and people use it as a building. But for the ants it might be something else.

[61:53]

For the termites, it might be a long meal. But it's a building, but it's a building because of, really we call it a building and use it as a building. Now, it's not so difficult to hold this thermos in your mind both the sun and the moon here, without calling it a thermos. It's fairly easy. It's not so difficult. And so the practice is to get in the habit of not substantiating it as a thermos. And this is also described as not a single thought arising. Now, let me see if I can say something. Something else.

[63:41]

Say that you are looking for me. And I'm not here. So everyone is looking around for me. And you say, ah, he's not here. And you have a direct cognition of the emptiness. That's not correct. What you have is a direct experience of not finding Richard Baker. You don't have a direct experience of the emptiness, you only have a direct experience of the absence of Richard Baker. And that's two different things. If you have a direct experience of the emptiness, then you've turned emptiness into a thing. You've now substantiated emptiness.

[64:43]

And your mind is no longer open. So what things are empty of, objects of perception, what objects of perception are empty of, is inherent existence or some inherent nature. And what they share is the unfindability of an inherent nature. So the middle way means between annihilation and reification, or between giving things substance or denying them, there's this unfindability.

[65:44]

So what you're experiencing is not emptiness, but the absence of Richard Baker. Or the absence of this thermos having any identity until you give it an identity. Now that's, again, fairly obvious if you want to think about it conceptually or logically. No. You might say, well, maybe it's logical, but why bother? Because when you cease, it's called a cessation, when you cease the exist, when this doesn't have an existence until you give an existence, that's the practice of a cessation.

[66:46]

Because you don't experience emptiness, but you experience the absence of an inherent existence of this thermos. We can also describe that as not a single thought arising. You're not substantiating things. Now the question is, when you're in that state of mind, as Koan's asking, is there any fault? Is there a valid cognition, etc. ? Now, as I said earlier this morning, it's at a conceptual level or inferential level, it's serial. I can see the absence of inherent existence in you, in you, and in you, et cetera.

[67:48]

I can see the... Serial means I see it in, and then I reestablish it here, and then I reestablish an emptiness here. But that requires an effort. I have to make the effort to remind myself of the absence of inherent existence. But if you do this enough by inference and conceptual thinking, At some point your mind rests in this unfindability. It doesn't require any thinking, any effort anymore to sustain it. And that is what's called here in the first thing, one taste. Everything has one taste, a taste of unfindability.

[68:55]

Now, what happens when this kind of mind moves you into the present? Because our usual flow of thoughts and identity don't get past this. You don't think about the future and the past in the same way, unless you make the effort, because everything just stops in this mind of unfindability. And everything constantly appearing in this mind with a kind of freshness and magical quality. It almost seems to appear magically. Oh, that's a thermos. I call it a thermos. So because I give it, I know I give it its findable qualities.

[70:08]

Does this help anyone? Does this make any sense? Yeah. You told this story about some shaman is asking, bring me seven flowers. Yeah. And if you give him anything, just a piece of him, is this one take? Maybe I should tell the story. Do we have a window we could open or something? There's one there, yeah. Maybe we could open one back there, unless it's too cold for you. Yes. At least for a little while. Harry Roberts told the Caucasian who lived with an Indian tribe. And he studied with the last Yurok shaman named Robert Spott.

[71:16]

Robert Spott, S-P-O-T. Yurok. And if somebody came to ask him to be his student, for example, or to practice with him, he would say, for example, he might say, yes, but when you ask, bring me six flowers. And if the person goes away and hunts for the six flowers, he's lost. Probably Robert Spott would have just said to him, well, please ask again tomorrow, without explaining why he didn't accept it.

[72:33]

But if the person reached down and just picked six blades of grass and handed it to him, these are six flowers. And I suppose, we can close one of the doors if you want, because I'm afraid everybody will freeze. It's okay. I suppose that that's an example of that. Because the student asking isn't in a mind with what I need is somewhere else. He has a mind, which you can also practice with, that always starts here. So this person, a man or woman, just knows that anything, together you're substantiating this. These are six flowers. You might take a stone.

[73:34]

But anyway, the feeling is like that. But what's interesting about that kind of example is if, in this case, the shaman teacher asks this person, if you stop and think, you're not there. This is not an answer you can think out. It requires your mind to be in a state of unfindability. That you're using myself as the example again. You're experiencing my absence. So when I appear, you're quite surprised.

[74:37]

And anyway, that's the best I think I can explain the sense of not producing a single thought. Or we can say holding your mind before a thought arises. And the point of this as practice is not that you, the philosophy of emptiness, but you use this idea of emptiness and the unfindability of an inherited existence That generates a mind that stays in a state of not substantiating things. And such a state of mind is much more fluid and subtle. Mm-hmm. So if I have a mind of unfindability sitting here with you I feel a number of presences here but I don't give them names male or female or Hildegard or Ruth or Eric I

[76:07]

I can, and I know each of you, but I also can feel just the presence of all of you. I can let my mind rest in the presence of you. And in doing that, I much more directly feel your thinking. And as soon as I substantiate it, I lose a certain contact with the present and with each of you. And through practice you get more experienced at taking refuge in this mind of cessation. And this is a mind that is generated as the third noble truth, where suffering stops. Because in this kind of mind suffering is rather different in the way it's experienced.

[77:45]

And there isn't the usual suffering of anxiety and burden by the world and things and stuff. You're in contact with things, but at the same time you're resting in an unfindability. So in this koan, when young man says Mount Sumeru, He's pointing out that this mind touches everything or has this one taste of covering everything. And the feeling of it psychologically and most emotionally is a tremendous feeling of intimacy, of connectedness. And at the same time, it cuts off myriad streams.

[78:47]

And yet, it's open to the ripples and movement of situations. Now he used the word Mount Sumeru also to say, to express a way of practicing this. Because like the Mukon, you repeat this feeling or you have this feeling of Mount Sumeru on each situation. You're trying to use some word or phrase that interrupts or blocks your usual thinking. It stops it just for a moment. but it not only just stops your usual thinking in its repetition it opens up another kind of stream of consciousness which this open sensitive or intimate mind can begin to find its own space a room to turn around in

[80:10]

And it's a way of feeling. Another thing I can say is you feel a kind of openness and fluidity to the space around you. And in your insides. So this... This koan is trying to get at this practice of emptiness or to have a mind before a single thought arises. And it's interesting, I mean, for me this is, once you see it, it's not so difficult to understand. And it's not so difficult to taste or practice it to some extent. What is difficult is to see that you can actually sustain this or rest your home-based mind there.

[81:31]

So here we're not talking about just about big mind or realizing big mind. But a condition of mind from which everything arises. Okay, let me stop. Again, I don't think it's difficult, but it's so subtle, it's very hard to say something about it. Does anybody else want to say something? Yes. I'm sorry, you say it again?

[82:53]

Mathematic, I heard. Yeah, you could, you want to say that in Deutsch? Well, in that you can represent logic mathematically In this sense, Buddhism is extremely logical. But Nagarjuna was the main figure of this kind of logic. But The logic is only used to use your thinking to get free of thinking.

[84:15]

So the logic is in the service of realizing this state of mind. Which I think, if I say a mind of directly cognizing emptiness, it's pretty hard for one to understand that. But if I say it's a mind of unfindability in which you're your habit is to look for and give a certain reality to things, and then to hold yourself back from that is a more practical description, I think. And here it says, if the bottom of the bucket has fallen out, The bottom of the bucket means that you're a mind of unfindability.

[85:28]

You don't have the usual way to substantiate things. And the red thread broken off means generally one of the examples is you take a roll of thread, a spool of thread, and dip one end in dye. Immediately the whole thing is dyed. So our usual experience of mind is everything's dying all the time. Everything happened to us as a child, everything's happening now, but almost instantly we're dyed by the colors of our life. So it's trying to describe this mind of unfindability which isn't dyed and doesn't have the usual boundaries. It's like space opens up.

[86:28]

So practically speaking, Knowing this, you can have some confidence in your meditation that if you have this experience, there's no need to be frightened. Though it should be in the context of developing stability in your sitting and in your mind. And if you have some taste of it in your meditation practice, you'll find more and more it can be present, subtly present in everything you do. So again, the purpose of this kind of explanation and koan is to give you a sense of this so that your experience can open into it.

[87:51]

Yeah. Could it be... to become more mature as a human being, some of these associated states of mind naturally occur. Because it is unbelievable that a human being should be so attached that if he does not practice this practice, he will not be able to accept these states of mind. We still mind we are speaking about

[88:57]

can also grow just by becoming more mature as a natural result of life. Because it seems to be so really unjust that The state of mind I'm speaking about, which is something I really enjoy, would only be a product of Buddhist practice So the question, is it also a natural process that what you give us is just the possibility to come and fast in this space of mind? Yeah. You're so compassionate. I think this mind before we substantiate is the mind of a baby.

[90:39]

But the baby is very rapidly moving into substantiation. And without some teaching like this, the baby won't learn to stop that process. Let's just look again at, let's talk about it from another angle. My brain has to, if somebody throws an apple at me, My brain has to tell me that apple is outside of me and coming toward me. Otherwise I couldn't catch it. But it's also the case that the entire experience of that apple occurred inside me. My brain tells me it's outside of me, and I start believing it's only outside of me.

[91:52]

Okay. So I have to remind myself by some teaching, hey, it's outside of me, but it's also occurring in my sense fields. And this is something that philosophers say, and some anyway. And it's a kind of common sense. But to draw the experience that you should remind yourself of that until you see the apple both outside of you and inside of you simultaneously, takes some kind of practice or teaching. So, I see an external image, I see an internal image, and I see the mind on which those images appear.

[92:55]

Our mind's job is to, because we don't want to get hit by the apple, is to convince us the apple's outside. And it is outside, but it's also something occurring in our sense fields. So it's taken a lot of people to notice that if you notice both those things at the same time, it creates a different kind of mind. And leads to you functioning differently and relating to the samsara differently. Now some other teaching would tell us something else maybe. I'm not saying this is the only way to be. But this is a way to if you practice meditation you can start to hear what I'm saying.

[94:18]

And hearing what I'm saying and continuing to practice you can begin to realize this. And it produces a certain kind of dependent arising. A person has a Buddhist flavor. You may like some other flavor. And maybe the other flavor suffers more or suffers less. But you know, you have your choice. And what's happening here is I'm trying to Make this clear enough so you have a choice to actually know what you're practicing if you practice Buddhism.

[95:12]

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