This possibility of stopping or becoming still is less an intentional thing but happens on its own more and more. And we also have this example with the snake, again with the setting. Someone else mentioned that he also works with it. And we realized that we actually all do it again and again. And notice that we all do this. When we notice that this shift takes place when you go into your breath or into your posture, this feeling of connectedness establishes itself.

[01:06]

The supermarket may sort of start shining. Whoa. Inika will make the lines even longer. But the problem is when they start shining, you don't have to buy them. Yeah, they're completely satisfying. It may sound awfully strange to say, but one of the few regrets I have in my life is that I've never been pregnant. And I think it's too late for me. Thank you. Anyone else? OK, I'd like to see if I can give some examples that might stay as seeds or images.

[02:55]

in us in ways that make us notice our experience in new ways and in ways that give us a feeling for this teaching of emptiness. I would like to say that I would like to try to say something, to give examples that work as a seed that allow us to look at our experiences in a new way and to make a theory in the sea new. that make us to notice our experience in new ways, and in ways conducive to feeling for understanding of emptiness. An old friend of mine, a scientist actually, who was at the Rastenberg seminar, And he's very engaged in trying to make the world, which he's profoundly discouraged about, make the world somehow work a little better.

[04:17]

And he was present during the whole seminar on the four foundations of mindfulness. And he felt basically agreed with what I was speaking about. But he understood it as being a kind of long program and he's getting older than I am and he's only got so many years left to make contact with people and try to see if things can be improved. And it's true, it is. It does take a lifetime to mature your practice.

[05:19]

In some ways, that's what makes it wonderful. You don't have to worry about getting to the end of it. But it's also something that you weave into your life moment by moment. You know, if his intention is to understand certain people better, that's the practice of mindfulness. Now, one practice I would suggest you do, it's outside the scriptures, Which is I suggest you wash your feet in the dark. Sit in the bathtub, either close your eyes or turn off all the lights, and then wash your feet with your hands in the dark.

[06:30]

So you can feel your hand touching your foot. Yeah. So you can feel your hand as subject. And your foot as object. You can change and feel the foot as subject and the hand as object. And pretty soon subject-object distinctions disappear. And you have the feeling of this kind of a live space that you can't say what shape it is. It's not only the shape of the body. There's a disappearance of the subject-object distinction. And there's no comparison of this to other persons. You don't think, I wonder how Bill feels in the tub when he washes his feet in the tub.

[07:47]

And you don't think, oh, I have a deeper experience than Amy does. You just have the experience you have and there's no comparison. This experience which we can't name but you can understand when subject and object disappear. We could also say it's an experience an incommensurable experience of emptiness. Okay. Now, the Lankapatara Sutra says the lowest form of emptiness, it names ten or something, the lowest form of emptiness is the one which replaces the other.

[08:51]

An example of that is you're scared somewhere in the attic. You go up in the attic of your house. And there seems to be a snake, so you don't want to go up in the attic again. So finally something happens. You've got to go up in the attic. days later and you open the attic and you go up and it's just a piece of rope. Now that's called the emptiness of the one the emptiness of the one which replaces the other. In other words you thought it was a snake but now it's a piece of rope empty of snake-ness. Okay.

[10:03]

This is, you know, Buddhism bothers itself with questions like this. So here is this piece of rope empty of snake-ness. Now you can understand why the Lankavatara Sutta may say this is the lowest form of emptiness. But it's not so innocent a form of emptiness. He's saying that you really believe in God. Or you believe in your religion. And after some years of really believing it, suddenly you don't believe in God anymore. That's not so different from the shift from the rope which had snake-ness in it.

[11:09]

And many people start to practice when they lose their faith. That suddenly it's just a rope. You thought it was a god. Now you can take it another step and say the rope is empty of ropeness. Man kann noch einen weiteren Schritt gehen und sagen, das Seil ist leer von Seilheit. After all, the rope is just strands of hemp usually wound together. Jedenfalls ist ja das Seil einfach nur Stränge von Hanf, die irgendwie zusammengedreht sind. There is no essential inherent nature of ropeness in it. It's just hemp wound together. Es gibt keine essentielle, inhärente Natur von Seilheit in sich. Es ist einfach nur Hanf irgendwie zusammengedreht. Yeah, and you can take the snake. There's no inherent snakeness in a snake.

[12:12]

It's independent of everything it's doing and eating and wiggling around and so forth. So one of the most basic form of emptiness or relative emptiness is just interdependence, co-dependent origination. Things have neither inherence, do you understand that, or permanence. Now, the practice of The most famous koan basically for, you know, beginning practice is, does a dog have a Buddha nature?

[13:16]

Yeah, it's the first koan, isn't it? In the Mumonkan. Which is the most famous collection of koans in Japan. It wasn't so famous in China. Does a dog have a Buddha nature? And Zhaozhou answers, he answered, yes, it's our mother's story, but in the story he answers, no, or mu, or empty. So if you say no or mu on every perception, on every thought formation, you say mu or no. This really isn't different than the shift from the rope has no snagness.

[14:20]

But now you're applying that same kind of possible shift. Because what is the most common... prior condition for enlightenment experience is to be stuck in something and to know where you're stuck and intend to do something about the stuckness. Okay. And when you have a shift in view, that shift precipitates. changes throughout your whole way of thinking and acting and viewing the world.

[15:26]

It can, at least. This is one of the fruits of mindfulness practice and zazen practice. which is that we notice shifts that we probably wouldn't notice otherwise. And practice has loosened us up enough that a small change in view makes a big shift in your mind and body. So if on each perception, You see this is a bell and you say, no bell, no, empty.

[16:35]

Look at this, I say, immediately your senses put this together as a cushion. And if you counteract that immediately with empty. You begin to change the way you notice things. You, in effect, incubate this Recognition that the object is not only what you see, etc. So you get in the habit of saying mu on everything.

[17:41]

I don't know too many people who this has worked for. It works for some people for a small shift, at least in their view. But at least in the literature, when you read about people who did it, often it's six or eight years of working with Moo. Most of us don't have the... We've got better things to do than Moo around. Or our lives are pretty good and we simply don't care that much whether we're enlightened or not. So you don't make this pretty extraordinary effort to keep something like that present. But if you can take a phrase that's where you're stuck,

[18:41]

that you can feel in your life. The more abstract sense that this is empty, most of us don't feel that. But there's something you do feel in your life, I'm too busy, or I don't know what, something. Maybe you take the phrase, the one who's not busy, to know the one who's not busy. And if you really have the sense it's possible, In the midst of busyness, to know one who is not busy, you somehow have to have an intuition of the truth of this. And you stay with it for, I would say, if you're a beginner, a year, a year and a half. I almost promise you some kind of enlightening experience. I'll sign a guarantee, actually.

[20:12]

But it's not a warranty. I can't repair you afterwards. The three muses are leaving. Can't there be a brunette among you? Okay, bye-bye. Auf Wiedersehen. They really did leave a choir before. Okay.

[21:13]

Maybe this is a good time to take a break, or maybe we shouldn't take a break, just continue and finish. Okay. I don't have anything more to say anyway. Okay. So let's look at the possibility of, let's look at a bell. Okay. We can hear the sound of the bell. And we can hear the fading of the sound of the bell. And in hearing the fading of the sound of the bell, we hear the impermanence of the sound of the bell. And the impermanence of the sound of the bell is established through its own characteristics.

[22:23]

The sound itself shows you that it's impermanent. So it's established through its own characteristics, we say. But the sound of the bell is also the absence of permanence. Now this is where, since this seminar is teaching and emptiness, teaching comes in at this point. Because it's clear that the sound of the bell establishes its by itself establishes its impermanence.

[23:38]

But it doesn't establish its absence of permanence. No. That shift I don't know if that shift is easy to understand or difficult to understand. Oh, it's difficult. Our silent nodder in the back. He protects you. In other words, what's the difference between the sound establishes its impermanence and we can

[24:42]

But it doesn't establish its absence of permanence. Because we can imagine a sound which is continuous, like some damn bell that rings forever in an alarm. But there is still the absence of permanence in that bell. Okay, now, If we say the bell shows us the impermanence of the sound, the concept implies that it could be permanent, which is in fact not true. So to say that something, the sound establishes its impermanence impermanence is to say something that's a conditional fact.

[25:52]

It's usually a fact, depending on conditions, etc. But if I say the sound impermanence in the sound we hear the absence of permanence, this is an absolute fact. Because permanence the bell also establishes the absence of permanence. It's not that just the sound is impermanent, the bell also is impermanent. Everything is impermanent. So the absence of impermanence is a fact of the world. Is it a physical fact?

[27:02]

Yes, a physical fact. Is it only a physical fact? Well, what are its alternatives? A spiritual fact? No, your mind's producing permanence. Your mind's producing permanence? Yeah, that's a delusion. That's the reason why it's only physical, just physical. Well, I don't know what just physical means exactly. It's in all aspects impermanent. There's nothing that's permanent. It's like, yeah? I mean, does it make the difference between nouns and verbs? Yeah, you could put it that way, yeah. You know, I mean, if you will call it a belling, then it implies to be impermanent as a concept.

[28:11]

If the activity of a belling, if it has belling, then this hardly can be measured as something permanent. Yeah. There is a difference between substantification and adverb, that you can consider things as objects, which somehow implies, that it is permanent, and in order to get there, you can also see things as an activity. If you add ING to things, treeing and belling and things like that, that's, yeah. I mean, it's logical that everything is, I mean, that's an experience we all have, that everything is impermanent. But I don't know for the whole thing, you know, if you split it from, in parts, like to make an object out of it, or an action, it's impermanent.

[29:24]

But when the whole thing is impermanent or not, it's not so easy to say. Well, in German, please. That the bell is ringing at a certain time, or that the bell is ringing at a certain time, or that the bell is ringing at a certain time, or that the bell is ringing at a certain time, Well, there's a lot we can't say, but we can impute. It's changing. There's a difference between changing and imputing. No, it's the same.

[30:27]

Whatever form it takes, it changes. That's impermanence. Let's say you have a thousand pieces. They always make different forms. But the thousand pieces may be permanent, but they're not changing it. Yeah, well, this is the kind of question people have been trying to answer for a long time. You know, we can say this is impermanent, right? And change. We can say this is. And we can say this is. And we can say the floor is. And we can say the walls are. And when do you jump?

[31:28]

How do you make the little leap to suddenly, outside the walls, there's a kind of permanence? It's called belief, I believe. The idea of oneness or wholeness is definitely, in Buddhism, a delusion. Yeah. But many teachers, what? Deutsch, yes. Sorry. Yes. Um... There aren't, you know, even the Buddha, it's said that the Buddha taught provisional truths or even falsehoods.

[32:51]

Because they actually led to people deepening their practice. And some Zen teachers, and you can look up the lectures and seminars, lectures and test shows of Zen teachers a thousand years ago, and some of them back basically teach oneness. And it's an effective way to teach up to a point. But they're wrong. In my opinion, they're wrong. They're just not quite smart enough. Or their experience has been oneness and they've extrapolated the experience of oneness to the world.

[34:03]

We can certainly have an experience of oneness. When we use the absence of permanence sound sound obviously is my mind the sound belongs to my mind and then there's the absence of sound but there's also the absence of the whole permanence what about the mind itself can i include or exclude the mind as permanent as not permanent it's also yeah deutsch when you go back to the sound of the bell and we say it shows us the impermanence or the absence of constancy, then the question is, it's all about the mind, I take it in my spirit, what about the spirit itself, does that close the

[35:12]

um The mind is also impermanent. And the fact that the sound of the bell is also mind is an example of its impermanence or its conditionedness. But there is the experience of, as I said, if your point of reference is an enfolding of observing mind itself, And that observing mind is not conditioned by the objects it perceives.

[36:25]

Of course it is conditioned. but to some extent it feels like it's not conditioned, and what we primarily perceive is mind on each object, called thusness or sameness. And that feeling and that imagined sense is a kind of sense of something that always exists or is continuous in the world. But it only feels like that relative to everything else that's moving. Sure, go ahead.

[37:31]

So the sound points to mind and then the sound is gone and I can somehow switch to the mind pointing to the mind. And this going into more into what you explained now as something that might not be permanent or something that kind of all at once or something always there. It's the closest we get to something permanent or something that holds, and it can be called dharma, too. So, it was also part of the seminar that the spirit observes the spirit and the sound of the bell points to the spirit and the sound goes off and is gone. And then there is, if you keep this attention, the spirit that observes the spirit. And now it is said that the next thing is Now, in the early Yogacara school, in Chittamatra, which all means mind, usually translated as mind only, there was some sense, Barclayian sense, of the British philosopher Barclay,

[38:43]

that it's really only mind. Instead of extrapolating from the experience of oneness, they extrapolated from the experience of mind to say everything's mind. But all of the development of the Yogacara school has been away from that point. That mind also, everything is changing and impermanent. And there's no background mind. There's no background to this. All foreground. Yes. Yes, in the back. You disagree with me?

[40:21]

I'm doing that? I hope it's good. I think you end up not losing anything. Because it wasn't there to lose anyway in the first place. I didn't understand what Otmar said about the mind when the bell started when the sound stopped disappeared Is mind what you called dharma?

[41:26]

Did you say seemingly or just as if permanent? In fact. Not in fact, seemingly. Seemingly, yes. By comparison. Yes, okay. He's translating my heaves and sighs. Okay. Now, Dogen says this. I can remember what Dogen says. Really? Mark said. Mark said. The sound... Let's see. The... I can't remember.

[42:48]

Let's go to somebody else. Shen Shui. Maybe I didn't say my name. Shen Shui. S-H-E-N-X-I-U. Okay. He said, do you hear the sound, a bell was ringing. He said, do you hear the sound of the bell? Does the sound exist only, does the sound exist, do you hear this only during the sound or before the sound? Hörst du den Klang der Glocke nur während des Geräusches oder vor dem Geräusch? And whatever you think, what do you hear just now? Was immer du aber auch denkst, was hörst du gerade jetzt? And Dogen says something similar.

[43:50]

He says, when there is, when... When there's knocking on emptiness, does the sound of that knocking Resound before, during, and after the sound. After the knocker, after the bell is hit. Okay. Now, this sounds like they're saying there's some kind of mind or ground or permanence beyond the sound that exists before, during, and after.

[44:53]

But what they're saying is the opposite. They're saying the absence of permanence exists before, during, and after. And the absence of permanence is exactly what the Kohan Mu is pointing at. Okay, now say that you accept as a fact of the world imputed concept, the fact of the world, little pea, pear root, root of whistle, merry hustle, big gubble gubble, is an absence of permanence.

[45:57]

And if you come to know this absence of permanence. And this cannot, you can't really, in your senses, you can't experience the absence of permanence here very easily. But you can experience The impermanence of the sound and the absence of permanence. And this is a point where you don't get to without teaching. And as in the sound there's an absence of permanence. And you know by imputation that there's also an absence of permanence in the bell and in everything.

[47:06]

The practice of emptiness is to bring the feeling of the absence of permanence to every perception. But Kei-Chu's card. Or you feel the put-togetherness of everything. Or you feel the un-put-togetherness of everything. Now, I remember that when I first, you know, some of this just happens as a matter of course. I should say as a matter of path. You know, just from practicing Zazen, you know, blah, blah, blah. I can remember I used to get a little bit scared I mean, not seriously, but a little scared when I went through an intersection.

[48:17]

Because I was so used to practicing in ways that often just come up I can't say naturally. As a matter of course, I was so used to practicing, seeing things as mind primarily, as well as an object. Ich war so daran gewöhnt, die Dinge primär als Geist zu sehen, sowohl aber auch als ein Objekt. And I was so used to practicing the feeling the object as space. Und ich war so daran gewöhnt, die Objekte als Raum zu sehen. Like you look at a tree and you experience, you perceive the space of the tree, not just the object of the tree. This kind of shift in perception is quite important in Castaneda's books.

[49:20]

So the word emptiness... is a word for the fact of the absence of permanence. That allows us to speak then about the emptiness of self. Emptiness of inheritance. The absence or emptiness of no fixed point. Stonehouse's enlightenment was to know where to rest in this world of no fixed point.

[50:53]

Emptiness of objects, emptiness of self. Can you hear the absence of permanence in the dogs barking? The sound of the birds. The sound of the traffic. the sound of the whole of Berlin.

[52:19]

We live in the midst of this absence of permanence. making do, expressing ourselves freely. Fast and large.

[54:35]

Why do we wash our bowls?

[54:39]

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