Does anyone want to continue the discussion or should we just start with whatever appears? Of course, during whatever I say, we can have any kind of discussion you want to interrupt without rupturing. Okay. So, one of the things I think... Hi. One of the things I think was said... Very clear. Is that... koans are clearly populated by these energetic presences, I don't know, whatever, which are encapsulated in these, or pointed to in these phrases.

[01:22]

In that sense, you could say walking around Vienna, for instance, there's all these worldviews walking around and you can feel the predictability of this person and the different predictability of that person and so forth. Yeah. So... Here we have the presence which happens, which arises when you hold to the moment before thought arises.

[02:36]

And that's a genuine yogic skill. At the same time it's not so difficult to do. If you wake up in the morning on a busy day Usually your mind goes directly to what you have to do during the day and so forth, into consciousness. But if it's a Sunday morning or your holiday or something, You may wake up and you just notice the first light or some birds or maybe children's voices somewhere in the house.

[03:53]

And you can experiment at that time of holding the mind before it perceives and says, oh bird or children, just stay on the edge of perception. Now it's interesting to me that, you know, this experience, waking up on a, morning when you have nothing to do. Which we can become familiar with just through our ordinary life. is also the turning point in a koan like this.

[04:55]

From one point of view, it's just waking up on Sunday morning. I would just enjoy waking up on a Sunday morning or whatever, if I didn't have Buddhist practice. But I, through practice and through the generations which have helped us develop the noticing that comes with practice, I notice that this mind, before it turns into, oh, that's children or that's birds,

[06:04]

When that mind is held to and evolved, it's at the center of what we mean by wisdom. So, Old Master Seejo, in walking, in sitting, says, just hold to the moment before thought arises. Look into it and you'll see not seeing. Now not seeing here is parallel to not knowing. There's this funny version of the thing, you know, When Faiyang says, I don't know, he is describing why he's going on the pilgrimage.

[07:28]

But here's another version. Linji asks Luopu. Where do you come from? Luopu says Luan City. And Linji said, there's something I would like to ask you about. May I? Lu Po says, I don't understand. Linji says, even searching throughout the whole of China, it's hard to find one who doesn't understand. In Gansu, In English, we would call this being a little bitchy. I mean, it's this guy. He says, I don't understand. He says, oh... You're so rare, it is hard to find someone who doesn't understand.

[08:52]

It's quite different than not, than I don't know. Okay, so then, when you direct your effort like this, Not practicing, let me read it this way, not practicing does not interfere with practicing. And practicing or studying does not interfere with not studying. So, this is like going beyond whether you practice or don't practice to something that is practice in its purest sense.

[10:03]

And the secret of this is To do it continuously. Without a thread of gap. Without a gap as big as a thread. And the key here is that it's done continuously, And it's done with the sense of not trying to understand, but as an incubation, as an incubatory process.

[11:19]

Because in this sense, not seeing and not knowing is a way of knowing. It's like think non-thinking. Okay. So then this Yuan Wu, I gave you a copy, right? Okay. is the compiler of the main person who put together the Blue Cliff Records, Hekigan Roku, the most famous hundred case compilation of koans. And Hekigan Roku is, you know, If there's a definitive text for all of Zen Buddhism, that's the Hegikan Roku.

[12:38]

And it was the start of my practice too, because Suzuki Roshi lectured on all hundred cases when I first was starting to practice. Okay. So Yuan Wu, if there is anybody who is an authority on Zen, it's Yuan Wu. That didn't make sense to you? You didn't understand my English. Sometimes I don't either. Okay. So Yuan Wu says, and I'm giving you several paragraphs from Yuan Wu. You spell Yuan Wu Y-U-A-N and then W-U. And then Michael asked me to give him this poem I told you a little while ago and this case and email it to him and he'll email it to you if you guys want it.

[14:13]

But we can also email this to you too. Michael asked me to give him this poem and I'll email it to him and he'll email it to you if you guys want it. So he says sit upright, sit upright and investigate reality. Okay. Within an independent awareness, the idea is sitting upright can give you an independent awareness. To significant degrees, it can be independent of your habit mind. And independent of your cultural mind. Within an independent awareness, you must constantly step back from conventional perceptions and worldly entanglements.

[15:30]

Okay. As long as you're seeing the world through conventions, you can't really investigate reality. Look to the void and trace its outline. And Okay, so look to the void. Means, let's try to keep it accessible and simple.

[16:34]

If everything is interdependent, inter-emergent, always changing, It's not graspable. You can't grasp an activity. You can notice an activity, but you can't grasp an activity. So because you can't grasp an activity, everything is empty. The world is in that sense void. You can participate in the activity, but you can't hold on to it. And to trace its outline... He means, notice in your own experience the pulse when you shift into a conventional way of looking at things and when you shift into a wisdom way of looking at things.

[17:56]

So you have an experience of this shift. Because we have to exist in the world as it's in its conventional way and commonly understood way by others. So you assume the bus is going to come if the schedule says it will. At the same time you are aware the bus may never come. And you wait as if the bus will never come and you wait as if the bus will come.

[19:02]

Then he says, take your head out of the bowl of glue. Observing the reality of physical existence. Is the same as observing the Buddha. Is the same as observing the Buddha. No, you have to read this in the context of that this is a Buddhist text.

[20:10]

And it assumes the potentiality, the possibility, and the fact of enlightenment. And it assumes that you can be free of mental suffering. So all of the comments are made in the context of those assumptions. Now, I think this is quite an extraordinary sentence. Observing the reality of physical existence. That's like this room. This is physical existence.

[21:23]

And he says that's the same as observing the Buddha. What kind of reality of physical existence does he mean? And how is it the same as observing the Buddha? Okay. So we're talking also about what kind of observing. Or what kind of investigation is this? Well, it assumes a certain kind of observing. One example I've already mentioned. is you simultaneously observe everything as void.

[22:31]

You view everything as empty and empty yourself at the same time. And that experience and that recommendation and that imagining and that experience and that imagining is repeated on every moment. And it begins, you begin to inhabit the world differently. So observing the reality of physical existence also includes observing it as we did with the tanjans. And upper Tantian Sabine, who is left.

[23:36]

And middle Tantian Siegfried, who is right in front of me. And lower Tantian, Christina, who is leaning against the pillar or almost leaning. Experienced physical existence differently. So there's a lot in this word observing. If you observe the physical existence in this way, then you get maybe like observing the Buddha.

[24:36]

Or if you observe physical existence before thought arises. Or you observe them before, you observe them as in the vijnanas. Like a person who can speak another language. Your senses now are speaking the language of the Vijnanas. Your senses hear the world. Your senses hear the world. And they hear their own hearing of the world. So you know you're hearing

[25:39]

you know you're not hearing the world exactly, you're hearing your own hearing of the world. And when I see the world, I'm seeing my own seeing of the world. This is also the see emptiness. Because you know, you can't grasp your own seeing of the world, and it's not the world, it's the seeing of the world. Yeah, so, and then, with the mano, you see your own... Uh-huh. Minding of the world. And you see that minding is also an editing process.

[27:01]

And you begin to see that the world is editing. Always diverging. Yeah. The world is open-ended. You... Let me go back to what I said before the break. Um... In reference to horse meditation experience. I like the one you had a couple of days ago too. That was good. One gifted meditator here. Yeah. We know that we are only what you call a microbe in the universe, in the multiverse.

[28:31]

And What our senses show us is only a piece of the pie. And if we're not going to make theories about things, If we're only going to know the path as it meets the eyes, as it meets the senses, And we have an open-ended attitude.

[29:32]

And open-ended in this sense means Allowing the world to be unpredictable. You're not trying to catch it in beliefs and theories. The world is never transcendent for a Buddhist. But it's always imminent. Each moment is full of the whole of everything, although we can only know part. So with this attitude, this open-ended attitude, you have many more experiences that you wouldn't have if you... If you practiced assuming or anticipating an end to practice.

[30:51]

If you practiced without assuming any outcome of practice, Buddha, nature, enlightenment or anything. Again, you don't practice with any assumption of an outcome. That's like a collaborative concept or attitude. accompanying attitude. We have unpredictable experiences. And I like to hear them. but I hear them with one ear shut and the other only half open because I don't want to try to grasp them myself but they begin to show us the lineaments

[32:16]

They begin to show us the lineaments. It means like the ley lines. Ley lines? Or... Of the mystery. They show us little connectives within what we can't understand. And they're not theories, because they're actual experiences. And we We know they're authentic. Because they affect us so authentically. And we may know they're authentic also because reading closely something like the koan, you see that this koan knows about these things.

[33:46]

Okay, so when he says observing the reality of physical existence, he really means there's no transcendence. There's only imminence. And that imminence, that it is a givenness. And again, I don't... What can I say? It's a givenness. So when you, for instance, we spoke about sensation only.

[34:48]

Sensation only is a givenness. So now we can go to the next sentence. Worldly phenomena and the Buddha Dharma are fused into one suchness. Does the experience of this There's the experience of this and so forth. And they're differentiated. But there's a commonality about the experience itself.

[35:50]

And you rest in that commonality of experience. And that's easier to do when it doesn't turn into a percept or a concept. Or to refine our language here, we might say, it may become a percept, but not yet a perception. We're a few sentences in this. Is that enough? Oh, okay. if I have an experience of this flower, we could call that in English a percept, a unit, an experiential unit.

[37:07]

And perception is more generalized into a perception that falls into other perceptions as flowers and so forth. Percept remains unique. Perception becomes general. I'll go along with this until you get tired. And then we'll put a little mark and next year we start at that. So then he says, Yuan Wu, go directly to your personal existence. In the field of the five clusters. That's the five skandhas.

[38:38]

A form, feeling, perception, associative mind and consciousness. So here he's now telling you how to observe this reality. And so he says observe it through the five skandhas. And the five skandhas, the primary teaching of the five skandhas, the five skandhas can include anything you mention, but self is not there. So whatever you see can be divided into the five skandhas except self is not necessary.

[39:53]

So it depends what you mean by self. So go directly to your personal existence in the field of the five skandhas. And then turn the light around. So now you're looking at the world only as form, feeling, non-graspable feeling, perception and so forth. And your Buddha nature will be still and clear. And everything will be simply as it is.

[40:59]

Through and through empty. This mind, which is now, he says this mind, I'm saying, this mind which has now arisen through this this way of observing the world. In other words, by limiting ourselves to observing the imminence of the world. And nothing else but the world as it is. That process of observing has created what we call Buddha's mind. And then he says, this mind is Buddha's mind.

[42:04]

The myriad transformations and activities of the sentry world cannot shake this mind and have never shaken this mind. Thus this mind that we've now arrived at is called imperturbable. And called the fundamental source. Or original mind. Okay. So that's the first two paragraphs.

[43:05]

So maybe I can just read you the next three paragraphs without commenting. Yeah. Well, we've got a lot of time. But just to change the pace, I'll just read it. If I can restrain myself from commenting, whether walking standing, sitting, or reclining. Now, here I go. These are the four postures. And the implication is, in each of these postures you have a different mind. Reclining, we sleep. Sitting, we can meditate.

[44:07]

In standing and walking we participate in the world in different ways. In these four postures in which we live our life concentrate on this fullness of mind. And again, this is uninterrupted incubation of the attentional body. And that's available to lay persons and monastics alike. monastics have the support of the institutional system you're fed though not necessarily all the way you want to be but you're fed without having to worry about it And so forth.

[45:36]

But the point here of Yuan Wu and self is if you've got this sense of an uninterrupted attentional body, that's possible. Maybe it's not so different. Most of us walk around all the time with an attentional self. So we are quite used to doing that. We're walking around, I'm always me, I'm always me. So maybe we substitute this me-ness with non-me-ness. Because if we're already doing it, we can shift it a little bit. And stay with this fullness of mind.

[46:46]

The mind that observes the reality of physical existence. He says, be naked and pure without interruption. So that no subjective views arise and you merge with this Buddha womb. and you will with this Buddha The Buddha womb is the Alaya Vijnana. When the Alaya Vijnana is viewed as the fullness and openness of all possibilities, beyond any predictability of the possibilities,

[47:49]

an activity of non-predictability, then it's called a womb. And it's producing all the time. So that no subjective views arise and Then you merge with this Buddha womb. This is your own fundamental scenery. Your own original face. When the ancients employed their hundreds and thousands and millions of expedient teaching devices,

[49:13]

When I see something like this, when the ancients, he says. I mean, when we look back on Yuan Wu, He's one of the ancients. But he looked back to the ancients. And maybe at some point somebody will look back on us and say the ancients there in Rastenberg. When the ancients employed these etc., etc., millions of expedient teaching devices. It was always to enable people to go toward this and penetrate to freedom.

[50:40]

As soon as you penetrate deeply to the source, to the arising of everything. the appearance of appearance, you will cast aside then the tile that was used to knock at the gate. And now we come to the paragraph that I referred to at the beginning of our seminar. Practice at this level for 20 or 30 years. Cut off all verbal identification. creeping vines and useless states until you are free of conditioned mind.

[52:03]

This will be the place of peace, bliss and rest. If you seek a time when you will finish, If you seek a time when you finish, there will never be a time when you finish. So I think that's a pretty useful text. What are you laughing at me for? I don't know how to express that.

[53:22]

Actually, I put this together for Paul the other day. We were having a conversation on the phone, so I put this together for him. Anything you want to say? I mean, Yuan Wu sort of did it, didn't he? Yuan Wu has already said it. Unpredictable, that's what you are. You're my favorite work of art.

[54:29]

Anything else? Shall we sit for a minute and stop? Thank you. I don't know how space actually can be soft.

[57:06]

What I find is stillness can appear. A softness can appear Everything appears in a softness of space No explaining.

[59:06]

Just the givenness of all things. In this softness of space. In this softness of space. Always concentrate on this fullness of mind.

[60:34]

Even when there's not fullness of mind. But still know there is this fullness of mind. In this way we continue sleep, our practice. In our work with others, in our personal existence. And in this immediacy which knows no boundaries,

[61:34]

and in the immeasurable, which knows no limits. sit upright and investigate reality step back from conventional perceptions observing the reality of physical existence, the same as observing the Buddha.

[63:17]

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