And he was, he felt like a great big person to me, but he's acting like this tall. And I never noticed it until I had seen photographs of it. I didn't realize it until I saw the photos and I looked everywhere for him. the biggest person I've ever met. So, you know, to have such a person so credible presenting this art, really peculiar, but, you know, maybe there's something to it. Okay, this is also the space body. Do you do that in German too, put two little things?

[01:08]

Okay, now the important thing to remember here is if you might think that you go from an ordinary person to the manifestation body. And then you realize this and then finally you realize the full body of Buddha. Because this is the biggest idea of Buddha. So sometimes when you say the Dharmakaya Buddha, you mean Buddha in the largest sense, in which everything all at once is Buddha. And this is a, you know, we can give a simple kind of version. If enlightenment is possible. And enlightenment arises from all the situations of your life. including all of your interactions with the phenomenal world, then your teacher is all the interactions in your life and the phenomenal world.

[02:30]

You can't limit Buddha to a particular person because Buddha as teacher and as realization is everything. It's also related to a basic idea in Asia, which is the planet and the stuff of the planet is intelligent. Now, it's not intelligent in the sense that are mere intelligent as human beings. But it's a kind of intelligence. We don't have a word for it. Now, if you have the idea of an outside god, who is kind made this stuff and then gives us some direction in teaching it.

[03:45]

You can think maybe of the earth as more kind of expendable stuff. But if you don't have the idea of a creator god, then the intelligence we see working in the world can't be said to be God's intelligence. It has to be the stuff of the world's intelligence. Now, when you look at all of this stuff and you see the divided You see all the divisions, all of the distinctions of the phenomenal world. And when you take those distinctions, either to bigger and bigger distinctions like the whole cosmos, or you take those distinctions down to the tiniest thing, in both cases everything disappears into space.

[04:55]

So this vision of the Buddha as space is reinforced by looking carefully at the world and seeing space as the most fundamental quality of the cosmos and things at a minute level. You're saying this again really long. Oh, sorry. If you look at the world very carefully and at the most minute level or at the most big level the most necessary quality or definitive quality is space. Now, excuse me, when I give long sentences, it's often because I think you all know all this and have thought about it.

[06:18]

Okay, this view of the phenomenal world closely examined being spaced reinforces this sense of the Buddha's body or the biggest sense of identity in space. Now, this is reinforced by meditation practice in which the deeper you go into meditation, the more your experience is characterized by space. Beckman can speak not just of states of mind, but of space of mind. So, As I said, the most important thing probably to remember about this is it doesn't go from here to here, but it goes from here to here.

[07:32]

Because this is what you realize first, actually. When you start in your Zazen practice to start having experiences in which it suddenly feels you don't have any boundaries, it feels like your body has kind of disappeared. Those kinds of experiences are tastes of this sense of the space of the Buddha's body and his space. It means you're beginning to experience your body that way. Now, when you begin to experience your body that way, feelings of bliss begin to arise.

[08:39]

Now, when those feelings of bliss start to arise, you're no longer spaced because you've got something happening. So this body is called the bliss body because it's not space, but it's not our usual physical body. Now, this sense of these three divisions was actually developed over many centuries. You started out with just the historical Buddha. Then you began having the sense of the Buddha's body being ultimately teaching. And then you had the body that manifests those teachings.

[09:45]

And this came later. And there's also a teaching of four bodies. But this is the most essential one that keeps teaching and has all the basic ideas. Now yesterday I used the sense of the snake rope construct. So what you have when you begin to see the world as construct, you begin to see everything as When you hear yourself hearing, you're hearing yourself construct the sound.

[10:54]

non-referential joy. So when you start to practice so that you don't identify with representational thinking as much. You begin to see the world as something that you're constructing all the time. In the process of doing that, you begin, it's a kind of sword maybe, this seeing the world as constructs. It's a process of freeing yourself from constructs.

[12:18]

And when you begin to free yourself from constructs, you begin to have a kind of joy arise in you. which doesn't arise for any reason. That's why we call it non-referential joy. And that means when you begin to have that feeling that your Sambhogakaya body is arising. Now, when you see a Bodhisattva like this, which is Manjushri, This is meant to be a depiction of the Sambhogakaya body. Yeah, it's meant to be a depiction of the body of bliss and awareness. Which is not the usual body you experience. So I think that's enough of a start for this morning.

[13:44]

But do we have time for, anybody has a couple questions or something like that from yesterday? Or from this morning? Yeah. Is space like energy? Is Raum wie Energie? Yes and no. In other words, you could say, we generally say, form, empty. Meistens sprechen wir von Form und Leere. And emptiness here is identified with space. That's not all. But we can also say form energy. Empty. That's a kind of transitional point. So when you're experiencing this, you're the sambhogakaya body.

[15:14]

When you're experiencing this, you're the dharmakaya body. And here, form would be the nirmanakaya body. But that's this body. You have the form body. But the form body of a Buddha, you don't have. You have the experiences which could create a form body of a Buddha. But you have to begin to enter those experiences into your mind-body stream. The first year. And then you begin to have this field of energy. Or a subtle body. And then you begin to have another kind of form. Which emptiness do you mean here? How many emptinesses do you think there are?

[16:29]

We're talking of home energy and emptiness? Which emptiness? Normally, we talk about emptiness when we talk about an existence on its own. What do you mean by an existence on itself? It's a good question. I like it. Eigenständiges Sein. Was heißt das, eigenständiges Sein? Because that's a term, just as many other terms are made. Yeah, but what do you mean by the term?

[18:05]

He wants to know the relationship between these three things because normally... Yeah, yeah. Normally in Buddhism, it's not only an empty space, but it's also related to the point of perception you're in yourself. And the perception of a, what do we call it? An existence on its own. He's willing to give up all these terms. When we only speak of this emptiness, just what do you exactly mean?

[19:21]

I can't exactly mean anything when I talk about emptiness. But here I made a distinction between conceptual emptiness and phenomenal emptiness. In other words, you can have a concept of emptiness that makes a certain amount of sense. And that concept of emptiness usually appears from seeing the impermanence of everything. That each thing is impermanent. And the way things exist is not a way you can perceive. The way I perceive you is not the way you exist.

[20:28]

Because you actually exist through impermanence, through impermanence, impermanence and you exist through so many various ways to say it conditioned arising you exist through many interdependent causes I can't perceive those things. Those things are all called emptiness. We could probably distinguish about 10 or 20 different kinds of emptiness.

[21:34]

So another way is that, as I said with you yesterday, you don't really exist. The way I see it. Or you're impermanent. And I'm impermanent. And I have many experiences of myself, how I exist. And many of the ways I exist appear when I'm talking to you. My continuity is moving around all the time. So I don't really exist the way you see me. And what does exist is this fact that something happens between us. Those interactions continue.

[22:35]

But I can't grasp them. I can't get hold of them. So they're empty. So the way we actually exist, I can't grasp. So that's another sense of emptiness. But those are basically conceptual emptiness. They're arrived at through inferential thinking. By inference. And if I think a lot about inferential, think about it that way. So this kind of perception, you hear about it. Okay.

[23:36]

Now, emptiness is one of those things like atoms that you can't see. You can, before there are electron microscopes, or ways in which we could look at least into the molecular structure, various people by inference said there must be this, it must be like this. And so emptiness is something like atoms that you can't see. But you can know by inference that it must be so. Okay, so you contemplate that. And my contemplation is that I see that the way we exist can't be taken over. So then I practice meditation.

[24:37]

And then I begin to have physical experiences of, or experiences of, boundarylessness or emptiness. And those experiences are often anticipated by feelings of bliss. And there's a Buddhist deity, excuse me for saying so, a Buddhist god type. Who supposedly has an eye on top of his head. And that eye is the eye that sees non-duality. And that's what the third eye means. And that... The reason they put it on top of the head is because when you begin to feel tinglings on the top of your head, in meditation, you're actually close to perceiving non-duality.

[25:53]

In other words, normally our perceptions only allow us to perceive duality. Normally, our perception only allows us to experience duality, do-da and do-da. Do-da, do-da. Do-da, do-da. It's the emptiness rag. So when you begin to have physical experiences, of bliss or ease, a deep ease inside you.

[26:54]

Put here non-referential joy, ease. Home. It means that somehow physiologically you let go of dualistic thinking. And those kind of physical manifestations, which emptiness doesn't have physical manifestations. But as long as you're alive, You have that kind of experience. If you practice. That's what I'm calling that phenomenal emptiness. And that's the direct experience of emptiness. Which is possible, guys. Now, the koan... We'll take a break in a minute. Um... I'll present to you two koans.

[28:18]

And I'll just present them. I don't want you to be involved with this tape recorder, okay? We can have your emptiness recorder working. He still has another question from yesterday. Can he read it? Yes, please. We talked about sounds and energy. What is the relationship between these two? Is that similar to form and energy? When you begin to... Form means sound, anything. When I poke her, that's form. Okay, so when you begin to drop the sense of the object of perception, and you begin to let the perceiver kind of fade away,

[29:25]

And the example I use very often is sunbathing. You get meditating into the light continuum and sound continuum. And your body disappears. And it wakes up fried. Disappearing. You begin to perceive whatever you were perceiving sound, you perceive more as energy. And that, practicing that regularly, you begin to awaken your energy body. You experience yourself more directly as energy rather than thoughts or feelings. Now part of this is the development of a continuity of being outside of thoughts. And the development of a continuity of being outside of thoughts is essential bodhisattva practice.

[30:50]

But I don't know if I can really show you this because you may not have the energy for it. Maybe I'm challenging you. But it actually takes quite a lot of energy to hear something like this. And pay attention to it. Because most of your energy and definitions come out of your identification with thought. So if I talk about something outside of that, it's very exhausting. And you may go home this evening. And whoever you see this evening will say, how are you? You'll say, I'm wiped out by emptiness. I know. I've been empty. I've got emptiness. So, yeah, I like your questions.

[32:20]

Okay, so the two koans I'm just going to present to be out there, or out here. One is the Jungian asks Dao Wu. Why does Avalokiteshvara, who we talked about before, have so many hands and eyes? And Avalokiteshvara is often presented with a thousand arms. And usually eleven heads. And And sometimes in each palm there's an eye. So he says, why does... So Yunyang says, Da Wu, why does... I don't know, who asks him, let's see.

[33:23]

Why does the Bodhisattva have it here? I didn't... Well, I have it here somewhere. Why does the Bodhisattva, why does Avalokiteshvara have so many hands and arms? And he answers, I'm completely blank, I'm going to have to read it again.

[34:29]

Why does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion do with so many hands and eyes? What does he do with so many hands and eyes? And Dawu gives a famous answer which is often used as a koan. It's like someone reaching for their pillow at night. And so he says... Oh, Jungian says, I understand. Then he says, how do you understand? He said, all over the body is hands and eyes. He says, Davos says, you've got a lot there, but that's only, you said a lot there, but that's only 80%. So Jungian says, what would you say, brother? They were actually brothers. He says, what would you say, brother?

[35:33]

He said, throughout the body is hands and eyes. Not all over the body, but throughout the body. Of course, that's a meaningless distinction. The koan is just fooling you a little bit. Because all over the body and throughout the body. What's important is he said, you only said 80%. And... And it's like someone reaching back for the pillow at night. Okay, and the other koan is a monk asked Dung Shan.

[36:34]

And I've been giving this a lot this year. But it really pertains to the three bodies of Buddha. Among the many bodies of Buddha, or among the three bodies of Buddha, which one does not fall into any category? So among the Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya and Nirmanakaya bodies, Which one does not fall into any category? And Dung Shan says, I'm always close to this. And sometimes it's translated also as, I'm always intimate with this. And in the commentary it says, somebody asked Dongshan, please teach me a word which doesn't yet exist.

[37:43]

So maybe... From what we did yesterday, you can understand these questions a little better. So someone asked Dung Shan, please teach me a word which doesn't yet exist. And Dung Shan says, no. No. No one would understand. So this is these guys attempting to find a language to talk about an experience or a way of being that's not in language. And that's what I'm trying to do with you. Okay, so let's take a break. And after the break, let's get together and have some discussion among each other.

[38:48]

Yeah, but please pick a different group this time. So everybody go far away instead of nearby, like your group. You know, it's interesting when I suggested you gather in groups not just around where you're sitting. We had one group of nine women and one man. And we had another group of 11, let's see, four men and seven women.

[39:49]

Excuse me, four women and seven men. And the other groups were more or less even. And it looked like where the groups were mostly women, the men talked as much as the women. But where the groups were mostly men, the women talked much less. And usually talked near the end of the time, not the beginning of the time. And the men were tired. Anyway, do you have some, you know what I'd like to do is continue till we get hungry. And then stop for the day. What do you think?

[41:05]

You're hungry now? So should we have lunch and then come back? That's better. Okay, now I would really like when you come back to have some of the questions from the discussion. I'm going to ask you a puzzle before we go. The word yoga, supposedly the root is from yoke. So in practice you're un-yoking you're breaking the connection between the sense of an identity location and representational thought. And this is a location, not just a sense of location in your mind exactly, but it's almost like

[42:09]

where you live, like being in this room. So you're kind of separating representational thought and where you live. And then you're bringing together, yoking together mind and body. And that's, you know, that might take a long time, but it's an important experience to begin to feel your mind and body together. If you think your toes are way down there, your mind and body are not too connected. Okay, and then you're yoking or bringing together interior and exterior space.

[43:26]

And you're bringing together subject and object, so you don't perceive things always in a duality of subject and object. So the question is, If the continuity of your identity is not in thought, where is it? Where are you going to live? Okay, so after lunch we'll discuss it. So let's sit for just a minute or two and then we'll go have lunch. Please sit comfortably. Most of you seem to have the feeling, understanding of having your backbone lifting, feeling through your backbone as you sit.

[45:03]

But not all of you understand the importance of having your arms at your sides and not slightly forward. So your hands position is determined really by how your arms can come down your sides. Because if your arms are a little forward, they pinch your lungs here and pull you forward. So part of being able to sit with your back straight and your whole body with this lifting and yet relaxed feeling, is to have your arms at your sides. The upper part of your arm.

[46:13]

Okay. I would like to ask something. Yesterday, when we were talking about possibility of shifting your way of perception or your way of consciousness to before your mother was born or after your parents were born. But then I had a thought, and the thought was connected with a sort of pain, a feeling, a sort of fear. And this fear was so strong that I couldn't think back. I couldn't do it. It was like it was over, all this feeling. I remember the Deutsch,

[47:13]

Thank you. Thank you. I had another thought that had to do with me at the time. It was a physical feeling of fear in my body. I tried to sit down and let go of this feeling of fear, this superficial emotion, and it didn't work. What do you do in this situation when the emotion is so strong that it takes over itself? Okay, did you say you weren't able to think back to before your parents were born? But anyway, you wouldn't think back to before your parents were born.

[48:38]

You'd think now to before your parents were born. Now one of the reasons, there are many terms which are gates. A phrase like before your parents were born or after your parents were born, they're gates. And before your parents were born means more or less the same, well, let's say exactly the same thing as original mind. And original mind means almost the same thing as emptiness. But If I say, before your parents were born, you're entering the same room, but you're entering it from the back door instead of the front door.

[49:52]

Or you're maybe entering it through your parents' door. So the different gates bring up different, first of all, it's a different approach. And the hindrances involved with going through the gate are different in each gate. So these two phrases, before your parents and after your parents, etc., are gates which bring up your personal story. So when you practice them, things associated with that are likely to come up.

[50:54]

Or you hear the phrase or whatever. Now, I'm not speaking so specifically to you, I'm just responding in general to this kind of question. Now, Whenever you're making a change or you see the possibility of change or even an emphasis in your life and in your personality, there's often going to be blindness or fear or resistance or confusion around the change.

[52:04]

And you can just expect that. And it may just be the nature of the situation in your own life and practice. And it might just be that you're doing the practice, you've got the wrong idea in the practice, which then disturbs things in a way which brings up fear or whatever. Now, what you've got to do, each of you, is I can give you the description But each of you has to discover the practice. And it's like you have an internal map and you begin to explore your internal map.

[53:11]

And some you go into this part of your inner country and it's scary and this part's not so scary and this part's sunny and this part's cloudy. Yes, you want to add something? I am thankful for what he is saying. You listen, I didn't say that practice would make me feel that. It has nothing to do with practice. It was just something which really... Because the practice of doing this, It was before very helpful, when this fear which had nothing to do with practice but just a thought was coming to my mind which had to do with my own life, then suddenly it was not possible to sit and meditate.

[54:17]

This is what I want to say. How do you deal with dry emotions when you sit and meditate? Okay. Well, let me add that usually there's a... Do you want to say that in German? Yes. Yeah. Well, usually there is a kind of, usually there is a connection between everything that's going on and a thought. It's usually not isolated.

[55:19]

So it helps to be more and more in the midst of the fabric of your life. So you perceive simultaneously. So you notice when you first got a cold, maybe a day or two before you felt it. Was that also at the same moment as you had a sad thought about something? Or you saw someone in a green jacket. The usual way of practicing with strong emotion in Zen is to go directly into it or turn as much toward it as you can that you have the strength for it.

[56:27]

Don't overwhelm yourself, but go right into it. And sometimes it's good just to sit down in the midst of it. And say, okay, fear, come on. Yeah, get bigger. See how big you can get. And you sit right in the middle. Whoa, this is true. Like that. And you learn to just find yourself in the middle of it and then suddenly it opens up and you begin to see it like a kind of light. Something else? Yeah.

[57:42]

Is this also true for psychotic episodes? I think one has to differentiate here. I think the... Of course, if you're chemically... mentally ill, you know, genetically mentally ill, there's not much you can do. But the psychotic episode of a person who's genetically healthy, shall we say, I would still advise the person to go directly into it. And decide, okay, I'm schizophrenic. This is what it's like. So I'll find out how to live in the middle of this.

[58:43]

And maybe with some compassion you can say, if I can live in the middle of this, other people can. It's like in the middle of the fear. The really way to go in the middle of the fear is to say, Well, I'll be here all my life. It's okay. Of course, part of you wants to get rid of the fear or the psychotic feelings, but another part says, okay, this is it. It's like the practice of just now is enough. In the divided world, just now is not enough. But in the undivided world, just now is enough. In fact, in the undivided world, this is it. So when you say in the middle of anything, just now is enough, this fear is enough.

[60:04]

You're moving in the middle of the fear, closer to the undivided world. You're moving toward wholeness. And wholeness and health are the same word in English. So this Dungsan's answer, what... In what way does the world not fall into categories? Saying, I'm always close to this. It means, you practice always close to whatever you are. And that's not just close to when you feel good. And that I'm always close to this is also being close to or intimate with the undivided world.

[61:16]

Now, practically speaking, you don't want to overwhelm yourself. Because The fear can really tear apart your divided world. So I can't tell you exactly what to do. It's up to your subtlety and your courage. And your trust and your confidence. If you have too much courage and you force it, that's not good. But you need a basic courage but also subtlety and practicality. Ultimately in this practice you're alone. And you're finding out how to live very intimately alone.

[62:18]

This is not loneliness. Okay, something else? By the way, I say this every seminar and I will say it again. I find it actually, it hurts me a little that so many of you don't sing. Too many of you, a few people speak a lot and most of you don't and I feel you're not helping me. So einige wenige, die sprechen viel, und die Mehrheit sagt nichts, und ich spüre dann, ihr helft mir nicht. You're too shy, you're involved in, it'll be dumb, or what other people think. I'm not interested in your vanity. Also ihr seid zu scheu, oder überlegt euch das, was ihr zu sagen habt, ist nicht interessant genug für anderen, aber ich interessiere mich nicht für eure Eitelkeit.

[63:19]

I want to hear it from you. Yeah. I've been thinking throughout this weekend whether it is really necessary to know of this what you are telling us and whether it is maybe not really enough just to sit So I do believe that this is helpful. I just didn't quite understand it. I do think it's sort of helpful, but I didn't quite get it.

[64:24]

Maybe I have to listen to the tape somewhat more. Okay. Understanding and practice are companions. They work together. And I'm giving you more understanding in this weekend than you need. But much less than you need for this lifetime. Part of what I'm teaching you are antidotes to what you already know. If you didn't already know so much and have so much of it unconscious, I could teach you less. But it's particularly, I think, important in the West that we understand Buddhism pretty well.

[65:29]

I can tell you that I practiced these things in the early 60s pretty successfully, I could say, without understanding them. But they were presented to me by Sukhiroshi who did understand. So I get the general picture which was sufficiently enough for me to practice them. But by getting the general picture, over the years as I went more and more into practice, it fit together.

[66:49]

And if the teaching isn't good in the beginning, even if it's more than you need, later you find yourself in trouble. And there's certain kinds of things that can come up in practice. Where you think, boy, this is kind of crazy making. What's happening here? The more you go into practice and let go of your usual personality, you can get lost. So part of what I'm giving you is permission. I'm telling you things that give you permission to have some balance when you feel you're getting lost.

[67:58]

But my feeling is if you take away from this weekend one thing, That you really feel. Or you take away from this weekend kind of gut level feeling. Then I've done much more than I. I've been pretty successful. That's more than enough for me if you each get one thing. But this is a teaching that has risen out of thousands of people trying to understand this life. And they finally come to this simple conclusion. description.

[69:06]

If you really want to get into the discussions they had, then it gets real complicated. And the disagreements and so on. It's as if Jung and Freud and Arnold Mandel and James Hillman and Adler and so forth. All of these positions were discussed over centuries. And then finally they worked out, okay, this is how it works. What I think's gonna happen in the world, if I can throw something like that out, is there's going, once something is out there, everyone has to take account of it.

[70:12]

You can't forget it. There's gonna be two movements in the world. And one movement is going to be toward a kind of international identity. You're comfortable in Germany, you're comfortable in America, you're comfortable in Japan. And you feel at ease with Sufism or Buddhism or Taoism or Christianity. And the other movement is going to go more toward individual identities. As you see Russia splitting up into its components. Or you see the Basques able to maintain their language and really genetic group, even though they're half in Spain and half in France.

[71:22]

And they have a language which is related to Chinese and not other European languages. So you're going to have more move toward regional and local identities. You're going to have people going deep into Christianity and deep into Judaism and others mixing the stuff together. But both directions are going to be quite similar because once the stuff is out there, both have to take account of it. And I think the world will be divided actually on basis of energy, personal energy. One of the big distinctions between people is people who have energy and people who don't have energy.

[72:55]

And the world is, I can see it now being divided more along the lines of those who can talk to each other and those who can't talk to each other. And we don't know what kind of culture that's going to produce or what kind of social forms, but we're all involved in it. And certainly partly we're going to end up with languages, meta-languages of spiritual life and practical life which we don't yet know. So Buddhism is a language And it's a meta-language which informs a whole civilization. And I can't be taught in one weekend. But if you just want to practice zazen in terms of your own personal history, you're fine.

[74:14]

But even then, if you, as over the next ten years you meet certain problems, most of those problems somebody has sort of given some suggestion on how to meet them. Okay. That's not a really great answer to what you said. Yes. One question relates to practice. Does it make sense to take one of these things and start constantly practicing it, or just pay attention to my breath and wait what comes up? Both.

[75:15]

Right. Okay, no contradiction. Yes. And most of the time, the situation is that I have a point of death for a while. And I don't know how to deal with it in the future. the following happens, that I reach a sort of dead end in my meditation, that I start becoming really overwhelmed by all kinds of things coming up, and I sort of... Yeah, kind of doze off and just realize after 10 or 15 minutes that I'm just sitting there again and this dead end comes up over and over and my question is what to do.

[76:38]

It's a kind of neurasthenic response. You know, sometimes so much is happening we just kind of go to sleep in the middle of it. It's good you notice you go to sleep. That's great. Sometimes if you're a little bit sleepy and you're reading a book, You'll fall asleep. And you wake up and you say, I'm going to read. So you start back and you start reading. And you read for a while and then suddenly you fall asleep. And then you wake up and you say, I really want to finish this. You read and then you fall asleep. And if you look carefully, you've fallen asleep on the same words every time.

[77:46]

There's something about whatever associations occurred when you read the middle of that paragraph put you to sleep. And you notice it more because you're kind of sleepy, so it's easy to fall asleep on the point. And if you're awake, what you do is you don't fall asleep, you just don't read it. And you can go back to a text a year later and you say, I didn't ever read this paragraph. Or you didn't see the implications of it. For instance, I read for years the mindfulness of the body. And I didn't get that it really meant the bodyfulness of the body. So it doesn't mean you know the body through the mind, it means you know the body through the body.

[79:00]

So I wasn't capable of imagining such a thing, so I read the mindfulness of the body, meaning thinking or feeling about the body through the mind. So often when you reach a point where it's all kind of like you fall asleep, You're also often very close to making it clear or finding a gate, but you can't deal with it and you fall asleep. So it's usually not the confusion that puts you to sleep, it's the possibility of undoing the confusion that puts you to sleep.

[80:05]

So it's a very valuable point you were talking about. Then you see if you can be present in it and then you lose it again, but that's life. That's practice. It's part of what makes it fun or at least deeply satisfying. It's not a game. Do you have to go? Oh, okay. Bye-bye. Her husband is giving a concert. this afternoon and he's quite insistent that she attend.

[81:06]

Thank you very, very, very much for translating. Bye-bye. Sometimes during my meditation practice certain images appear or colors appear and then I feel really dislocated or dislocation of my body kind of like distorted or up there or somewhere. And then some Zen teachers or what some books say, this is a delusion.

[82:09]

And the wrong breathing. I think it's to say that it's delusion is useful if you get involved with this. Oh great, I'm having fireworks. But I don't think delusion is such a useful word. It's just something that happens when you sit. And yes, it's caused by something. Maybe your posture's off or maybe it's making your posture off. But more likely it's your energy is beginning to change and this is the manifestation of it.

[83:15]

I just try to be still in it. Once or twice during the period, straighten your posture. And let whatever happens happen. The basic attitude in practice is welcome. Willkommen. Yeah, something else, maybe one more, and then I've got to sort of finish this, if we're going to. Noch eine Frage. We were talking about hearing, hearing, and we're trying to understand what does it mean to hear your hearing.

[84:21]

When we were thinking, it's an example, I don't know if it's the right one, sometimes you are not quite asleep, not quite awake, somewhere between, and you hear something, I don't know, the telephone is ringing. You hear it, but you don't know what it is, you only hear something, and then... The next moment you're awake and then you're, oh, that's telephone. Is this hearing of the telephone ring, we do not recognize it as a telephone company? Yes. Did I say that in German? Yes, we spoke to our group about hearing and hearing. And we tried to understand it. And I thought it was an example, perhaps, that if you are not bad, for example, when you get a phone call, where you hear it, where you don't know what the sound is, where you hear a certain sound, until the next minute, you know why, you know, oh, yes, that's a telephone call.

[85:49]

I thought at the moment when you hear it, you don't know what it is. Okay, now, what she has, what she's basically done or reported on what the group did is you heard a phrase like hearing, hearing. Now, the word hearing is language about the act of hearing. This is just one word, hearing. And it covers something that goes on all your life. And the word doesn't explain any of the gradations of hearing. Sometimes you hear something and it makes you cry.

[86:57]

Sometimes you hear something and the word is like a physical object that hits you. Sometimes you hear something and a tremendous ease goes through your body. or what so forth. So language just doesn't cover the territory of hearing. So remember this phrase in the koan, tell me a word that doesn't yet exist. Hearing, hearing is an attempt to tell you a word that doesn't exist. So first of all is to accept that this is language about something that there isn't language for.

[88:06]

You can't look up the meaning in the dictionary. Under hearing, under hearing, hearing, oh yes. Very clear. But you can look it up in your own experience. So you have to get so that you can kind of find something in your own experience that gives you a thread or a feeling for it. And often it's in in territory where language usually doesn't reach, which is like when we're half asleep. Now, the only difference I would, or the only thing I'd add to what you said, is you're nearly asleep. You hear something.

[89:19]

What is that? Something's happened. Am I snoring? Is that the phone ringing? You're putting it together and then, oh yeah, it's a telephone. So hearing is hearing something, but you haven't yet turned it into a perception. Now, in the example you gave it's sequential. You didn't know what the construction was, but something was happening. You added a construction and you recognize it as the telephone. Then you added a feeling. I don't want to get up. Or you add a feeling like, oh, it might be important. Who would call at this hour?

[90:34]

Then anxiety. And then associations. Might be my mother. And then consciousness appears. waking consciousness. I just described the five skandhas to you. That's exactly how the five skandhas work. Which are the five constituents or personality streams. Now the only thing that happens differently in practice is all of this which I just described sequentially happens simultaneously. So that simultaneously you hear the sound as the telephone construction and as indeed as a non-constructed sound. You hear the field of sound and the object of the perception simultaneously.

[91:43]

Or there's a pulse and you can feel one, feel the other, feel one, feel the other. And that pulse is what's meant where I said, thus come, thus gone. Thus come, thus gone. And it's one of the meanings of thusness or of perceiving things in terms of non-conceptual perception. Where you perceive non-conceptually, and conceptually you see it's a phone, non-conceptually you don't recognize it. And you put those two together, and it's called thusness. And where on the one hand you perceive in concepts, in this sense you realize that it is a telephone, on the other hand you do not live in concepts and you bring both together, unite it, and that is the so-to-be.

[92:55]

Good day. Does that also apply to the thing that was mentioned yesterday with the tone, which consists of the three parts of the tone and not the tone? Is that the same thing? Is this also true for what you mentioned yesterday, like the sound and no sound? Sound and no sound is a subtler version of the same thing. So instead of having construct, field of sound, you now have construct, field of sound, emptiness. And then I added two more things. Because we're primarily creatures of eye construct.

[93:37]

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