Now, one of the senses of Buddhism, and I'll try to explain these things enough but not fully, I don't have time, is of certain phrases being used I don't know how to put it. A sense of the power of certain words, if you can put them a certain way, that they penetrate people to turn people's lives. Okay, so one of the basic practices of Zen, of course, is koan practice and wado practice. So when I give you a phrase like mountains and rivers are not seen in a mirror, you can't say that this has exactly a logical meaning, but I think you have some feeling from it.

[01:10]

Und so kann man sagen, dass dieser Satz nicht direkt eine logische Bedeutung hat, oder ihr kein logisches Verständnis darin seht, aber ihr habt ein Gefühl davon. Oder auch, ihr sollt wissen, dass es jemanden gibt, der nicht beschäftigt ist. Okay, so actually this phrase form is an emptiness and emptiness is form was used in that sense in the way the Chinese consciously put this sutra together to emphasize the phrase form is emptiness. It was a decision to get the teaching out there. Now, we'll be here all night. Now, oh dear.

[02:32]

No, it's not true. I want to try my new reading glasses with you. I'm getting old here. I don't really need them, but it's fun to put them on. Oh, thank you. It's all right. I can see. I found my place. Oh dear.

[03:32]

Ah, here we are. If a Buddhist sees a world just come into being, where the people there don't yet have the tools for livelihood and understanding, enlightening beings, not enlightened beings, but enlightening beings become craftsmen. And they teach them various skills. They don't do anything or make anything that will oppress or afflict living beings. They only explain things that will be of benefit to the world. Various fields of knowledge such as the incantational arts and medicine will be, they'll explain.

[04:57]

Incantational? Chanting, magic, etc. Verschiedene Felder des Wissens, wie zum Beispiel, die etwas mit Chanten oder so zu tun haben und der medizinischen Kräuter. And enlightening beings use various methods and techniques and adapt them to worldly conditions to liberate beings. And although they adapt themselves, just like lotus blossoms, the water doesn't stick to them. With extraordinary thoughts and profound talent, and with song and dance and conversation admired by the masses, And they manifest like magicians all the various arts and crafts of the world.

[06:04]

And I think this is interesting. They say here, some make a show of visiting shrines of various deities. And some make a show of entering the water of the Ganges. means they pretend they're hindus even though they're not and some eat roots and fruits and various herbs and they make a show of these practices Some show themselves kneeling or standing on one foot.

[07:24]

Like Shiva. Some lie on thorns or in dust and dirt. And while they do this, they are still always contemplating the truth that transcends these things. And these truths and the four noble truths may be explained in local magical language. In skillful esoteric speech. In direct human speech. They may be told in the language of divine mystery.

[08:28]

They may be told through an analysis of words. And so forth. It goes on for pages. So I read that to you to give you a sense of who these guys were who wrote this sutra. Do you get a feeling from what I just read about this? These guys said, geez, we'll pretend to be Christians, Hindus, magicians, doctors, as long as we can teach them the truth of emptiness. I have a friend actually who wrote two Buddhist books using Christian terminology and got a Christian press to publish them when really he's teaching Buddhism. And he feels comfortable.

[09:34]

It's understood as Christianity is fine. If it's understood as Buddhism, it's fine. So these guys and gals... Nowadays there have got to be more gals in Buddhism, I think, now that we have the opportunity. Okay. We're quite conscious of what they were doing when they coined a phrase like form is emptiness, emptiness is form. And they were so successful that if I go to Berlin at this conference in Potsdam and I ask the audience how many people have heard of Form as Emptiness, many of the audience will hold up their hand.

[10:43]

They don't know anything about Buddhism, but they've heard this phrase. And that was the intention of the Chinese guys who put this together. Could you turn the light back down, please? I thought you were going to the kitchen. I like hearing you come down. I'm in my room, I hear you. I think it's Long John Silver. Do you read Long John Treasure Island in German?

[11:45]

Okay, there's a mantra for you, Long John Silver. Okay, so let's see if we can tie this up here a bit. Okay, so the sense that, the three senses of form are again, form as including every, just being a word for everything that you can see and so forth. And the second? Thoughts. Thoughts, everything. Yeah. Anything has a shape is form.

[12:56]

Then there's also this idea as linked to and including emptiness, because not only is emptiness form, form is emptiness. And then we have practices and understandings and koans based on form is form and also emptiness is emptiness. And these are actually a little different ways of understanding and practicing. And there's a third sense of form, which is form as it is turning into emptiness. Now, This is, to go back to the words I used yesterday, of the indivisible world and the divisible world.

[14:01]

Yeah. When you begin to see form in such a way and in such detail, and as I said again yesterday, preciseness, that it's already the mark of emptiness is in it. So the bodhisattva is distinguished again, as I implied yesterday, from the our heart. is the bodhisattva is one who is a co-arising being who arises simultaneously in emptiness and form so you could say is arising simultaneously in nirvana and samsara So simultaneously doesn't leave the world of Buddha or the world of ordinary people.

[15:26]

So all the Bodhisattva's actions are permeated by, pervaded by the world of indivisibility, indivisibility, yeah? Which is also invisible, sort of, but let's call it indivisible. And in the world of divisibility. Now, When you say, when you use a word like divisibility is different from form, you're talking about dividing it, something that can go back together. So if you even practice with this word as a wado, turning word, of divisibility, and you see everything as something that's divided, separated, and coming back together, you again begin to change the basis on which you perceive.

[16:43]

And if you now practice with the term shareability in the sense of a wordos, i.e. such a word that turns you around, then you will be able to see that this perception that everything is shareable changes you and your practice. So this sutra is asking you to get to the point of perception where you see form as arising simultaneously as emptiness. Now, one last point is what the Yogacara school did. Now, this form and emptiness stuff is the Madhyamaka school. Yeah.

[17:46]

But the Yogacara school comes along and says, okay, this is not nihilism. This is not just emptiness. This emptiness is a kind of being. This emptiness itself is a Buddha. So when we chant in the meal chant, one of the names of Buddha is Prajnaparamita. One is Avalokiteshvara, one is so forth, one is... Samantabhadra, and one of them is Prajnaparamita, which is the name of a sutra or a teaching. Is that enough? You don't have to translate. Sorry. We have the names of the Buddhas in the screen. I got too involved in thinking about it. Yeah, okay. Anyway, one of the names of Buddha is this teaching, Prajnaparamita.

[18:51]

Okay. I try not to tell you too much here. But I want to give you a little more of a feeling of this. So this sutra is about how you view the mind. And in itself it's supposed to be an experience of viewing the mind. So Avalokiteshvara is the Bodhisattva who sees everything as it's often translated from on high, deep in this practice of wisdom that's the perfection of wisdom, sees that all, sees the five skandhas are empty and thus is saved from suffering.

[20:09]

I think to go into this anymore, and if I do, I should wait till tomorrow. Okay, so let me just say a few things to end. So the Heart Sutra is trying to get you to see emptiness simultaneously with form.

[21:14]

And as you get closer to seeing form as emptiness, your body begins to feel certain things. And your body feels certain things which are actually called the glorified body. Like adopting a term from Christianity, I guess. And a body which is called the Sambhogakaya or bliss body. Okay. So now, the Dharmakaya body means the body of space or emptiness. But at the point at which Form and emptiness are very closely related.

[22:29]

The divisible and indivisible were very close. You have the Dharmakaya becoming the Sambhogakaya and the Sambhogakaya becoming the Dharmakaya. Now that's an actual experience in your meditation. As you develop a base in stillness, this is the house distiller, and a deepening calmness, you begin to have the eye and the energy to see form and emptiness arising simultaneously. And then out of this calmness arises a beginning feeling of bliss. Now, when this bliss is at your stomach where we concentrate sometimes, that's considered the bliss of integration, the joy of integration.

[23:51]

You see, this is not just philosophy. The experience of non-duality, of non-duality integration happens here in your body. And the feeling of spaciousness of which your body begins to have no boundaries and the bliss associated with that is related to this chakra. Now, the guy in here is, often in these sutras, in this flower ornament sutra, is Manjushri. And you see, this is Avalokiteshvara manifesting the Sambhogakaya body because the jewelry is where the chakras are.

[24:56]

And Manjushri is the Bodhisattva of wisdom. So that's why Ishi is holding her fingers here at this chakra. Because this chakra is where bliss appears and the feeling of space. So one sort of esoteric reason this is called the Heart Sutra is because this is not just heart as love, but heart as space and all inclusiveness. So when you begin to concentrate and be free of concentration in zazen,

[26:09]

And you begin to manifest and feel this spaciousness and bliss. And we would say then that you are manifesting the heart sutra. then when you chant it, you're supposed to chant it from that feeling. Now, let me go back to the word prajna. We could say prajna as wisdom means most simply to, it means emptiness, but most simply it also means to be able to change your sense of location. Only wise people can do that. Now, when you make the simple shift to hearing the birds, which are good teachers in the Sashim, now, I'm not joking.

[27:50]

I'm serious when I say there are teachers. You may have an experience as a child when you first heard a bird. And a kind of joy may have gone through you. And you might have passed that off as just hearing a bird, you know, I had to go to school the next day or talk to my mother or something. Or at night you may be working and you suddenly hear a train whistle or something. Some feeling goes through your body. That's teaching. That means you've shifted your location out of your thoughts into a sound, the field of sound, And a kind of bliss arises.

[29:05]

And that bliss is the juice of prajna. But until you study Buddhism, you probably don't know how to emphasize that, how important that is. So prajna is to be able to move your sense of location, your sense of identity perhaps, from one sense faculty to the other. And generally, since there are most powerful sense faculties for human beings are light and sound, The person manifesting prajna is residing either in light or sound.

[30:22]

Now, when you listen to these birds in the morning, our teachers, There often is not only these wonderful sounds and as someone discriminating said there's a particular good singer among them. There are little moments of silence in which all the birds stop or nearly stop and then they move again. You can also reside in those moments of silence. And even here in this room, we can make it very explicit or it can be subtle, there are little moments of silence which we all participate in. Well, I don't want to express my gratitude to you too often or too obviously.

[31:46]

Like every day or something. But I want to say I really am really grateful to each of you. I mean, it's because of each of you I'm here. And I'm grateful to all of you too, as well as each of you, more because all of you is necessary for all of you. Anyway, it's surprising how many of you have come to know each other and have some contact throughout the year. And really the practice of a good friend is as important as your teacher.

[33:04]

And in the end really your teacher is only a good friend. And it's that sense of friendship in the Dharma and in practice that makes practice strong actually and effective. And I'm grateful for Steve willing to come here and sit every period with us all the way from America. And you'd think we, having known each other for so many years, get kind of bored with each other, but for me it's a special joy to sit with Steve. And the same for Mark, too, to come here from Creston. He's pretty new.

[34:20]

We've only been practicing together about, at Creston, what, two, three years? Less than two. And before that in Santa Fe for about a year or so. And yet he's already an adept. Ha! Now he's going to be embarrassed to go into the kitchen. And I don't want to go on forever, but I have to also say I'm very grateful to Frank for being so friendly to us and making it possible for us and Angelica to be here. I mean, this is a beautiful place with all this water winding around in between the land. And all our teacher birds who made their home here.

[35:33]

Including the woodpecker, the schlatz. who has his own little Han, that's the wooden sounding board. Once in San Francisco at our temple, someone called the taxi driver and said, can you come to such and such an address and pick up somebody? And the taxi driver said, well, and he said, oh, oh, you mean the woodpecker building.

[36:37]

Because we had, we don't have it here, but a big wooden board that we hit with a mallet, cluck, cluck, cluck, and it can be heard out in the street, it's so loud. A mallet, a wooden hammer. Maybe we should get one for here and use it unless the neighbors would complain. We have to consult with Frank about all these things. And finally, I couldn't do any of this without Ulrike's help. I mean, I couldn't talk to you, and she stays in contact with you all year. I don't know. I'm very lucky. And you guys are all learning all this so fast that pretty soon I'll be obsolete.

[37:51]

Really, when I watched you all eating yesterday, I was so proud you all just did it perfectly in just five days. Okay. Let me sort of pick up where I left off yesterday. We've spent a lot of time on your outer posture, your zazen posture, and this inner-outer relationship to the world that can be discovered through things like the orioke eating practice.

[39:04]

And We haven't talked much in this session about inner posture. And the main inner posture is breath. Now, even though the basic practice of Zen is uncorrected state of mind, Still, we do take care of our outer physical posture. And you need some inner posture too to discover uncorrected state of mind. Otherwise you just have a confused state of mind.

[40:09]

And the main inner posture of zazen is counting or following or residing in your breath. As you in some senses are discovering the pace of the phenomenal world in a kind of subtlety and detail by some practice like the Oryoki, and doing one thing at a time completing each thing one thing at a time this is discovering an outer pace which allows you to enter the world and the world to enter you a pace of the physical world.

[41:25]

And you also need a kind of pace of the interior world. And that pace is initially discovered through counting, following, or residing in your breath. And in a sense, I could stop right there. So it's actually pretty useful to count your breaths, whether you're a beginner or advanced practitioner.

[42:28]

And as virtually all of you know, we generally count our exhales to ten and then start again at one. And you count your exhales with a sense of bringing your mind and attention to the one. And bringing your mind and attention and all your the content of you, mind, thoughts, feelings, to that breath and let it go out. And really practicing having the feeling of dying on each breath, going, disappearing. And then on the inhale, which comes, the world reappears.

[43:37]

So you may start out doing this by counting, but the important thing is that you begin to have the feel of breath in everything you do. Your posture, zazen posture, is within and without your breath, within and inside your breath, and, I'll just say, your posture is within your breath. I couldn't make the English word. Gosh knows what you do with the German. And your thoughts and emotions and feelings occur on your breath, within your breath.

[44:58]

And you just get used to this as a habit. And it's a pretty, takes a while to learn the habit. At first our thoughts, because they move in a sort of psychological pace, take us away from our breath. You can have the same thoughts on your breath or separate from your breath. So, having the same thoughts, you're not policing yourself by bringing your thoughts into your breath. So although you can have the same thoughts, it's sort of like having the same cat, but in this case you're petting it.

[46:03]

So bringing your thoughts and feelings, emotions and so forth into your breath is sort of like petting your mind, you know, nice mind, nice mind. This is very healthy. And breath is the main inner posture of your outer life, your daily life. Now, anyone who thinks Zazen practice is Zen practice isn't practicing Zen. Zen practice and Mahayana practice is thoroughly the wholeness, the totality of your life. Anything less than that is not practicing Zen.

[47:29]

If you don't find and make an effort at least equal to Zazen to practice in your daily life, you're not practicing Zen. Okay. Now, again, the main bridge of zazen mind and zazen practice to your daily life is this inner posture of sasen, of breath. Okay. So, again, to practice sen, the main thing to do as the beginner or adept

[48:34]

is to find ways, continually find ways to bring your daily life into contact with, a pace with your breath. Okay, now that's the main way main particular way to practice in zazen and in your daily life. Now, the other main practice of everyday life is the view of the world, vision of the world you bring to your life.

[49:55]

Now this is a little harder to do and harder to talk about with you. The Eightfold Path starts with right, complete, correct views. It doesn't start with zazen or meditation or concentration, it starts with views. And these views are, I think, most simply stated as practicing with your attitudes.

[51:10]

I don't know what that word means in German, but in English attitude covers both a big and a small word. By attitude, I mean your whole stance and posture within the world. Stance and posture. Again, don't... Stance. Where you're standing. But I don't know, again, this might be hard to translate, because stance and posture in English both mean where you stand and your posture, but it also means everything. You could say like the posture of the West toward Asia. Same in German. Yeah, same in German, okay. So I use the word attitude to mean your stance and posture in the world.

[52:14]

at the level that it covers everything and at the level it can be met, reached, touched in its details. Okay. Now, as I said yesterday, I believe yesterday, one of the shifts in Buddhist teaching to the Mahayana was a shift in cosmology. And if you read the Lotus Sutra or the Flower Ornament Sutra, you see that this is vast vision of this world. In which there's worlds within worlds and this world is just a tiny speck within worlds which are tiny specks within worlds and so forth.

[53:26]

Why not? And move to seeing and really emphasizing, as I said to Kevin a few days ago, that the world is in continuous creation. There wasn't a beginning point. Now this kind of vision was attempted to be brought in to the small details of one's daily practice. Now, recently Ulrike and I were at a conference in, I mentioned it already, in Cortona, didn't I? In Italy, south of Florence. I don't remember what I mentioned, but anyway I'll say what I want to say.

[55:02]

We met, one of the persons we met was a physicist named Hans-Peter Dürr. And I liked him a lot. He's a very smart, sweet, compassionate man. And very politically engaged in Greens Party and ecology and so forth. And what we had fun doing is in the process of his giving a talk and mine, My giving one and then us talking together personally and then in front of everybody. And me... what we discovered was there is a remarkable, which has been pointed out a lot, but remarkable similarity between the world of physics and the world of Buddhism at a descriptive level.

[56:27]

And to some extent we went into, and I would have liked to have gone into further with him, how his thinking is affected by being a physicist and how much his thinking arises, the way he thinks arises from some other sources. Now, if he were a Buddhist, or if we are Buddhists in this contemporary age, the job of a Buddhist today is not to use science as a Trojan horse to bring Buddhism into the West.

[57:30]

But to incorporate the vision of, the contemporary vision of the world into Buddhism. and to incorporate it on two levels. To incorporate it at the level that it seems to be true and expand the truth of Buddhism. And to incorporate it also at the level which it's true for people, whether it's true or not. Makes sense. In other words, even if the world of science, the view of science, let's take science as the example, is not true, or I know that it's hard for most of you to believe that it might not be true,

[59:02]

Yeah. But say that Buddhists preferred the vision of Buddhism to the vision of physics, because there's some difference. The traditional way Buddhism would do it was whether they thought the current vision of Buddhism freud jung or einstein was correct they would still incorporate it into buddhism because that's the way people think yeah so unabhängig jetzt davon ob buddhisten jetzt die wahrheiten von freud jung und einstein für korrekt halten würden oder nicht sie würden sie doch aufnehmen in den buddhismus denn das ist das was die leute in diesem zeitalter oder zu dieser zeit denken Now, if it was found to be untrue at some level through meditation practice, then it would be called a provisional truth.

[60:25]

Does that make it clearer, sort of? Christine? Buddhism tries to cover all the bases. Do you have that expression in German? Sort of. It's from baseball, of course. Covering all the bases. Of course we don't have it. Covering all the bases. First, second, third, home plate. Japanese play baseball. Why not you? Because I'm a girl. Oh. Girls and women play baseball. So what I'm saying in saying all this is that your responsibility as practicing Buddhists is to discover what is your, you, you yourself, your own vision of the world you live in.

[61:39]

Now, Arnold Mindell has some idea of what he calls the world channel. Now, I don't really know what he means exactly. But In Buddhism, if I use the term world channel, it would mean something like that each of you is part of the world, whether you recognize it or not. Then you have to bring the world somehow open up the world channel in yourself in a Buddhist sense and bring the world into your practice.

[62:44]

And this is most succinctly expressed in the vision of the Bodhisattva As one who cannot be enlightened until everyone is enlightened. And the Bodhisattva's own enlightenment is inextricably linked to creating the possibility of enlightenment for each person you meet. Now, this really means in Buddhist practice that you bring into your practice each person you meet. Now, this doesn't mean you have to be a goody two-shoes.

[64:07]

Do you have that expression in German? A goody two-shoes. I don't know where it comes from. It means somebody who's always doing everything right. I guess he doesn't ever wear one shoe like Bodhidharma or Eric. Is it good? It's a good expression, goody two shoes. I wish you had it. Yeah. Within the locus of possibilities. Eric, you're becoming the comic of this sashim. You either break sticks or you turn lotuses into toilets.

[65:18]

You know... Yeah. You know, I think that in English the G of German stands for gigglers. You know, Americans don't giggle. They laugh. I mean, in the Sashin, when something funny happens, everyone laughs, but everyone doesn't giggle. That is, unless Beate is there. And then everyone starts to giggle because she starts giggling. And if Beate and Ulrike are both there... Anyway, it's rather interesting that you all think that I like it.

[66:23]

I could learn how to giggle easier than speak German. Okay. Okay, so another person we met at Cortona was a man named, an Englishman named Horace Dobbs. And he was a brain scientist, head of a laboratory in England.

[67:41]

And one day he was somewhere swimming with his wife and son who was eight or ten or something. And if I remember the story correctly, he'd gone in and was sitting on the shore. And his son was out a ways in the water, maybe hanging onto a little plastic toy or something. And suddenly this dolphin began leaping over his son. And several hundred pounds of dolphin going over the head of his 10-year-old, he thought, what should I do as a father? And he thought, well, I guess I'd better go out and do something.

[69:02]

So he swam out toward his son. Trying to tell his son to get out of there. And suddenly his son lifted up in the air and went riding around the harbor at high speed. For 10 to 15 minutes, his son was touring around the harbor. And Horace was there kind of, had no idea what to do. And then suddenly his son appeared beside him and was let down in the water. And Horace said, what did you do? How did you do that? And the boy said, I don't know, I just got lifted up and carried.

[70:22]

So they went in the shore and Horace decided, I mean, this was such a remarkable thing for him to see. that he quit his job as head of this laboratory and decided to study dolphins. And his wife went back to work to try to support them. Her name is Wendy. She's a very nice person. A sehr nett. You're a sehr nett. And... He founded what's called World Dolphin Watch, I believe.

[71:42]

And now he's one of the two or three main people who track dolphins and study dolphins in the world. And we had a good time too, because he sort of looked at Buddhism almost as he'd seen a dolphin appear. He knew virtually nothing about Buddhism, but he found it quite interesting, so that was fun. So he said that One thing that he's been doing is, well, it happened rather by chance, he has discovered, he discovered by chance that dolphins relate very powerfully and directly to depressed people.

[72:48]

And now people come to him and ask if they can swim with the dolphins. And he says if he brings several people to swim with dolphins somewhere along some coast, if a few of the people are kind of confident and sure and looking forward to swimming with the dolphins, Or full of themselves. Do you have that expression too? Full of yourself? And... And if he brings a person who's kind of unsure, an old woman who doesn't know how to swim, who's never been in the water before, except in the bathtub.

[74:08]

And he brought such a woman who'd actually never even been in a swimming pool. She'd only ever been in a bathtub. And he got her to get in the water. She wanted to, for some strange reason. And the dolphins immediately, he says, immediately relate to the vulnerable and depressed or weaker people. Like this terrified great-grandmother actually trembling in the water. This dolphin, he was looking at her and she was trembling and then slowly she began to steady in the water.

[75:25]

And the dolphin just came up and put her, I think it's body, against this woman. And waited a long time until she calmed down and then began moving her around. Now, I... I mention this story partly because it's nice to tell it to you. And also because this may seem like a stretch, a stretch of an analogy. But I think the Buddha part of you likes the vulnerable part of you.

[76:30]

And the more you can be vulnerable or whatever that means, all that territory, the activity of Buddhism is more likely to reach you. Now maybe the Buddha puts his or her body against you from inside in some gentle way. But see if you can bring this sense of softness in to recognize it in your body. And one way to begin to notice this sense of softness is to notice the feel of your eyelid on your eyeball.

[78:04]

So you're bringing a sense of softness into the pain in your leg. If you can notice, even in the midst of the pain, there's a kind of softness, there's a kind of territory within the pain. And there can be a softness throughout your body. And you feel this softness is connected to feeling really at ease with yourself and with the world.

[79:06]

Even though it's quite discomforting perhaps to sit so long for lunch in zazen posture, still even just putting your chopstick down in your bowl, they feel like they're exactly in place. Everything in the world starts to feel exactly in place. And one of the ways this feeling arises is through a kind of softness that permeates your body. Maybe the kind of softness that the dolphin responds to. Just now the way your leg is on the mat or the cushion.

[80:23]

And the way one leg touches the other. Or the way your hands are together or whatever. And inside your body, not just connected with your breath, but also connected with your breath, there's a kind of softness inside your breath and breathing and thoughts. And this is also a kind of moving of your mind in the sense put your mind into your work or put your mind into what you're doing. Your mind seems to go into the softness and into the touch of things.

[81:26]

Even the touch of air on you. Now, there's a practice which I've mentioned, alluded to, in which you just notice that you like something, or you don't like something, or you feel neutral about it. So it's like saying, you know, so simply as this is a tree. You're naming the tree. you're pointing out the tree you're using language and the grammar of language this is a tree but you're not using language in the way that language thinks like this is a tree like some other tree and I like trees no it's a language at a transitive level maybe just this is a tree

[83:01]

No, I... My own feeling is that language itself doesn't represent just one kind of mind. Language itself is several kinds of minds. So the mind which just names or points out, using language is not the mind that thinks about things in relationships. So if you use language in this way to just point out, I'm standing here, this is a pond, Sounds stupid.

[84:23]

You meet an Indian, oh. I am white man. You Indian. But anyway, if you practice in this way, And when you practice in this way, you don't get into, oh, I like that. You don't get into why you like it. I like that. I don't like that. I feel neutral about this. This is not a practice to stop you from discriminating. I have to keep saying that because so many Westerners are afraid Buddhism is going to go against their great thinking and discriminating capacities. And Buddhism isn't going to do that.

[85:25]

Buddhism is happy to incorporate this provisional view of the world. But you can use language itself to change your mind. So, if you practice for a time it's not something you do all the time but practice for a time this oh I like it I don't like it it's neutral just name just name things you name whatever your state of mind is oh I have a terrible state of mind I guess I'm living these days in a terrible state of mind

[86:28]

That's all. No big deal. Now, what this does is one of the doors to the world of one taste. Or equanimity. Equanimity also means the world of one taste. Doesn't stop differentiation, but in the midst of differentiation, you find always one taste. Mm-hmm. There's a deep silence in this practice of one taste.

[87:54]

And it becomes a window and then a door into a much deeper world. And this sense of softness helps you in that way. Well, maybe I should stop. I want to talk to you about Samantabhadra, Avalokiteshvara, Dungshan's Three Roads. One of Dungshan's Three Roads is equanimity. The three roads are the bird's path or the bird's road or bird's path and the hidden road and stretching out the hands.

[89:12]

and then stretch out your hands. And I'll just say one thing rather than going into it, which is this practice of equanimity and the three roads of Dungsan is also part of what's called meeting in objects. Meeting in objects. So when Horace Dobbs saw this dolphin jumping over his son and then carrying his son around, this is a kind of meeting in objects. And when Heisenberg and Hans-Peter Dürr met regularly to discuss physics and experiments and so forth,

[90:46]

And I talked with him quite a bit about this because it seemed so similar between the meetings between teacher and disciple in Zen. Basically what I would say that he said was that they created a certain situation which they began to understand things together through the situation. And they couldn't bring a third person into the conversation. And the conversation didn't involve physics and mathematics.

[92:07]

They'd present a problem to themselves. They'd present the problem, name the problem. And then they'd have some conversation seemingly about it. Then they both understand what it was about. And then they'd say, oh, how are we going to do the mathematics to show other people what this is about? And the mathematics, he says, always came second or last. And if they, once they had this understanding, they always knew, and it was the case, the mathematics worked out. And in Zen, this is called, this kind of practice or state of mind is called meeting through objects. And it is related to this realizing through sound and realizing through this softness and touch I was talking about.

[93:24]

This is part of what Avalokiteshvara and Samantabhadra represent. So I can't say more than this because that's enough.

[93:46]

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