The mind which observes objects but doesn't leave home. Yes? Would it be right to say that you can only shift from the object to the people if you give up the concept of the object you have? You have to give up your attachment to it or ego involvement with it. You have to do what? Your attachment to it, or your ego involvement with it. Is that okay in English? No. No? All right. Deutsch, please. I mean, that's Japanese. I have to practice all this. Please, this one from the object in the space. That concept is a Buddhist object called you. And I think we, you know, I really want us to take a break a little earlier today, but I'm almost done this, so let me finish this.

[01:09]

So this process of returning the mind to itself, the last one is called purification, is a process of purification. Just as Giulio pointed out, it purifies you of ego, of attachments and so forth. Yes. It purifies you of another ego. Or it's just a purification of the ego. I know the situations where I'm suddenly in something, I would say, there's no breath. And that feeling there, it's something like ego, but it's just different. I could just say there's a Peter 1, Peter 2, or a Peter B, and Peter B is in the no breath space.

[02:14]

Yeah. Yeah, David yesterday was talking about David A and David B. Well, there may be a hundred people here, actually. Did you all pay twice? I don't know how to say it in German. I don't know how to say it in German. I asked if there is another me. And I know situations where I think I am now where there is no Atom. And there also feels what I think of myself differently. That's what it means in the koan when it says, the lip of the mortar blooms. No, you probably wouldn't have guessed that. I have another question.

[03:42]

It feels like when you withdraw the mind from the object back to the mind itself that then this is possible what is said here in the Koran. The third patriarch said, just do not hate or love and all will be clear. Where are you seeing that? It's a sentence that kind of stayed with me. Page 13. Okay. So, yes. You want to say it in German? You did? Okay, we got to the main point of the, through the things that several of you have said, we've gotten here to the main point of the koan. Let me come back to that in a moment and just finish these six methods.

[04:53]

So I think you see how and why I more or less put together as three aspects of the same thing, stopping, returning and purification. And if you don't follow that at this particular moment, you will. Because I have such deep confidence in you. And And I love introducing this koan to you because if you want to over the next weeks or months you can come back to it and there's so many teachings in this koan.

[05:53]

Or you can come back to it suddenly on a spring day four years from now and you'll find out that it's talking to you. And it's been waiting for you. It says, where have you been the last four years? I haven't seen you for a while. And once you get one part of the koan, the feeling of it, the rest will open like a time-release capsule when you're ready. Okay, so the one I haven't really dealt with is the two is touching and contemplating. And touching is the one I added. And I think that touching and contemplating, which maybe I should come back to that because I want to have a break.

[07:02]

But let me, now after the break, what I'd like you to do I really want this sense of a commons among us and so I would like us to break up into sort of six groups of eight or something like that and have some discussion among yourselves to see if you each understand it or what you can each bring to a common understanding. And just pick the group of people more or less where you're sitting. Don't try to choose the nicest or the prettiest. Yeah. And also, you might consider if any lines, as usual, the introduction to a colon is a phrase.

[08:30]

And if any particular phrase has stood out for you, you might bring that up in your group. Okay. Now, before we do that, I want us to look at the koan for a moment together. Okay. So this koan is interestingly based on both Dharmakaya practice and Sambhogakaya practice. Or insight and craft. Now, the craft is the breathing practices, skandhas and so forth. And accompanying the craft and what enriches the craft and makes you sometimes able to jump past the craft and then go back and develop the craft are these phrases or insights.

[09:52]

And it starts out with one, the state before the beginning of time. And that might stay with you. It's not much different than feeling you should know there's one who's not busy. And this sentence is not much different from this statement about Jungian, that there is always one who is not busy. And try to feel this change, a statement in time and a statement from before the beginning of time. The shift between space separates and space connects.

[10:54]

Okay, and the next is a turtle heads for the fire. A turtle heads for the fire. Some of you might feel that way sometimes. Okay, and then it specifically says it. The one phrase specially transmitted outside the doctrine. Outside the doctrine means, you may have heard it in the sutras, but it's in you, it's in your breath, it's in your repetition. Now it tells you how to practice with the one phrase. Like you are grinding something in a mortar. And what does it say?

[11:57]

When you grind something in the mortar, outside the doctor in the mortar itself blooms. So it's the sense, it's basically the idea of a metalogue. You're not taking the seed. You've ground something up in a mortar and you've taken the seed and planted it. The mortar itself blooms. So the phrase itself becomes the insight. Okay. Now, why did I say this is like what Peter said? Now, it also says here, now tell me, is there any accepting, upholding, returning, and reading and reciting in this? Yeah.

[12:59]

Is this really all of this? Do you practice this like you do a teaching? Do you uphold the teaching and so forth? Or is this a process that's working in the dark inside you? And of course that's what this koan is emphasizing. So, now, if you are a poor wayfarer, And you don't dwell in the realms of body or mind when breathing in. Sometimes now the five skandhas are sometimes called a throne. Because in the five skandhas you can sit and breathe. Review the world in terms of each of the skandhas. And also the sense fields are a second throne. Because you can sit in the sense field without ego and see the world in terms of its sound and make the shift to the taste or make the shift to the touch and so forth.

[14:13]

And the third throne is the body itself. Now, in general, mind dominates the body. You think and you decide. Your thinking decides what you're going to do with your body and so forth. And your emotions and feelings and thoughts dominate your breath. That's clear. That's what culture does. Okay, in language. Yeah. So what do we do when you, in practice, in yogic practice, you shift to the body dominating the mind? Breath begins to take a presence independent of thoughts and feelings.

[15:17]

In fact, you begin to be able to manage your thoughts and feelings through your breath. Or as Martin talked about, staying present in your thoughts and feelings through your breath. Now, you also, when you're breathing, begin to breathe through your nostrils, and you feel the touch of your breath in your nostrils, and you begin to make a tunnel. You can feel the openings through breathing through your nostrils. Or you locate your energy in your hara so that you feel like you're upstream at the reservoir that feeds all the rivers below. Now when you do that, you're locating or anchoring yourself in your body. And your body is taking precedence over your mind and thoughts and so forth.

[16:53]

Do you see that? So that's a basic essential shift in Zen practice from being dominated by your mind, thoughts and feelings to having your anchor in your body, in your breath and in your sense fields. Okay, but this is also not good to have your body dominate your mind. So how are you going to get free of both? What does this koan say? It says... Page 14 in mine, it starts in English as Heroic Power.

[17:55]

In German, it's in the middle of the commentary. Okay, heroic power smashes the double enclosure. So you're no longer enclosed by body or mind. The double enclosure is mind and body. And down below it says, at the end of that paragraph it says, the elements of being, body and mind, and the myriad circumstances are more than a double enclosure. And it says here in the poem, if you want a place to rest your body, cold mountain is good for long preservation.

[19:05]

And that's pointing out the double enclosure. And a subtle breeze blows in the dense pines. And this is talking about the levels of breathing practice. Okay. Now, if you want a place to rest your body, it can't be in... body or mind, as this koan's pointing out. Yeah. Where it says on page 12, above the poem about the cloud rhino, Here it says, he only knew his iron spine held up the sky.

[20:24]

And this is the spine developed through breath practice. And then it fooled the non-practitioners by saying he didn't realize his brain had fallen to the ground. But actually, that's good. Because your mind is everywhere. And it's put in a negative because then non-practitioners don't understand. But if you practice, you realize, hey, last time I felt an iron spine, my brain was all over the place. Then you learn to read these texts from inside yourself and not be fooled by whether they put it as positive or negative. Okay, so under the eyebrows, the cold blue eyes...

[21:25]

Now, that refers again here to cold mountain. If you want to rest your body, cold mountain is a good place. And who has a pair of cold blue eyes? Other than most people in this room. is Bodhidharma. Because for some reason, not many Indians have blue eyes, but for some reason in China, because they all have black eyes, Bodhidharma is the blue-eyed one. Okay. Under the eyebrows, a pair of cold blue eyes means in... Peter sense another kind of ego. Now, ego is not the right word, but it's a good approach. Yeah. So it says right below that, if you want both eyes to be perfectly clear, You must not dwell in the realms of the body or mind and not get involved in myriad circumstances.

[23:14]

And to realize this, you must hang sun and moon high in the shadowless forest and implicitly discern spring and autumn on the budless branches. It means to hang sun and moon up means you don't use it, like you hang your coat up. And if you see spring and autumn in the budless branches, you're seeing outside time. You're seeing outside the usual way. So what you do is you end up with, by making the shift of identifying with the field of breath and not breath itself, You end up with a constantly moving but constantly steady place to observe from. But it's not like an ego.

[24:26]

It's just a place to observe from. And it's very still. And it can be in your breath. It can be in your body. in the field of the mind, and knowing this place to observe from, which you can't call an ego, but is like another state of mind that's not ego, but functions sort of like ego. And it's not an ego because it doesn't have a story. You know, it's a Buddha, but it doesn't have a story. And it doesn't have desires.

[25:26]

And it doesn't try to control things. Yet, It can move into ego, it can move into action, and so forth. So this is the basic teaching of the koan. And what it means right above, under the eyebrows, where it says, you will find a spiritual light shining alone, transcending the senses. Transcending is not such a good word, but it means it can rest, it can observe from the senses, or it can observe from the field of the mind. It's not attached to any.

[26:27]

I'm sorry to get carried away there for a moment. But sometimes if I don't, if I find maybe I can talk about this, I have to continue. And I plead for your help and let's take a break. Thank you very much. I would like us to have some discussion together about these teachings, so maybe we could at least initially hear from those people who are the mouthpiece of their groups. Who's first?

[27:41]

Yeah, after. Yes. Language. Yeah. We talked about the function and meaning of science in communication with others and about language and its connection to consciousness. Sort of language as we speak with others and language as we speak with the silent parts of ourselves?

[28:44]

Was that the sense of it? And the second part where we talk about consciousness and language and relationship or consciousness of other kinds, whether language can also be a result of a more deeper consciousness. Yes, I understand. They agree. I can see they all agree in the back. Okay. In our group we didn't actually talk about the koan, but mostly around the koan. In our group we didn't really talk about the koan, but we talked about the koan. He said, around the koan.

[29:50]

Not actually about it, but about koans in general. What did you say in German? I thought David said we talked around the koan. In a sense, like in a roundabout way. Well, that's true too. And people were saying how... Beating around the corn? Beating around the corn. People were saying how difficult it was to actually approach it, to get into it. And there's a German expression which says, that one feels that way. And the way that feels in German is that you're an ox standing before the mountain and you can either go forwards, backwards, left or right.

[30:58]

You're just confronted with the mountain and you're completely blocked. And... And then it was interesting. There's an expression in Zen, it's like a mosquito biting an iron bull. But then Gerd, among others, said that if you stand in this particular, or you feel this particular feeling of being blocked long enough, something changes. And we tried to find a way, in a group, of expressing what that change was. And then we came up with a Zen saying a little bit, that sitting quietly, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

[32:07]

There's a way of... Something happens and you're not quite sure what. You just sit there feeling blocked, and then there's a little shift, and then something happens, and the grass grows. Feels like you beat yourself right to the center of the con. Or to the middle of the mortar at least. It sounds as if you are being pushed to the centre of the choir, or at least to the centre of the nasa. Next. We had the sentence, the third patriarch says, simply avoid hate or love and everything will be clear. And suddenly we came to the conclusion that we realized that this is an equanimity.

[33:12]

That's not true at all, because it's not that easy to avoid hate and love. That's love, especially love. It's the most beautiful thing. Just avoid it. And then we came to the question of what kind of moral terms are occupied, and that it depends on how we notice and look at it. And whether we look at it from this lying consciousness, or whether we look at it with a different consciousness, and that we notice it, that it then gets a different meaning. And in the end we were able to turn it around and said, he could have said, love and hate and everything will be clear and it can have the same meaning. Can you translate all this? When we worked with the sentence of the Third Patriarch with the do not love or hate, and everything will be clear, and first we thought it was a little annoying to say something like that, especially, I mean, we could do without hate, but doing without love is not so nice.

[34:19]

And then we kind of worked at it and studied it from various points of view and then we realized if we look at it from borrowed consciousness actually it's understandable to avoid hate and love and so forth and we turned it around a bit in the sense if you come from the right consciousness then you can also say do love and hate and everything will be clear. And the second part of the sentence, where it became clear that everything will be clear, we then thought, what does it even mean, everything will be clear? And the answer we still have, congratulations. And then we particularly emphasized that everything will be clear, but we haven't found an answer to that, what it means that everything is clear.

[35:22]

I was watching you. As you were speaking, you began to hold your breath a certain way, and the last sentence you released your breath into laughter, and everybody released their breath the same way. You're actually sort of controlling us with your breath. Sounds good, though. Okay. So could you translate the latter part of what he said? I just did. She didn't hear. You spoke in German. No, I just said, and then the group dealt with the second type of the phrase, everything is clear. Yeah. And we wondered what it means. Yeah. But we didn't find an answer. Okay.

[36:23]

And how did the men's group do over here? different scenes that came up when we were sitting together, when we were going through the process, and when you have got to find a familiar answer. And the first thing that came up was, I'm at the beginning, at a beginning, and you talked about that sentence, being at the beginning of the weekend, or being at the beginning with you, or within the group, and kind of creating, sitting together, creating a kind of new unity, or sitting together. And then another sentence came up, I think the sentence I was covering, saying, each breath is a new one, and we connected it with the first sentence in the beginning.

[37:28]

And we talked about, on one side, each practice we want is a kind of distribution in some ideas as well, and the other side is a kind of freedom we get with the sentence, beginning, beginning, beginning, and a kind of releasing or relaxing, of course. Dr. Ritsch? Or Gerd, or he feels like a bull before a mountain. Nothing, sorry. Yeah. I am at the beginning.

[38:31]

I am at the beginning on different levels. I was in the group at the beginning. We sat together. We started with the chirurgy and the group at the weekend. Then we have a second sentence, the sentence that every breath is a new one. And then we talked about it and that with this sentence two sides are connected. Okay, yeah. How can the reading of texts reach the degree of oxenlead?

[39:33]

So writing in the sense of Koans, how can you approach Koans? Be it now, and then we thought about an intellectual way of thinking or, and there we actually came to the conclusion that an intellectual way of thinking is not possible, but that the approach also requires a bit of experience, that it goes beyond the intellectual understanding. The goal of the poems is to go beyond this conceptual understanding and to find a connection to the poems in this way. And then we thought it would make sense to read the texts. And there we came to the conclusion that it is necessary to read the scriptures once, and at the same time to have a certain experience. As the World Book of Scripture says, we should be aware that if we breathe once,

[40:47]

Reading the sutras is like piercing ox skin. How to approach a poem, how to come near to a poem? experience, and experience and weeping, weeping at poems published in the same, and it's a compliment. And so perhaps it's important to the aim of poems, one thing is to go and sexual. Is that everyone or somebody else?

[42:31]

Yeah. The body functions in every single cell. There is a step between the body and mind. There is the cognitive attitude, the vegetative nervous system, but also the conscious mind. And then there is the breath, which goes far and wide through every single cell. We had difficulties with the koan too and how to deal with the text.

[43:38]

So we returned to the breath, so to speak, and just discussed the various aspects of breath and breathing in our group and how the breath relates to the individual bodily functions and how the breath is sort of the cutting edge between body and mind and The joining edge, too. So we then also realized that breast is not just an individual phenomenon, but it's something that unites us and connects us, the people in our little group, people in the room here. And then we graduated, so to speak, to universal breath and ended our discussion with the question, how does the universe breathe because there's no atmosphere? It breathes locally.

[44:42]

This question of facing a koan and a couple of people brought up. So this question of facing a koan and a couple of people brought up. facing a problem or facing a mountain or etc. And I can tell you that when you see a problem or when you feel a barrier, you're a long ways there. If you don't see there's a barrier, you've got a long ways to go. So once you've seen a barrier, you've made very big progress. And sometimes it feels like an iron wall or something, and sometimes it feels like a glass or something between you and the world that you can't get through.

[46:01]

But once you know there's a wall or a problem, you also know there's a solution and another side to the wall. Now, you may need a lot of patience, but usually, well... This is a wall at least. I don't claw at it and try to smash it. You kind of stay near it and you keep yourself in presence of it. Sondern man bleibt in der Nähe, in der Gegenwart der Wand.

[47:07]

Sometimes you can kind of feel down the wall into the door. Manchmal tastet man sich an der Wand entlang, um zu spüren, ob eine Tür da ist. Or if you're Gerald, you can kind of peer over the edge. Wenn man Gerald ist, versuchen über das Ende zu gucken. Or if you're used to sitting, you can sit down in front of it. And sometimes you can see it's actually up there, and down here it's not, you know. Man kann sich aber auch davor sitzen und dann sogar feststellen, dass die Wand nur oben existiert und man unten durchgucken kann. Gewöhnlich bleibt man einfach in der Nähe, aber kämpft nicht damit. Und übt ein bisschen Druck aus. So, you know, you don't, I mean, maybe sometimes it's like this, but mostly it's just some pressure. But you stay near it and some pressure. And if you can create a state of mind that just does your life, that you feel the wall and you keep some pressure on it, almost certainly it'll move.

[48:19]

You need a certain courage or a kind of inner desire to know your life. But if you have that desire and you do as I said, I expect you will have good results. Any additional comments, discussion? I hope so, yes. that for me the impact was actually chaos.

[49:22]

And out of that chaos, yes, as the opposite of order. And this chaos of course also makes you angry, but also somehow, yes, then it goes on to this breathing thing, the first breath. Should I translate it? Yes. Well, our group, we also had great difficulties with the koan and the text and so forth, and it created a feeling of chaos, like the opposite of order. But we felt a great enthusiasm for this one guy or patriarch or whatever who sort of put the general norms out of order or devaluated, what's the name of the norm in English?

[50:33]

Norms? Yeah, norms. Norms. I know. That he just abandoned the sutras and just said, I mean, don't bother. Oh, Xue Fang? But... Xue Jing? The Chinese guy, Xue Jing, or the Prajnatara? Prajnatara. Prajnatara, okay. Okay. Yeah, okay. Yes. We talked about why breathing has such a meaning, or why it is moved to the center. And what I remember, what we brought together was that, on the one hand, the air is something that one can hardly grasp.

[51:41]

You can't see it, you can feel it, but it's hardly tangible. And on the other hand, it's the closest, or so to speak, the most immediate with the star, with life and death, because to starve or to defecate you need a relatively long time, but to suffocate you need a very short time. The two things, on the one hand, that it is not as easy as it seems, and on the other hand, that it is so existentially close. In our group, we discussed in particular also why all this focus on the breath. And we came up with basically two answers.

[52:43]

One is, first of all, it deals with the air. Air is the element which is the least substantial, the least materialistic. And on the other hand, The breathing affects our existential situation in the most traumatic way. It takes a long time to starve or dehydrate in comparison, like, if you don't have any air to breathe. It's very quick. So these two poles, like on one side, this very, I mean, ungraspable air element connected with a very immediate existential consequence, that maybe this is why we focus on the breath. Yeah, sure, that's right. Yes, Andreas? There was a question for you, and the question was, who is Hengdang? It's not clear. Maybe someone who didn't know Yvonne Illich.

[53:46]

Yeah, probably someone who didn't know Yvonne Illich. Because he talks too much. I actually discussed this with Christian because it doesn't have... This seems to be a section of the book, of the text, which clearly he's only translated a portion of it and it says a long pause and it's not clear where the pause is. It's, I think, an error in the book. And I could look up Feng Gan, but I don't have with me the thing to look up who he is. But it probably refers to me. Talking too much. Wahrscheinlich bezieht sich das auf mich, weil ich zu viel rede.

[54:50]

Ich würde gerne noch ein oder zwei kleine Anmerkungen aus unserer Gruppe noch dazu beitragen, zu dem Satz, do not hate or love, and all will be clear. Ich denke schon, dass wir ein bisschen auch in die Richtung schon fortgeschritten sind, was es heißt, and all will be clear. Alles wird klar sein, werden wir and we look at hate and love as extreme poles and we start to study in these two poles, to perceive, then a lot becomes clear. And that would be the second point, is not morally mean, or hateful, but that it is actually the indication that Buddhism does not work with morality, but with experiences that can lead to a kind of general morality, which then leads to similar results in the different Buddhist groups.

[55:57]

I would like to add two more I would like to share two more things. From this sentence, do not love or hate and everything will be clear. I think we went a little step further than just not knowing what the part and all will be clear means. If you put yourself within the two extremes of loving and hating and studying yourself, a lot becomes clear. And the second part was that the do not hate or love is not connected to morality or something you should or should not. It's more towards an experience within the process of practice that could lead to a more universal morality.

[57:17]

And you could see it in results from different Buddhist groups, where they come up with similar results, like do not harm other people or the vow to liberate everyone. And it was also, and I didn't say it in English, but like a question, what would Buddhists say? In Germany. In Germany, what would Buddhists say about if a woman doesn't want to have a child, how would we react? And there's much more freedom towards the decision that the woman makes and not society. Yes. Statement of the Third Patriarch, it says, said, just do not love and hate.

[58:41]

Actually, it's from the... What's it called? The... Of the Third Patriarch. Anyway, the first line is, the great way is not difficult, just don't pick and choose. Yes, to the sentence again, love and hate not, and then everything is clear, it comes from a certain writing, where the beginning sentence says, the great path is not difficult, but you should not choose. So I don't know if he says in the treatise by the Third Patriarch, just do not love or hate and all will be clear. But the first line, I mean, in Zen you feel quite free to give your own versions of these things. So this is a version of the great way is not difficult. Just don't pick and choose. Yes, and in Zen, the writings often draw comments about each other and where there is also a lot of freedom, so to find your own version. And so this sentence is not love and hate and everything will be clear, actually a version of this other sentence, where it says the great way is not difficult, if you just avoid the selection and stumbling.

[59:53]

And in a basic sort of philosophical sense, love and hate means don't think you can possess something, don't think you can get rid of something, reject something. But in your personal life, psychology and so forth, it often takes the form, as some of us know, of love and hate. Yes. That means the great way is not picking and choosing. That's right. Well, or rather, if you don't pick and choose, this is a gate to the great way, or here they put it, the clear mind that is beyond eons.

[61:08]

So the great way has something else when it does not pick and choose. Other teachings. Yeah, okay. Okay. That's something else, though. Whoa. Yes. Yeah, I think we've done... Somebody else has something in specific. But I think we've done about as much as we can with this koan. And I might say, see if there's something I might say that might be useful. Yeah, on page 13 or in the beginning of the commentary, the second, the end of the first paragraph of the commentary in Fuhrman, the second commentary, Also, Ende des zweiten Kommentars.

[62:17]

Ich glaube, der letzte Abschnitt, Seite 13. Also, der sehr verehrte Prajnathara hat einfach Kopf und Schwanz hervorgebracht und dabei ganz implizit eingeschlossen, was dazwischen ist. And so the head and tail is... The head and tail... means, of course, beginning and end and so forth, and it refers to not dwelling in the realms of body and mind and not getting involved in myriad circumstances.

[63:21]

But it says implicitly including what's in between. And that means the five clusters, the breathing practices, and so forth. Of course. Especially about this, this morning you were talking about the mind, Returns to the mind. What does that exactly mean? The mind leaves its home, which is the mind, and goes out to an object. And then when it lets go of the object, it returns from the object to the mind. goes back home.

[64:34]

That's the sense of returning. Where does the mind reside? In this, they're emphasizing the mind resides nowhere, but the mind has an experience of itself and isn't attached to objects. So it returns the images. I direct my mind at this bell, and then I release the bell and return, direct this attention, in a sense, to the mind itself. Yes, so the mind has such a home base, such a starting point, and I can direct this mind from it to an object and then withdraw from this object and return to the mind itself. And the mind, of course, does not have a real home or where it can be localized. The mind is nowhere. Now, one thing I haven't made too clear is maybe we can continue on this page 13.

[65:36]

Yeah. Good words are to be treasured, but in the final analysis they tend toward feelings and thoughts based on literary content. Trying to find it in German. Yeah, it's in the second commentary. And your chemtong says... This means that even words that arise from immediate consciousness or arise from the absolute still tend to produce feelings and thoughts. Ja, das bedeutet nichts anderes als, dass Worte, die von dem unmittelbaren Bewusstsein herkommen oder aus dem absoluten, dass selbst die dazu neigen, Gedanken und Gefühle hervorzurufen.

[67:02]

Now, the line that paragraph starts with, the cloud rhino gazes at the moon, it's life engulfing radiance from the poem, As the koan points out, it's a kind of poetic image of breathing in. I don't know if you can feel, ever felt like a cloud rhino gazing at the moon. A little bit. That's my horn. Yes? When we regard culture... Is classical music deeper than popular music? Yeah, culture has various levels.

[68:22]

And ideally you want your culture to give you a door out of it. Okay. Then here, the next paragraph, one who has only understood himself or herself and has not yet clarified the eye of objective reality. Now this is a little hard to express.

[69:28]

It's the most subtle and elusive idea in Buddhism. And it says, as I read earlier today, if you want both eyes to be perfectly clear, you must not dwell in blah, blah, blah. But the eye of objective reality, if we take the sense that we spoke of, and I'm not sure this is useful to people particularly, but it's in the koans, so I'd like to say just a moment about it. is that if you have your ego, you know, the pilot of the ship, and then you move to the self, maybe, which is the ship, And you can have a point of observation that's the ship and the water and the sense fields and so forth.

[70:45]

A point to observe from. Now I think you can at least understand that conceptually. The objective eye of reality means when the whole thing becomes an eye. The boat, the ship, the water, the sky, you, etc. That means that you are so sensitively moving with everything, it's as if you can move the whole world with your shoulders. And the whole world moves your shoulders. If you can imagine such a point of egolessness, But yet a way of functioning in the world.

[72:02]

This is called the eye of objective reality. Now on the next page, just before that line, heroic power again. And then on the next page, just before that line, heroic power again. It says it again very specifically. Here's who wrote Power Smashes, The Double Enclosure. We found that just before that. The whole earth is a student's volume of scripture. The whole world is a student's eye. With this eye, read this scripture. So the whole world is your eye, and with that eye, You read the world, which is also scripture. And read it for countless eons without interruption. And then the commentary says, it's not easy to read.

[73:04]

But you can go back to the very first paragraph, first commentary under the case. And this prajñatāra, when he was a boy, says to his teacher, when you were expounding the Maha Prajñāpāramitā sūtras, I was upholding the most profound scripture. And I've been awaiting to assist you here in the true teaching. And clearly what this koan is saying is deeper than the emptiness sutras is emptiness itself. And how do you study emptiness itself?

[74:11]

You study the root of all the teachings and the root of Buddhism, you. You study yourself, the phenomenal world, through your breath. And this is the most profound scripture or sutra. And this takes great personal power. And that's why it's called here, he was known as the resolute. And he was known as Mahastama Prata, the one who has arrived at great power. And it's heroic power which smashes the double enclosure and so forth. Yeah. So the teaching here is that

[75:12]

Studying your own breath, your own body, your own mind is the essential practice. That's all this is saying. It's the source of all the sutras. And you may need some sutras and teachings to help you do it, but that's basically what's underneath the sutras. And contemplating in this thing and touching is that you use the state of mind that arises through breathing practice to study the body. How your stomach rises and falls in breathing. And use that sense of touch to begin to study the four elements.

[76:39]

So contemplating means to use the state of mind arising through breath practice to study the body. And to use that sensitive sense of touching that you feel in your breath as your breath touches inside your body. This kind of golden rope you feel connect that your breath is. And you can begin to feel this touch that you learn from your breath. The sensitive guidance you can get from this touch of your breath. And you can begin to feel how we touch the world. Now the world touches us.

[77:50]

And as you begin to know that touch of the world and you and other people, and you can, in a sense, take your rest at this point, This is beginning to read the world as scripture. And to use the eye of the world, the eye of objective reality to read the world. And that may sound pretty far out. But actually, we're all doing it to some extent all the time. Smashing the double enclosure, a wooden horse romps in the spring.

[79:29]

I really hope you can find the world speaking to you without interruption from now on. As to some extent, I think this koan has begun to speak to you. It's certainly speaking to me. And I say that because I also want to say sometimes it doesn't speak to me. Sometimes I look at this koan, which I've looked at many times, and it just doesn't speak. But I begin practicing with it some, breathing. Reading it from my breath without thinking too much.

[81:20]

And suddenly every line is speaking to me. Almost slapping me. That's a line from a movie I just saw. So when the koan starts speaking to you, you should study the koan. You thought I was being original, no? And just as the koan speaks to us, sometimes you can begin to really hear the world speaking to you.

[82:20]

And if you only listen sometimes with one ear or one eye, this is a lot. And if even one or two of us open our eyes, both eyes, this is great. Because if one person opens their eyes, both eyes, everyone opens their eyes. They may not know it, but they're seeing through their lids.

[83:15]

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