Yuan Wu again. What he calls active meditation and maybe we could call it for ourselves active mindfulness. He says to thoroughly penetrate the heights and depths. Er sagt, die Höhen und Tiefen gründlichst zu durchdringen. Now he's trying to say something, and maybe by the end of this taste show I can give you, you'll feel what he means by heights and depths. To fully penetrate the heights and depths or when you fully penetrate the heights and depths without omitting anything whole entire being appears before you.

[01:17]

Now he can say before you, he could say whole entire being appears through you or as you. Er könnte sagen, er sagt vor dir, und er könnte aber sagen, das vollständige Ganze sein erscheint als du oder durch dich. I mean, there's no word that quite carries it, but before is okay because he means the sensorial sphere before you. For Yuan Wu and for me, a whole entire being includes a sensorial sphere. Or we could say the attentional habitation sphere.

[02:32]

appears before you as you and nowhere else. Now, somehow, I've wanted to try to find a way to articulate that for myself and for the practice period and for this session. If we're going to absorb and access this traditional inheritance, We need to look at such phrases which for Yuan Wu were a challenge to say. The do and elixir of his lifetime is in these phrases.

[04:13]

And then, you know, they get translated in various ways, Chinese, Japanese, English. And then we try to find the elixir through our own practice. And then they are translated into different languages, Japanese, Chinese, English. And then we try to absorb the elixir through our own practice. Okay, so in this session and in this practice period I've given you the spine. The spine as in always there. I mean, as long as you're alive, you have the spine and you have awareness. Or you have the spine and you have consciousness, but if you bring consciousness to the spine, it turns into awareness.

[05:16]

And then you can move that awareness up into your neck and top of the crown of the head. And it becomes a source of bodily awareness. And as you lift it up, a source of contextual awareness And I will even say it becomes a source of health, a gauge of health. Gauge. Like a measure.

[06:44]

Yeah. If you bring this aliveness of the upright spine into your life, I really believe you'll be healthier. Okay. All right, so I gave you that. And it's always available to you. And I gave you an attitude. Attitude, I think it comes from an airplane, takes a certain attitude when it's landing, etc., Yes, so an attitude is for me a way you enter into something, find the angle to land. So the attitude I've offered you is the attitude of offering.

[07:52]

is a surrendering, a giving yourself over. To disappear into what you're doing, what's happening, etc. So that's the attitude I've offered you. And it's even an offering too, because it's an offering to all sentient beings and to Buddhas and Buddha ancestors and so forth. It's the first parameter of generosity. But what more can you give than to offer All of you.

[09:27]

And in this sashin of this practice period, and before, I've given you the dynamic, let's call it a dynamic of generating, inhabiting and releasing. So you have the always available spinal awareness. You have the attitude of giving yourself into things, engaging with things. And you have the practice, always available practice, of generating appearances, inhabiting them, and releasing them.

[10:31]

Until what more do you need? That's a fully, fully realizable and available and so forth program. And at the end of the Sashin you're all going to get a document of you've achieved this. But there's something else. I made a distinction between wisdom phrases and realization phrases. And a wisdom phrase is like the entire universe is the true human body.

[11:47]

Now that goes beyond wisdom. I mean, already connected is wisdom. But when that connectedness is so extreme as the true human body is the entire universe, well, that requires an enlightenment, a realisational leap. And then there's that poem I like so much, True friendship knows neither alienation nor something. I forget how it goes, the beginning line. Intimacy or alienation.

[12:52]

I've said it so often my translator remembers it better than me. but the last line is the southern branch of the fully blossomed southern branch of the tree owns the whole of spring and also does the northern branch Now that's another realisational phrase that requires a leap. Okay. And then, when have they ever flown away? This requires a realisational leap.

[13:52]

So that's, you know, most of you will know, remember, that Matsu and Baichang are out for a walk. And some flying geese, some migrating geese come over. And Matsu says, what's that? And Bajang says, oh, geese, migrating geese, flying geese. And then Matsu says, oh, those are geese that are migrating, flying geese. And Matsu says, sort of innocently, where have they gone?

[15:13]

And I liked the ending of this story, because it always gives me a chance to twist my translator's nose. She's not going to finish the story now. She says, I've had enough of that. Ich mag immer das Ende der Geschichte, weil mir das Gelegenheit gibt, die Nase meines Übersetzers zu verdrehen. Yeah. So Matsu says, well, where have they gone? Matsu fragt, wo sind die hingegangen? Wo sind die hingeflogen? And Bai Zhang says, well, they've flown away. Und dann sagt Bai Zhang, die sind weggeflogen. And as the story goes, Matsu grabs Bai Zhang's nose, so it ended up hurting for two or three days. And her nose is so delicate and small, I wouldn't dare grab it. I mean, don't look at mine. Anyway, Matsu supposedly reached over and grabbed Bai Zhang's nose and said, when have they ever flown away? So when have they ever flown away is another realisational phrase.

[16:30]

Now I'm trying to speak here still to the when you've fully penetrated, thoroughly penetrated the heights and depths without omitting anything. Okay. So I'm trying to imagine how to give you a feeling for this. Well, let's go back to our Cezanne. Let's go back to our Cézanne, how we imagine Cézanne. And younger painters often went to his classes or at least spent time with him to watch how he painted.

[17:36]

So let's imagine he and a fellow painter are walking in Aix-en-Provence, is that how you say it? Exxon Provence. Exxon Provence. And let's imagine that he and a younger painter went for a walk together in Exxon Provence. Which is near Marseille. It was within sight of Mont-Saint-Victoire, which he painted so often. So as I said yesterday, Cezanne is painting a landscape which is a landscape. So let's imagine that when he's walking in... Anyway, let me come back to why I use painters as examples.

[19:01]

Because I find painters maybe more... earlier than poets, anticipate worldview changes. Because it actually has to look at this world we're living in. And Cezanne completely ignored vanishing point perspective. And vanishing point perspective assumes that there's a space in which objects simultaneously exist.

[20:06]

In other words, space is imagined as a universal. But what I noticed as a teenager sitting in front of Cézanne's paintings as often as I could in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which different little situations he's painting, will have one perspective, and another one somewhere else in the canvas has another perspective. And early critics thought he was just not very good at perspective. Kept making mistakes. But when Cézanne looked around, and a little bit of time is passing, etc., perspectives constantly are changing.

[21:28]

You're in a space in which the particular and the context that you're in a particular... A contextual particularity. Du bist in einem Raum der zusammenhangsgebundenen Besonderheit oder Einzelheit. You see, I never talked about this before, so I'm still trying to find language. Ich habe darüber vorher noch nie gesprochen, also versuche ich noch immer die Sprache dafür zu finden. I've been indirectly and implicitly talking about it, but not as specifically as today. So here you have a situation where the particular and the context flow together, are interwoven. So space is always contextual.

[22:35]

And the particular is always contextual. And the particular and the context are interwoven and flow into each other. You can no longer really make a distinction, foreground and background. So there's a big difference to seeing the world as flowing past you, time flowing past, the world, life flows past you. For the yogi, he'd hardly notice that. Because what you're noticing is the particular and the context are flowing together, replacing each other, interweaving.

[23:49]

No, you don't know that unless your active mindfulness Das weißt du aber nicht, bis deine aktive Achtsamkeit die Höhen und Tiefen durchdringt. Was kann ich sagen? Welche Worte kann ich dafür verwenden? Es gibt eine Now, this is not possible if you're living in a world of names. Names simply drain away sensorial reality. Drain away?

[24:51]

Yes. So you either have to take the names off things or the names are just hardly present because the sensorial vividness is so engaging A name is a tiny little part of it. So vivid, yeah. And this kind of simultaneously with Cezanne's Lifetime. this kind of sensorial periscacity is really the source of Proust's book.

[26:00]

I don't understand periscacity. Ability to perceive in detail. And this kind of sensorial Okay, so let's go back to Cezanne with his apprentice painter. Walking there within sight of Mont-Saint-Victoire, He's in a let's call it a perceiving a perceived attentional sphere. Er befindet sich in einem wahrgenommenen, in einer wahrgenommenen Aufmerksamkeitssphäre.

[27:08]

Or we could more accurately say a perceiving attentional sphere. Oder vielleicht müssten wir noch genauer sagen, eine, eine, ja, die nimmt er nicht selber wahr, die ist, doch, wahrnehmenden, wahrnehmenden, danke, Aufmerksamkeitssphäre. Now let's imagine somehow the spirit of Baizhang and Matsu has inhabited the two of them. Gehen wir mal davon aus, dass der... The spirit of who now? Matsu and Baizhang. Ah, okay. Und sagen wir mal, dass die Geiste von Matsu und Baizhang die beiden befallen haben. So for Cezanne, there in that valley, he's in a perceived sphere of attention.

[28:13]

You couldn't even ask him about where the geese went. Because that's a conceived sphere not a perceived sphere. You can conceive of where the geese have gone But you can't perceive where the geese have gone. And what Cezanne... Cezanne is painting what he can perceive, not what he can conceive. So what does... What does Matsu expect from Bajang?

[29:19]

And you know, of course, this is not just Matsu and Bajang. This was put together by a tradition and mostly written in the Song Dynasty, not the Tang Dynasty. Das wurde von einer Tradition so zusammengestellt, zum größten Teil in der Song-Dynastie und nicht in der Tang-Dynastie. So, not just what is Matsu expecting of Baizhang, was just a part of the tradition in China of teaching through cases. But what does the entire tradition expect of us now? Matsu and the tradition expect of Baizhang and of us is that we're so engaged with the perceivable, perceiving, sensorial sphere, which can be inhabited by your attention.

[30:32]

Your attention can't inhabit where the geese have gone. So you're so engaged in the attentional, perceivable, being at this moment perceived sphere. Du lässt dich so vollständig auf die Aufmerksamkeitssphäre, die wahrgenommen wird, die in diesem Moment wahrgenommen werden kann, ein. And whole entire being has so arisen within you. Und das vollständige Ganzsein ist so voll und ganz in dir aufgenommen. And before you. And when every step produces space. It's not there ahead of you. Every step produces space. If you shift out of that into a conceivable, conceived space.

[31:49]

It's almost like your embodied presence becomes as thin as a piece of paper. It's almost as if you were slapped down. And often these stories are the teacher idealized teacher, tries to see if his disciple is actually in the sphere of entire being inhabited by attention. Or you can easily push them into a conceived world. By asking them a question like, what time is it or something.

[33:01]

Mm-hmm. When Matsu, the idealized Matsu, is walking along with also idealized Baichang, the realization Matsu wants with Baichang the intimacy he wants with Baizhang, is their walking along, generating space as they're going.

[34:08]

As Cezanne might say, this valley attracts migrating geese. So wie Cezanne vielleicht sagen würde, dieses Tal zieht Wandergänse an. The valley of migrating geese, he might say. Who knows? I don't know. Er könnte das vielleicht das Tal der Wandergänse nennen. So for Bai Zhang and for Matsu and Bai Zhang, if they're really generating a mutual space as they're walking along, in which particular and context are flowing together, then you can't even conceive of the conceptual question Where have they gone?

[35:23]

Or at least Bai Jiang has to change his tone of... I mean, Matsu has to change his tone of voice when he asks the question. No, there's another phrase... do not hinder that which hears it. Is Dung Shan's wondering about the early Mahayana and Mahajamaka teaching of insentient beings preach the Dharma? Can you repeat, please? When insentient beings teach or preach the Dharma. But if your have thoroughly penetrated engaged the immediacy it's a fully without emitting anything it's a fully engaged sensorial sphere then it's a fully engaged

[36:47]

It's a fully engaged sensorial sphere. Then you can say, it's the Dharma body of phenomena. Because the Dharma body of phenomena, although it doesn't exactly preach the Dharma, it preaches to you. Because in the flow of context in particular the whole entire being which is the true human body is the entire universe. In that sense, the Dharma body of phenomena is constantly teaching us. Okay. It's a good place to end our Sushin, I think.

[38:20]

And I'm, you know, even slightly early. Thanks.

[38:23]

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