Welcome back, Frieda. We missed you. Yeah, I always find it challenging, bewildering, maybe a little wonderful. You know what the problem is, right? They're all the same word. Okay, anyway. To speak with you inside your own experience. And inside what Presumably is the Buddha's experience.

[01:05]

And inside what the sutras describe as the Buddha's experience. Yeah, I sort of feel... I want to find a way to do that now, so I feel a little... embarrassed or maybe something you're responsible to speak inside, if possible, your experience too. But that seems to be part of my job description. Yeah. Yeah. So when I look at the Buddha, the statues of the Buddha, I feel something like the Buddha statue represents someone sitting in the truth.

[02:40]

then I have the feeling that a Buddha statue represents someone, stands for someone who sits in the truth. And silence and... But when I feel that way and I look at, that experience comes up when I look at the statue, my life is about whatever that statue is about. So am I coursing in the... When I look at the Buddha and just let whatever comes up, come up, am I coursing in the apprehension of a sign or of a basis? And the Prajnaparamita literature does say the Bodhisattva recognizes that

[04:03]

people course in the course in flow in function in like a boat a boat courses through the water courses in the apprehension of the sun and the bodhisattva does do that The Bodhisattva notices that people do that. Or courses in the apprehension of a basis. In English, I like the word apprehension because it means both to understand and to fear. If you want to say, I fear that will happen, you say, I have an apprehension that might happen. For the apprehension of a basis.

[05:41]

So when I look at the Buddha and I have a feeling of he's sitting somehow representing the truth, is that the apprehension of a basis? Now again, what I'm saying is not complicated, but it takes a little while to settle into the distinctions. So when the Bodhisattva perceives or senses that people show course in the apprehension of a sign or a basis, The bodhisattva then, him and herself,

[06:54]

use that apprehension to shift into coursing in the signless and in emptiness in order to demonstrate I shouldn't say the truth to demonstrate how things actually exist to others then the bodhisattva uses exactly this apprehension, exactly this grasping or this understanding to demonstrate to the people, and I should not use the word truth, but to demonstrate to the people the teaching or the way the world actually exists for the people. Yes, now, why are these... rather refined distinctions of any importance to us? And we're in a world of environmentally coming apart and politically coming apart.

[08:36]

What are we bothering with this kind of thinking? Why do we deal with these differences? Well, I mean, again, someone ought to explore how we actually exist. Maybe it's useless, maybe it's not. But probably someone ought to do it because this is all, everything that's happening is rooted in our existence. Our... Our experience of the world is rooted in our existence. This Manjushri statue in the Zendo. Her fingers are right over her heart. Ihre Finger sind direkt über dem Herzen.

[09:51]

Aber sie hält auch ein Schwert. Und dann ist da das Gefühl, dass alles, was nicht aus dem Herzen kommt, abgeschnitten wird. And in this statue, her clothes turn into flowers and turn into clouds and flames. And in some statues, she's holding a little thing between her fingers that turns out to be a stem, which turns into her clothes and flowers. There's a lot of information in that, practice information in that statue. That's not present in the less articulated three golden sitting figures.

[11:09]

And in this 500-year-old figure, we know pretty much because the age of the wood it's made from is 500 years old, Muromachi Jidai period. Which doesn't mean that it's old. It means that for 500 years, people have taken care of that carefully. Which means really, for me, we have to take care of our practice carefully too for 500 years. Und was das für mich bedeutet, ist, dass wir wirklich uns auch sorgfältig um unsere Praxis 500 Jahre lang kümmern sollten.

[12:30]

Now I mentioned the other day about the itching. Und ich habe vor ein paar Tagen das Jucken angesprochen. I mean, sort of the instruction, basic instruction in Zazen posture is you find your posture and then you don't move. And then another basic instruction is you don't scratch. You could understand that as well. Scratching is a form of moving, so you're supposed to not move and you don't scratch either. But if you practice enough, you find out this scratching. My skin is falling apart with age, and it's kind of a nuisance, but I'm getting used to it. So with practicing, you begin to find out something else is going on if you don't scratch, which is different than not moving.

[13:46]

And as I said, the skin is our largest organ. And its job is to establish inside and outside. Protect us from venomous insects and things like that. And strangely enough, as soon as you start doing zazen Somehow the skin starts feeling, hey, there must be lots of venomous insects around. I'm going to start itching. Aus irgendeinem Grund ist, sobald du beginst, sasen zu sitzen, bekommt die Haut irgendwie das Gefühl, hey, jetzt sind aber ganz schön viele giftige Insekten hier in der Gegend und ich werde jetzt mal vor der Zeit auch anfangen zu jucken. And I think the skin is actually saying, because your skin talks to us and says, hey, don't be stupid.

[15:08]

Who do you think you are? Don't relax your guard. Everything is dangerous. Yeah, so the little itches appear here and there. And one thing to notice, often they're actually acupuncture points. It's the kind of way you discover, you can discover acupuncture, as I'm sure it was the case, acupuncture points were discovered from the inside as well as experimenting from the outside. But the advice I would give you as practitioners is see if you can feel underneath the scratch, the itching. And see if you can feel the gesture which wants to scratch.

[16:24]

And then withhold the gesture, refrain from the gesture. And if you get you know, good enough at that, it sounds strange, but you get so that you can feel under the itching and let the itching just happen. And you can refrain from scratching and feel a gestural space. To not scratch is also a gesture. To just feel inside, underneath the itching.

[17:29]

And sometimes, maybe it will happen to you, that you suddenly... There's no inside or outside. The inside-outside distinction disappears. And then the feeling of your, say, the wetness of your mouth. Or your tongue at the roof of your mouth if you're doing zazen. Or someone coughing. Or your spine gesturing upward or somehow, whatever.

[18:37]

Or a truck goes by. So the sound of the truck or the feeling of your tongue or mouth or the pain in your knee perhaps just exist in a space that are all equal. They're not even inside or outside. Maybe they're all inside, but they're neither inside nor outside. If you could read the sutras with that feeling from that space, you'll understand what they're saying much better. Wenn du die Sutren aus diesem Gefühl heraus, aus diesem Raum heraus lesen kannst, dann wirst du viel besser verstehen, was die Sutren uns sagen.

[19:47]

We could call that, I think, pretty accurately the experience of what is meant by, the experience of suchness. Wir können das, glaube ich, ganz zutreffend die Erfahrung von Soheit oder von dem, was mit Soheit gemeint ist, nennen. It's all equal, just sounds, feelings, appearances. It just happens in a field of experiences. Now, I think it's pretty difficult for a non-meditator, unless they're hit by a bicycle or a car or something like that, to have the experience of suchness. I mentioned accidents because I've known people who've had accidents and had this kind of experience. But usually it takes the stillness of the sitting posture called meditation or zazen.

[20:59]

To drop, let go of the inside-outside dissension. And then just feel everything as appearances. They're all equal. They're not inside you or outside you. They're just appearances. We could call it just information. Now, generally I don't like to use common words that everyone knows what they mean, but in this case I like using the word information. Because I'd like to bring the special meaning of information that arises from zazen practice.

[22:02]

To all your use of the word, Uri, this culture's use of the word information. And the word form means to mold or shape. So information in English is to go into molding and shaping. So you're in a field of information. So now when I look at the Buddha, I feel trying to see if I can look without any coursing in the sense of a basis like truth or endpoint like truth.

[23:18]

Truth is a termination. Yeah, and if we look at the history of Buddhism, early Buddhism and later Buddhism, I don't think we have to look at it through the politics of Freudian psychology, the survival of the fittest and things like that. Mahayana is politically better than the Hinayana. There may be some truth to it, but basically it's just like I might say, well, geez, the way I thought of that when I was 50 is different than when I think of it, experience it at 80. Because the most subtle and accurate I think distinction between Mahayana and

[24:28]

Theravadan or early Buddhism. And you can see it established over and over again in the Prajnaparamita literature. Is Theravadan's course our earlier ancestors, course in the concept of enlightenment. that there are terminations and there are beginnings, beginning points and end points. And if you think in terms of beginnings, of beginning points and end points, Your thinking loses subtlety.

[26:06]

Because you're thinking, well, this will lead to this or that is based on this. And the concept of a basis or grounding will pull the information into establishing that and will pull the information or the noticings into establishing an end point. Then, what the Prajnaparamita literature says, you're abandoning beings. Okay, that was great, but that was three things. How many did I say it was? Too many things to translate. That was three different concepts. I think I can put them together, but it would be useful if you went. I'd like to see you do your best. Okay. I told Matt and Paul and Paul and Anna last night at the meal, I might try to speak about this if I felt it. was possible.

[27:25]

Okay. Because Buddhism looks at the world as beginningless and endless. There are multitudinous beings and everything is just going to continue forming itself. Okay, good enough. Coincidentally, you know, quantum physics says, we don't know what the world is.

[28:29]

All we know is the information we have about the world from experiments. And when you... try to put an endpoint into that information, and say the information tells us the world is about particles or photons or something, you're making a mistake. And all the information only tells us what the information is. And the information is based on experiments that you couldn't think your way to the experiments, but the experiments show you things you couldn't think your way to. And that, coincidentally, is just pretty much what the Prajnaparamita literature is saying.

[29:44]

Suchness is just information. We don't know what it's about, really, but it's information that you get by experimenting with your practice and your mental postures and so forth. It doesn't mean that practically speaking you don't also know things when you go walking back to Johanneshof. Your steps are making the path, that's true. But there are those extraordinary big stones that Otmar found and put as our stairs to the road. So that's, you know, at the level of our ordinary functioning, that's all out there.

[31:21]

But there's another dimension which is just information. It's just the sound of a truck or a car or a pain in your leg or the wetness of your mouth. And all we have is subtle observing. As I call it, connoticing or noticing. And it's, again, the background of Hishirio to notice without thinking about. You notice things, but you allow the noticing to be what you know, not what you think about. Yeah, and Atmar likes the statement attributed by some to Cezanne.

[32:35]

I'm not sure it's Cezanne, but to don't paint only what you see, don't paint what you think. And there's that Swiss artist, what's her name, Carolyn Hesse-Honegger, something like that. Hesse-Honegger. Her first name is Caroline. I forget. Yeah, I happen to know her slightly and spent some time talking to her. And she's quite well known as a painter of insects.

[33:38]

And she was in Sweden at one point after the Chernobyl disaster. And she noticed that the insects she was painting in Sweden When she painted them carefully and looked at them carefully, they were mutated insects. And it's interesting because people were going around the nuclear power sites in Switzerland and all and saying, oh, there's no leakage. But she went and she painted the insects and there was leakage. You get miles from it and you still see the insects were mutated.

[34:41]

And that's strange. The people who are checking this went around the nuclear power plant in Switzerland and said, no, there's nothing going on, there's no leak or something. But when she was there and drew the insects all around, you could see very well that something was happening, because the insects had mutations miles around the nuclear power plant. And so in others, there were other people who looked and said, oh, these insects just like you. But they didn't look carefully enough to paint them. And only when you look that carefully could you see that they were mutated. And so in Zazen, you don't want to You just want to notice that goes beyond thinking about.

[35:45]

And you want to trust that that kind of noticing is a more fundamental way to know. So I'm against using the word consciousness. Oh, thanks a lot. But when you say consciousness and you have subconsciousness, unconsciousness, everything relates to the reference point is consciousness. reference point i think ought to be knowing and then we see that there's knowing inner knowing and then there's outer knowing or um the knowing of consciousness.

[37:06]

And so then we might see that the fundamental knowing is wider than the lesser knowing of consciousness. If the reference point was knowing instead of consciousness. So I'll go in another direction for a moment. I think that's enough for now to get a feeling for what I'm talking about. The Buddha is sitting in the field of suchness, a field of information that he or she accepts and resolves. People who come and visit the Zendo or see it for the first time sometimes say to me, Why did you lay the slate as diamonds or triangles?

[38:27]

And I think, well, that's interesting. They're just squares. Why do they think they're triangles? Well, obviously, because the sill of the doorway, for instance, is not one way, but that's only one board. But the walls of the room, the rectangular, nearly cubic room, the walls are different than the way the slate is laid. I mean, the slate is just a square. It's just a square. In relationship to the walls, it's a diamond.

[39:43]

Baseball, which most of you don't know much about, is based on a diamond and the length of time it takes to hit a ball in the distance in the direction of the diamond. And baseball, that most of you don't know very well, is based on a diamond shape and on the duration it takes to hit a ball in the direction of the diamond. And American football is about capturing territory. Yeah, and European and nowadays worldwide, football is about the fluidity within a rectangle. American football is about capturing space within a rectangle, and football is about the fluidity within a rectangle. And football, as it is played worldwide, is about the river within a rectangle.

[40:58]

In football, it's about conquering an area within a rectangle. And in football, it's about the river. Okay, so somebody looking at the Zendo says those squares are diamonds. And they say that, I would say, my experience, is that they actually have embodied the volume, the rectangular volume of the room. And my experience is, at least I would say, that people say this when they embody the rectangular or quadratic volume of space. They notice the diamond of the slates. But most people don't notice their body has already established a rectangular or cubic space.

[42:05]

We take for granted. You walk into a room and your body establishes that space, and then this looks like a diamond instead of a square, even though it's also a square. And then when you walk from the Zendo into the Buddha Dharma Hall, that door is almost a perfect square. So you flow through that perfect square into this rectangular volume guided by the lines of the lights, probably. And now you feel you're in a rectangular volume.

[43:09]

And I think your body will, actually we don't notice it, but our body is reflecting that. And then when you go back into the Zendo, you go back through the square of the door into the nearly square Zendo. which then the square of the central ceiling is even is a square which makes a more of a kind of focus in the zendo. And then the diamonds which is actually four overlapping triangles or two triangles, depending on how you think of it.

[44:20]

The diamond layer of the floor is moving underneath the rectangular space of the room. So you feel this is going on somehow. The floor is in a different kind of level, and you're establishing another level within the volume of the room and on the floor, which is going differently. The room wouldn't have this dynamic if the slates were laid parallel to the wall. The floor requires you to establish your own space. Der Boden sorgt dafür, dass du deinen eigenen Raum herstellen musst.

[45:41]

This is all information. Und all das ist Information. So that the information your body feels, the rectangle of the room, the square of the ceiling. Es ist Information, die dein Körper spürt. Die Information des Bodens, die Information der Decke und so weiter. It's only information and some of it you notice and most of it you don't notice. There's a kind of knowing going on outside consciousness. And you don't notice that you're not noticing it, obviously. You don't notice what you don't notice, but you can notice it because you see, hey, why are these squares diamonds? And likewise, sometimes you can suddenly feel that there's no inside and no outside. Your robe is turning into flowers.

[47:00]

The outside world is just a field of information that's penetrating you and everything. And this is the same, as you know, iconography is that statue. here's this stick turning into a lotus embryo where the hand goes and here's the bud of the lotus and here's the seed pod of the lotus and here's the flower of the lotus just information Thank you very much.

[47:53]

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