You don't. So if we have a sense, if we can have a sense, if we can let ourselves into this absolute uniqueness this then productive uniqueness let our minds rest in the surprise of the particular and again this takes a kind of revolution to really do this even for a few moments But it's only in the particular is the contingency of insight and again realization. And opening up nearness. not closed in by nearness but finding a way to open nearness allows what is concealed to come in for some reason I think of Christian Johann Doppler another Austrian hero

[01:29]

He lived in the first half of the 19th century. And he's the first one to notice that, or at least make clear, that when a train comes toward you and the sound is higher pitched as it comes toward you and lower pitched as it goes away from you. There's a shift in this airborne spectrum of sound. And you can tell how fast the train is going by just looking at the sound. And that was soon extrapolated to notice that in the light spectrum, planets or galaxies that are moving toward us have a blue shift and moving away from us have a red shift. And this led to this awareness of an expanding universe. So Mr. Doppler, sitting, listening carefully to the sound of a train, has allowed us to come up with this great mystery of the Big Bang.

[03:07]

And the missing matter that might allow us to contract instead of endlessly expand. So here's something very particular that leads us into an immense mystery. And this is here before us all the time. Doppler just had the willingness to notice. And our body is a kind of, you can think of your body as a kind of antenna. And the more you're embedded in here-ness, the more here-ness gives. And you know, I've been trying to find a way to express how the body is an antenna.

[04:27]

You know, math, mathematics is physically based Measurements. And it can be done on computers for that reason. But math can go where our mind can't. Math is a kind of tool which can reach farther than our thinking can. And the body is a kind of tool that can go farther than thinking can. Each of you is a kind of antenna here in here-ness. Maybe I'm getting too weird here, I'm sorry, but anyway, this is how I feel. And it's when you allow the openness of here-ness that what is concealed comes near.

[05:47]

And it's only in this openness of here-ness that the vertical dimension, the timeless vertical dimension is accessible. This dimension as we say connecting heaven and earth. So I think that's enough of an introduction to how our mind is also here-ness.

[07:05]

And how our mind is also nourished by here-ness. By the comfort of a continuous nearness. The comfort of a continuous nearness that's always a surprise. In which we can feel some soft new being coming into birth. Okay, thank you very much. Let's sit for a few minutes and then have a break. It has been understood by the ancients that this here-ness of the sight-centered big self is best realized by returning the mind to the breath.

[09:34]

This wide trunk of the breath. And our subtle body which is connected to heaven and earth and to all things. But rooted always in the particular. Everywhere you look, the world is very particular. You should be so. And so should you be too. Our power is not in our universality, but in our uniqueness.

[10:51]

Accepting thus the sight of our lives. Yes? I think the remarkable thing about this comment of Tungshan is I'm always close to this.

[11:57]

This always. And how can you do that and how can we do that? Yes, that's true. First step is to be close to this. And to recognize the value of being, this importance, the necessity of being close to this. That's about 90%. The last 10% is very difficult. To turn it into always. But Dung Shan is really making it possible.

[13:09]

Because he's not saying enlightenment or something big, some big deal. He says just be close. It's very kind of embracing. Yeah. Yeah, yes. How long are you sitting per day? You mean a normal day? Well, you see, I'm not very good at practice. So I've arranged my life so that everywhere I go, there's groups of people who force me to sit. I'm not kidding. I knew how weak I was when I first started. So I realized I had to get the help of a lot of people. So I form meditation groups every place I like to go.

[14:28]

And since I like being here in Germany so much, we have a center in Germany which gets me to sit every morning. If I have any wisdom, it was getting all you guys to help me. So generally at Crestone I sit two periods every morning. A 50-minute and a 40-minute sit. And in my ordinary life when I'm not at a center, I usually sit 20 or 30 or 40 minutes a day, but not always. But the first five years of practice, I don't think I missed a single day. Maybe in five years I missed one or two days for some reason.

[15:34]

But anyway, so like that. The people at Crestone sit one, two, three, four, five periods a day. And in Sashin we have more, but... But if you're asking for yourself, the important thing is just sitting even a few minutes is a big thing. Because nothing... Nothing in your daily life leads to sitting, usually, unless you're in a stressful situation. But you have to make a kind of wisdom decision that cuts through and says, okay, I'm going to sit down for 10 minutes or 20 minutes or something.

[16:39]

Usually, if you convince yourself you can sit for, say, 30 breaths, You often find once you're sitting that maybe a half an hour is okay. But to sit some is... Because there's some things you can't do through mindfulness. So the stillness that's possible through sitting that allows you to study the mind and still the mind. And then through the stillness of the mind study the body and the world. It's not possible through just mindfulness.

[17:56]

So some taste of sitting is important. But still the main practice is daily mindfulness. And that's primarily joining your sense of continuity and identity with your breath. And it's possible to do. You're breathing all the time, so why not try it? If you only breathed a couple times a month, it would be hard, but... Okay, something else? You want some water? You don't have a glass? Yes. Yes. You emphasized that the culture is us dragging in direction to universality, and that to be more particular is an effort you have to do.

[19:12]

Yes. But on the other hand, you have to have a certain universality to communicate and even to say that the culture draws us to universality is a universal remark. Does that mean you have to search a balance between it? Or then, because the tendency is to universality, you have to make the effort to particularity? Deutsch. Begrange hat gesagt, dass uns unsere Kultur in Richtung Universalität zieht, das Beispiel mit McDonald's, und dass wir die Besonderheit des Augenblicks Yes. Well, first of all, the way you are thinking about what we talked about is practice.

[20:35]

I mean, you have to turn these things over, really without trying to answer them, but just turn them over, look at them from various sides. And naturally, sometimes we're more generalized. And maybe it's kind of exciting. Even if depleting. And it's, of course, a way to be with others. But I don't quite agree that it's a necessity. Because the particular... There's a difference between language which becomes just words and language which is rooted, as you say, in a threshold or a frequency of each person.

[21:46]

So it's this difference between what I've talked about before, borrowed consciousness and immediate consciousness. So I can speak with you. I mean, I talked about this... The other day in Crestone I found myself using this example of here-ness and there-ness as a way to speak to some situation. But the way I spoke about it here turned out to be quite different. Because even though I had some similar idea in my mind, that I wanted to, thought would be useful, it actually grew out of being here with you.

[22:58]

That's why I find for myself almost always, although I talk about similar things that I found out how to speak about, For me, each time I speak, it's something different. I have the experience of very little repeating myself. And if I'm speaking with people who are with me all the time, I can almost never repeat myself. And I counted last year, because I had such a little bit too much traveling last year.

[24:02]

But I gave something like 248 lectures last year. And I always, I look here and something appears. I don't know what to say, but something appears. Because I'm so dependent on you. So for me it's not as much as possible. I always have this sense, as Eric says, of trying to be close to this. There's the first case of the Blue Cliff Records, the case, the book of koans, the famous book of koans. The first words of the introduction, what's called the pointer. It says, when there's smoke on the other side of the mountain, already we know there's fire.

[25:17]

When there's horns on the other side of the fence, we already know it's an ox. When one is raised, we know three. To judge precisely at a glance. This is the ordinary food and drink of the patched-robed monk. Yes. Now that's the first half of this pointer. And it really is a version of what I just said in the little talk before. Where there's smoke, there's fire. Where there's smoke on the other side of the mountain, you know there's already, already, that's like always, already know there's fire.

[26:23]

A word like already itself is interesting. It means all are prepared already, are all prepared to ride. So already we know there's fire. This means in Zen talk to mean we know the world is interdependent. To be aware all the time of interdependence. And that there's an ox If you see horns, you know there's an ox. Means you know because enlightenment exists in the world, you also can be enlightened.

[27:27]

Means for when Yochum knows the taste of enlightenment, he can cook toward it. And since he already knows the taste, I'm waiting for the cooking. Because as you know, I often say, you either cook your karma or get cooked by it. Yeah. I repeated myself there, I'm sorry. So because there's a taste of enlightenment, enlightenment is possible. You see the horns of the ox, you know the ox is there. And to know one when three is raised. means that when you pick up something, the other corners are there.

[28:42]

You show one, but you know three. So this has an obvious meaning of fire and smoke and ox, etc., And when you go into it you realize it has more evolved meanings. Because as I said the other day to hold up one also means to see many. And to see many means to realize emptiness. And to see the mind that raised the finger. So that's also what it means to hold up one. To raise one is to see three. And to judge precisely at a glance, this is to not be caught in dualistic parsing.

[29:45]

To not be involved in the hesitation of comparative thinking. And then it says the most interesting thing, this is the ordinary food and drink. Yeah, this is where the nourishment is, in the here-ness of interdependence and realization. It's like the rat pups that are nourished more by patting than by food. So we're all little rat pups nourished by the nearness of here-ness. So that's our nourishment. That's the nourishment of the patch-robed monk. And you're all fashionable patch-robed monks. So I won't tell you the last half of this introduction unless you get me to do it.

[31:04]

Because I don't want to tell you. There has to be some reason you might come back next year. I always loved those serial movies. They don't have them anymore. But I'd see on Saturday as a kid where the horse would be going over the cliff with Zorro masked and to be continued. So what else? In your opinion, what is the difference between meditation practice like here or meditation practice like TM?

[32:04]

Well, TM is a good practice, I think. Lots of people, I mean, my experience of it in the early 60s or 70s was it was a benefit to a lot of people. And I met him once in Berkeley and I didn't know who he was. He was just standing by a car There was a big lecture and I kind of climbed in the window of it and sat. This was 1964 or something, five, something like that. Maybe earlier than that. And I was standing and here's this guy with all his hair and Hawaiian flowers around him, you know.

[33:19]

Who's this guy? I'd just been walking across the campus. And I'd been practicing at that time a couple years, so it must have been 62 or 63. And I remember standing there, and I didn't know who this guy was, but I suddenly thought, my mind said, he's pretty good. Because I didn't know. He was just this flower power guy. Yeah, and the 60s were full of flower power guys. So I thought, he's pretty good. So then I said, why did I think that? And I noticed that even as an amateur new practitioner, I'd actually intuitively synchronized my breathing with his.

[34:23]

And as soon as I'd synchronized my breathing with his and had the Doppler effect, I suddenly felt, ah, he's quite good. I think the problem with TM has been it's been too generalized. So too many people without much real contact with others are giving out mantras and so forth, and you hardly know the person. From the Zen point of view, practice has to be more particular, more face-to-face. And one of the detrimental views that's been around among TM folks Though I don't say it comes from the Maharishi.

[35:33]

Which is that if a little meditation is good, more meditation is better. And that's not true. One should meditate. If you're meditating on your own without a teacher... probably you shouldn't meditate more than one or two periods a day. And borderline personalities, particularly who meditate too much, it can be quite difficult. And it's often satisfying, but it's not healthy. But basically the sitting in... Of course, in Zen we want a more... uncorrected mind than to work with a particular mantra. But still, it's a good practice. But I can't really speak of any other practices because I only know this one.

[36:34]

Something else? Thank you for your question. Yes. Yes. May I come back to the mind that arises from certain objects, like the flower mind, the stick mind? What about an ideal mind?

[37:35]

I mean, what is an idea? Where do they come from? What kind of mind arises with them? That's a good question. That's a good question. I think thinking that my own sense of it is, and we have to recognize that we define these words like ideas differently among ourselves. Nun, ich verstehe darunter Folgendes, und dabei muss man berücksichtigen, dass wir natürlich alle unter einer Idee was anderes verstehen. Is that thinking that's rooted actually in ideas. Nun, ein Denken, das in Ideen verwurzelt ist. is the only thinking I feel that's really functional. For instance, when I'm speaking, if there isn't a clear idea behind each phrase, she can't translate it.

[38:43]

If it's just a string of words, she'll have a hard time translating it, I think. That's my experience. So I have to feel that a group of words are glued together by an idea that's behind it or underneath it. So then in turn, I think ideas are rooted in the possible and the particular. We have a practice of evolving attention. In other words, there's natural curiosity. Now, teaching is to sustain that natural curiosity. If I give attention to you, that's normal, but usually my attention is easily satisfied.

[39:55]

It's satisfied by knowing your name. Or remembering something about you. Or knowing how you fit into my self-story. But that natural curiosity or that attention when I sustain it and I trust attention itself because attention is the seed of mind. and it's also the fruit of mind and there's lots of blossoms in between so if I practice with the teaching that attention itself can be trusted so if I give attention to you and I sustain that attention and I ponder what happens An operative understanding occurs.

[41:05]

I know how something functions by looking at it. And that operative understanding is an idea. So I think that a mind that arises from an idea And if you look at where ideas arise from, it's a mind like a flower mind. But when the ideas turn into words, And the words get divorced from their roots. We call them in Zen dead words.

[42:07]

Live words are rooted in the particular. I'm sorry this is such a long answer, but I don't know. It's all right. So live words are rooted in the particular. And then nourished by the particular. Unfortunately, these words start floating free of their roots and we start identifying with them and then we're not nourished. Now, when you just go on with this practice of evolved attention, when you learn to sustain attention, you're essentially exercising the muscle of attention. Attention becomes denser.

[43:15]

And you can begin to see the world in this more dense attention. The example I use is when you see an insect flying through the air, you can't see its path. But as soon as it hits the water, you can see it's bad. And as you evolve attention, it becomes something more dense and you can see the world happening in attention itself. And this attention is what precipitates realization. We call it threefold turning. Because there's an increase in knowledge, a decrease in doubt, and a turning towards something new or realization. And that happens through evolving attention. So through teaching, natural curiosity turns into a realized mind.

[44:29]

So this attention is like Mr. Doppler hearing the train. So attention, we bring attention to attention itself. And then attention evolves. As you're all appearing in my mind just now. And I'm appearing in yours. And aren't we having fun? Very nice, actually. You make my mind feel very good. Something else?

[45:29]

Yes. I thought we just... So that means, in addition to what you said, that to practice this sustaining of attention, Exactly. You do it as long as it's not too embarrassing for the person whose attention you're resting on. One practice I've often recommended is what I call direct attention. You just take, say, your flower on the table in the morning and really just let your attention rest on it.

[46:33]

And if you want, practice some teaching. Practice the five skandhas while you're giving attention to the flowers. Watching how perception works or how associative thinking arises. Or allow yourself to feel the interdependence of the flowers, the florist, etc. the farmer the clouds your own mind so if you do that as I say practice is a homeopathic medicine I'm now repeating myself and it works in small doses

[47:38]

So if you feel close to this only occasionally, the nearness of that begins to change you. You begin to purify yourself from inside. Something else? Yeah. You told me yesterday the story of the monk and the nun. And my question is for the nun who was in this vertical grave, in this grave, in the moment when she meets this monk, didn't separation happen again between the people? Or also the other world with the cultural trance, that it is important to create a hole in the cultural trance, but doesn't separation happen again? You mentioned yesterday in the story with the nun and the monk that she was in this vertical dimension and from this dimension related to the monk.

[48:55]

But didn't that sort of create a separation between them? Oh, that was her intention. And also like the cultural trance we tried to puncture. Isn't that also separation? Also the separation was intentional. Okay, so now you've given me permission to give the second half of the pointer. So it says, this is the ordinary food and drink of the patch-robed monk. But what about when cutting off myriad streams? Excuse me? But what about when cutting off myriad streams? Such a person rises in the east and sets in the west. Freely comes and goes in any direction.

[50:13]

And freely can give and take. Okay. So the first part of this pointer as a teaching is we go out into the world. There's a movement outwards. Outward within this here-ness. Everything is interdependent. Together we can come to realization We're each other's midwife. And we can understand things at a glance. That's called compassion.

[51:14]

Do you understand? Compassion is an outward movement to understand the world and be present in the world. In this sense, wisdom is a cutting off. So if I cut off your name, your occupation, you know, then something is very present, but it's not name. So that's cutting off myriad streams. That's not feeding your maps. Feeding your maps. Maps of how the world exists. To rise in the east and set in the west. This means we don't get up because the sun gets up.

[52:28]

We get up because we get up. We're the center. Or maybe the sun gets up because we get up. So there's not this causality of the sun comes up and we come up. This kind of statement emphasizes absolute independence. Nun, diese Art von Aussage betont einfach die absolute Unabhängigkeit. Denn einerseits sind wir zwar von allem abhängig, mit Gefühl, und auf der anderen Seite ist alles absolut einzigartig und unabhängig und schließt alles andere mit ein. This is the vertical or timeless dimension where the world stops.

[53:37]

So that's cutting off, myriad stream. And such a person is free to come and go in any direction. And free to give and take. So this is like I said to Helmut, isn't it? Werner, Werner, yeah. Werner, when you mirror somebody, this is compassion. When you turn that image in the mirror into the image of the Buddha, that's wisdom. But that's also compassion. So sometimes we do that. So if I'm relating to you, sometimes I relate to what I see integrative in you.

[54:41]

Sometimes I relate to what's disintegrative in you, so that will be emphasized. Sometimes I relate to you as your personal story. Sometimes I relate to your hidden story, as a Buddha. Because we each have the history of a Buddha in us. We just haven't connected the dots. So sometimes practice is to connect the dots. So she just came in showing herself. And he's a monk, and she immediately saw him, judged precisely at a glance. Realized what he needed.

[55:43]

So she walked around him saying, hey, how about the vertical dimension? He didn't know what to say. But it's interesting that that night he had a dream. In his dream, this other kind of thinking came to his rescue. And said, if you're patient, someone will appear. And the next day, this guy appeared named Tenryu, which means heavenly dragon. Who held up one finger and showed three. So the point here is that, yes, it's separation, but it's separation which allows another kind of connectedness. And the teaching here is we're not seeking oneness.

[57:00]

When you, the more your personality and your Mind itself is mature. All the possibilities of action and thinking come into this pattern of going out or coming in. Compassion or wisdom. Noticing all the attachments. Or having the power to cut off the attachment. And just cutting off the attachments is not right.

[58:03]

Just enacting the attachments is not right. Our teaching is this pulse of enacting attachments, cutting off attachments. And you know this intuitively when you take a walk and you want to be in the forest without talking to anyone. And then you want to be in a coffee house or someplace having conversation with someone. But this pulse is going on very deeply all the time. And with practice you can find this mountain and forest within you anytime. And you can come into this mind which the Diamond Sutra described. The mind that neither is nor is not.

[59:03]

A mind that neither is nor is not. Neither increases nor decreases. So it's a stable, immovable mind. This is also the mind wisdom. Which already we have the intuition of. A practice is to settle yourself in this. And know the world is this going out into interdependence, coming into absolute independence. And this is expressed as the Bodhisattva Manjushri, who has fire around him, and a sword to cut off attachments.

[60:19]

And the Bodhisattva of compassion, holding the lotus pod, The Avlokiteshvara or Kannon almost always holds a lotus with just the pod and the bud. The seed cup. And sometimes a curled up leaf which represents the embryo of the lotus. But it never shows the bloom. Because you are the bloom. So on the one side, compassion is this figure of kanon. Open and receptive and vulnerable.

[61:21]

Accepting whoever you are just as you are. So lovely. This is something we need. It nourishes us. And then there's also this Manjushri with the flames and the sword. Yeah. And we need that too. And if I look at you carefully, sometimes I see flames around you. Sometimes I see this heart. Yeah. Mm. So again, I've talked too much.

[62:24]

Sorry. Why don't we sit a couple minutes, and then we will have our lunch. Would you thank our for translating? Thank you.

[69:04]

Perhaps you can feel this kanon and this compassionate kanon. And this fierce wisdom consciousness of Manjushri. Perhaps you can feel this in you. Wanting to be born. In this new being mind. In this new being mind. which may surprise us at any time. Well, thank you all for being here and being so present this weekend.

[71:33]

And thank you to the Quadernity folks for inviting me again. Ferner and Christiane and Joachim. Always dear Martin, who's always bearing his right shoulder and asking a question for all of us. And Charles. Charles. And Eric for coming from Johanneshof to help us with the meditation. And Rika for improving on my words. Thank you very much.

[72:02]

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