So one side says this and the other side says that. I'm divided. I don't know if I'm divided this way or this way. Well, let's practice together and see if we can bring this together. And let's practice together and see if we can bring this together. And here it says, it can only be done through wholehearted listening. Yeah, you can do it. And I'm again separated. I'm again divided. Okay, but at least you know it. Yeah, but at least you perceive it. And then I have a problem.

[01:05]

And then I have a problem. And I came here running away from home. And now I'm here and I want to run back to where I came. Well. Why don't you wait till the end of the week? Explore, it says here, explore. That means explore, explore. Yeah. Okay? That's enough, I think. You know, there was a song when I was in high school.

[02:07]

Yeah, and I'm not making... light of what you were saying. But it didn't make me think of this song. And I'm not much of a singer. But it goes, take my hand. I'm a stranger in paradise. So somehow we can be a stranger and yet still be in paradise. But anyway, I hope you can stay through the week. At what time are we supposed to stop, by the way? All right, a minute. You had something you brought up earlier.

[03:10]

Human discretion to follow. Yes, we had in our discussion this question if this sentence not only makes sense or it is just a mistake in printing. There is sitting, letting go of body and body-mind, which is not the same as sitting, letting go of body-mind. What do you suppose it means? Can you say this in German, please? So what do you think it means if it's not a misprint? Not in the strange way, but for me it means that there are two times of getting rid of body, or separate ways to do it.

[04:21]

Not only one way, there's another way to do it. Okay. When I read the whole paper from here, that they should stay first body and mind, they should stay mind, and then body and mind. Okay. Anybody else? Yeah? Yeah. Everything is special. You can't repeat anything. Yeah. I remember the Tibetan saying, you can drink twice from the same river. Yeah. There's no way of a conceptual understanding of letting go of what is in mind. It has to come out of the wisdom of not understanding it. Well, it just means each moment is different. So every time you sit is different.

[05:23]

There is sitting, and it is different than sitting. And that sitting is different than sitting. And he puts it in the text, to make you experience the reading of the text as every time you read it, it's different. Now, I wanted to speak about reading the text of the world. Reading the text? Reading. Den Text der Welt zu lesen. Or understanding the world as text. Oder die Welt als Text zu verstehen. But I think now it's better to wait till tomorrow. Aber jetzt glaube ich, wir sollten besser bis morgen warten. But thanks so much for everything you said.

[06:26]

Aber vielen Dank für all das, was ihr gesagt habt. And I'll see you tomorrow morning. Thank you for translating. Very welcome. Let me start by taking three or four phrases from this Samae o Samae.

[07:48]

To manifest, second phrase, to manifest the magnificence of the Buddha ancestor's house. This is the second... It was the second phrase. Der zweite Satz in diesem Artikel lautete... to manifest the magnificence of the Buddha ancestors' house. And the second is to become a true person in the Buddha ancestor's room.

[09:02]

And the third phrase I'm extracting is to transcend the intimacy the realization of the Buddhas and ancestors, the Buddha ancestors. And the fourth is the Buddha ancestors practiced this way and didn't need to do anything else. And the next sentence, the Buddha ancestors practiced this way and didn't need anything else. I think probably if you're new to this stuff, it's a little hard to make sense of these things.

[10:03]

Yeah, it's like me reading the sports pages. But if you're familiar, you know what he has to be talking about. Now, I've decided to concentrate in this practice week on, first of all, how we know the world. And maybe we'll get to how we not know the world, the wisdom of not knowing. So let's talk about the wisdom of knowing. And I started making a contrast yesterday between knowing and understanding.

[11:28]

English had five or six words in this area. Maybe I'd pick a different one, but I'm just using knowing because it works better than understanding. So I'm trying to fit my experience in practice into this word knowing. Experience comes first, and then I'm trying to... influence the word knowing. But at least in English you can hear that the wisdom of not understanding doesn't make, doesn't feel like it could make sense. Now the phrase, the wisdom of not understanding, doesn't feel like it could make sense.

[12:40]

Now I heard in Andreas's... comments about the discussion he had in the small group. Several aspects. Perhaps one was the wisdom of not needing a teacher. Isn't that what you said? No. The wisdom of not needing to study the teachings or the sutras. The wisdom of not needing to do anything but the world teach you.

[13:43]

The problem is If we did take this, you know, the wisdom of letting the world teach you or something like that, how to let the world teach you, yeah, we could also say is the theme of this seminar, this practice week. Belehrt könnte auch das Thema dieses Seminars sein. And that takes some teaching, actually. Und das bedarf einiger Lehren. Now we could say the Buddha, yeah, he didn't have a teacher. Wir können sagen, der Buddha hatte keinen Lehrer.

[14:44]

Or he didn't have a Buddhist teacher. Oder besser, er hatte keinen buddhistischen Lehrer. So, you know, maybe we don't need a teacher either. And this teaching arises, I mean, before Buddha, at some point this teaching arose through human beings and the world we live in. Yeah, but can that happen for us? Well, it's a bit like asking if you were left out in the wilderness, would German arise or English arise? No, we know it. You might mumble about something or other, but it wouldn't be any known language.

[15:51]

In the few cases they know anything about where something like this happened, the person's brain is incapacitated for life. because learning a language develops our mental capacities. So probably, like the Orientals feel, or Japanese feel, that you want a language as complex as possible, not as simple as possible, as complex as possible, because it makes the brain, the mind-body complex. And just as people in the East or in Japan feel, it is about shaping the language as complex as possible and not as simply as possible, in order to then develop a complex body-spirit relationship.

[17:17]

So I think it's best to think of this practice as a language. A language you first learn to recognize and then to read. Now, the Buddha didn't appear out of nowhere. He comes out of the history of India and his times. And he somehow, through various causes and influences, realized enlightenment. No. He knew you and I could not have his life. So he tried to understand well enough what happened in his life that each of us could find this realization.

[18:29]

So he started to teach just because we couldn't replicate his life. Because his life was a teaching. Now, you could just say, well, he was a religious genius, blah, blah, blah. That certainly must be true. But he also had a particular life and he understood it and experienced it in a particular way. And the teaching is his way of sharing with us what led him to realize enlightenment.

[19:40]

Now, Anton gave me a piece by Dan Goldman it was in the New York Times recently who wrote the article? Dan Goldman G-O-L-E-M-A-N and he someone I know slightly not well and it's an interesting article And one of the main points is that it seems that they've discovered a way, or they seem to have discovered a way to measure what I think they call a set point.

[20:47]

I skimmed the article, but anyway. And if that set point is toward the left, you're in a pretty good mood all the time. If it's toward the right, you're in a pretty foul mood all the time. And if they can measure that set point, they can predict how your mood will be in the next days. And they found one Tibetan Lama who out of 175 people they tested, his set point was always way to the right. And Dan Goldman surprised me because he said,

[21:50]

You know, I've been an off and on meditator all my life, but after this I'm now going to start meditating regularly. I thought this was pretty funny because he's had conferences all the time talking about meditation and his books are about meditation, but anyway. I found that very strange, because he always shows up at conferences and talks about meditation and has also written books about meditation. So the article is interesting. But if you've been meditating for much time and know other people who meditate, it's nothing new. But it does seem, if you give nowadays, contemporary life, these things a scientific, supposedly scientific basis, then people are more likely

[23:06]

Aber es scheint heutzutage so zu sein, wenn es dafür eine wissenschaftliche Basis gibt, dann ist es wahrscheinlicher, dass Leute da einsteigen. Okay, so let's all wake up tomorrow with a set point to the right. Only to the left. Yeah, to the left. Lasst uns alle jetzt morgen früh aufwachen und dieser Ausgangspunkt ist weit links. Please tell me how you're going to do it. Und sagt mir bitte, wie ihr das macht. So that's the problem. I mean, the problem is, yeah, it's not just about more meditation or mindfulness practice. It's how deeply you understand the process and craft of meditation. So we could say, I could say that During this practice week, I'm trying to speak about how you could set the set point.

[24:13]

Or if someone could find one of many ways to measure your mode of mind. They hit upon this one thing they can measure. Perhaps through practice you also might reflect this measure. But now, of course, what pharmacologists and others will try to do is find a way to kind of adjust the set point, like turning a radio dial.

[25:20]

Almost as if you're not in possession of your own life. I think, first of all, we want to come into possession of our own life. Whatever it is. What are we doing here? We're trying to practice the Dharma. We're trying to practice the Dharma together. Because somehow intuitively or explicitly we understand, know the power of a shared vision. When all these many people march in these peace marches, it also changes, it not only changes the politics in the world, At least that, if not the possibility of war.

[26:44]

But it also changes the marchers. But one thing that the marchers don't really understand... They march to be counted. They don't march to be felt. That's important, and you share your... your enthusiasm of being with other people. But I found when I marched with Suzuki Roshi and with Thich Nhat Hanh in peace marches, they both marched the entire march as if the bombs might be going off beside them.

[27:46]

They marched with a full seriousness of what could happen. They just didn't march with a feeling of... Oh, this is a vote, and the helicopters will count me from up above. So I think if a whole march of a million people could actually march with some feeling like that, it would have considerably more power. And as some people do, they say, oh, this is just some young people's fashion or something.

[29:02]

The sangha is our effort to study together To study this teaching together. And see if we can come to the power of a shared understanding of what it's about. And maybe we can come to the power of a shared understanding of what it's about. So that's why we dialogue together, have discussion together and so forth. Because first of all we need to understand each other. If we start understanding each other and start understanding the teacher, That's also a powerful context for understanding ourselves.

[30:11]

And all that together is a powerful context for understanding the world. From which this teaching arises. This teaching arises to manifest the magnificence of the Buddha ancestor's house. Because it's not just you. How can I put it? It's not just you that has a set point. The world has a set point. Somehow, the example I can give most easily and is quite similar, is being in love.

[31:23]

You're in love with someone. But the whole world looks better. Why is that? Maybe the whole world can look better without your being in love. We could say that practice is something like that. The whole world looks better and it's not necessary to be in love, but it's not excluded. In this way, the world might stay looking better and not have so many ups and downs. This doesn't mean you're not realistic.

[32:24]

So yes, I think we need teachers. Yes, I think we need to study the teaching. And yes, we need to practice. And yes, we need to teach ourselves. But we need teachers and so forth to find out how to teach ourselves to read the world. So I... What time is it, by the way? Do you know? Okay, let me explain. So I don't know, do you have this nearly identical word in German, read?

[33:42]

Do you talk about reading braille as well as reading words? Do you read computer disks? Do you read computer disks? Yeah. Okay, so read in English anyway means it comes, it means to fit together. It comes, the root means to fit together. And it's probably most ancient root is the order of threads in a loom. And text means to weave. So here I'm taking these words in their widest sense.

[34:52]

How do we learn to read the weaving of the world? And what is the practice of the Dharma? The practice of the dharma is to have a magnifying glass, maybe, where you can see the weaving of the world. Or a specimen slide, you know. Like in a laboratory, you have a specimen slide in glass. So dharma is the practice or the activity of seeing the fabric of the world. And what conditions are necessary? A calm, abiding mind. A mind that can be still and that stillness abides.

[36:17]

How do you get there? Well, you can start reading the text of the world when you have a still abiding mind. It takes, I'm afraid, some teaching, some practice. And what's another condition? Freedom from the explicit or implicit permanence of self and the world. Freedom of the permanence of the world. then there's the possibility to begin to read the text, to discover the text, to feel the text, begin to participate in the text

[37:38]

of our own life in the world. This is something true and something we can do. You just have to really deeply see the point of it. You see the point of it? It's possible. Thank you very much. May we each and every person, every person and every word penetrate with the true radiance of the Kula Way. Shlutro muen seylando, mordor nushen seylanda.

[38:53]

They saved their place and none got scared. No, don't sit that way, please. Now I'm trying to introduce during this week the idea that the world itself is text.

[41:33]

It might sound obvious, perhaps, Yeah, something like that. But, you know, like saying we live in the world. But the living in the world goes towards generalizations. But the world as text means going toward what is text, what is the world. If the world is a kind of weaving, are we participants in the weaving, in the texture?

[42:40]

When the world is a kind of web, we are partakers of this texture. You don't have to translate such a thing. And if the world is text and we are also a participant in the weaving, how do we also read the text that we are participating in weaving? Now this idea is at the center of Mahayana Buddhism. But how do I introduce it so we can feel it? In the very first koan in the Shoyuroku, it says, it has a phrase, weaving the ancient brocade.

[43:59]

Including the forms of spring. Now, I think even in a phrase like that, you'll see that you need teaching. No, I'm not trying to promote myself here. I'm just, because this koan If you looked at it real superficially, it seemed to say, oh, all you have to do is practice breathing. But that's definitely not what it's saying.

[45:00]

So what's going on here? It's kind of like contradictory something. Yeah. Just take a phrase, weaving the ancient brocade. And I mean, you just This isn't so much a matter of that I know something I'm teaching you, but rather you get familiar with it if you spend a lot of time with it.

[46:00]

So let's just take weaving the ancient brocade. Imagine you just said weaving the brocade. Mm-hmm. Well, it doesn't say that. It says weaving the ancient brocade. How can you weave an ancient brocade? It's already woven. No, no, it doesn't mean just weaving the old patterns. It means that somehow this... World is an ancient pattern.

[47:09]

The beginning of things, the beginning of the seasons. But it also means, I mean, something actually close to set point left. It means that incorporating the forms of spring is that somehow you're weaving this brocade so that there's a realization in it. Das bedeutet auch, diesen Brokatstoff so zu weben, dass es eine Verwirklichung darin gibt. These folks did not have an image of the world as a fixed object.

[48:17]

Diese Leute hatten kein fertiges Bild von der Welt als Objekt. The image of the world they had was the... womb embryo that is in a pulse of coming and going. That's the biggest name for the world, the Tathagatagarbha. So when they talk about many world systems, they also mean right here there are potential world systems. We're bringing the pattern out or not bringing the pattern out. Now, if we go back to this, you know, I'm just trying to, introduce some ideas here.

[49:23]

Yeah, I might not talk about what I call right now Ur-ground mind. But let's just imagine that all the infant's millions of synaptic possibilities It includes all languages. A baby at a certain age can learn any language. And can learn several at once. This little baby that's visiting us now, Konstantin. He's a year and a half and he already knows everything. Afghani, Spanish, and German. Spanish, his mother's Afghanistan.

[50:32]

And they live in Dusseldorf. So the kid, you know, he wants aqua, and then he wants something in Afghani, and then he wants something in German, you know. Okay. Yeah, so at that point a child, an infant, can learn languages that haven't even been thought of yet. Okay. It could learn to live on a river boat the rest of its life, as its entire world. One could learn to live on the moon or Mars if we could get the poor kid there with enough oxygen. So let's call that right now Ur-ground mind. Now, Buddhism assumes that some kind of Ur-ground mind is this universe.

[51:56]

And some of those potentials of worlds may be right here, realized, interlocked with ours, but invisible to us. I'm not saying that's the case. I'm just saying that the wide conception of what the world is, is something like that in Buddhism. So this Ur-ground mind is also something like weaving, entering, recognizing this ancient brocade. And you know, brocade is a very layered kind of cloth.

[53:03]

And typically brocade in Asia has gold in it. And interestingly enough, even though silk is just an extraordinary fabric which barely ever wears out, when brocade does kind of begin to fall apart, What they do is they gold-leaf paper. Then they cut it into thin strips and they weave the thin strips of gold-leaf paper into the cloth. I mean, I haven't looked real carefully, because they can fake it sometimes, but I think the bowing mat in the Zendo is like that.

[54:19]

And when brocade does over centuries deteriorate, the gold-leafed paper lasts the longest. So that this brocade, which represents the... I'm sorry, it's not... It's pure gold. It's not like gold on paper. Yes, it's pure gold on paper. Gold leaf on paper. Okay. That came up with the translation?

[55:34]

Yeah. Okay. So the brocade represents one of the highest accomplishments of the culture of that time. Just getting all those silkworms to unravel their cocoons is an accomplishment. Just imagine, who figured that one out? Let's plant a mulberry tree and make some silk. And often the best paper, in Japan anyway, is also made of mulberry leaves. So this is a very complicated idea already.

[56:37]

and as you can see in the bowing mat and pillow in the zendo. The cloth is full of light. Der Stoff ist voller Licht. It reflects light. Er reflektiert das Licht. When I first got those two cushions, I got some criticism that it's too religious and too ornate and etc. Als ich diese beiden Kissen, diese beiden Gegenstände zum ersten Mal gebracht habe, bekam ich Kritik dafür, dass es zu religiös sei und zu viele Ornamente hätte. Yeah, maybe that's true. But still, it's nice to have an example of this height of Asian culture.

[57:58]

So when possible, brocade is always used for altar cloths. Okay. Now, have you all read this little thing here? It takes a minute or two to read it. Sometimes a... So he says, I don't read the scriptures. He didn't say, I don't read the scriptures.

[58:58]

He said, why don't you read the scriptures? And he just said, I do this breathing. He didn't say he didn't read the scriptures. And the point is, of course, both he and the Raja are breathing. What's the difference between the breathing of Prajnapara and the breathing of the Raja? Vajra. Yeah, it's Prajnidhara or Tara, but nowadays mostly it's spelled Dara, Prajnidhara. So it's Prajnidhara, but today it's said Prajnidhara. And Prajñādhāra, he's named after the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra.

[60:09]

So he kind of is himself a sūtra, this is the implication. Dhāra means jewel, so he's wisdom jewel. Prajna means wisdom and Dara means jewel. So we're going to start calling my daughter Sophia Dara. She's my youngest daughter. No, no. My youngest jewel. Sophia Dara. I already call her Sophia Darling, so it's pretty close. And then she just repeats it, and she looks at me and says, Darling. But I say, Give me a kiss, and she says, Nein. Then I say, Give me a kiss, and she says, No.

[61:15]

We were in Italy recently, and the waitresses, every day more waitresses started giving her kisses. It doesn't happen in Germany, but in Italy it happened. They started kissing Sophia. We were in Italy recently, and the... But, so, when we first, after a while, when we first go down at breakfast, Sophia would look around and say, And when we then came down in the morning, she would say, And he is, when he was, if the story is, he's the 27th ancestor of Zen. Buddha ancestor.

[62:36]

When he was recognized by his teacher, he was said to be the bodily reflection of Mahastamapatra. You don't have to say it. And that guy, Mahastamapatra, is the Bodhisattva who represents the wisdom of Avalokiteshvara. And Bodhidharma, his kind of like ancient name is Avalokiteshvara. Bodhidharma was considered to be a bodily reflection of Avalokiteshvara.

[63:52]

Avalokiteshvara represents compassion and yet we chant her name in the morning wisdom sutra. So you see these are mythological identities all woven together. One is the wisdom of the other and one represents compassion and so on. Babies seem to cry in a similar language. So, given... Prajñādhāra's names.

[65:06]

Now we have to look carefully at what it means, what they might mean by, why don't you read the scriptures? And this kind of contradictory layered meaning is typical of koans. You have to feel your way into it. If this koan is about the text of the world, how do you read the text of the world? then if this world, if this con is a... What's the word now?

[66:13]

this koan then would be itself an example of reading the text of the world. In other words, the koan should be an example of what it's teaching. Okay. So again, this is the third koan in this book that particularly represents Dungsan's lineage. And this introduces, this third one introduces the world itself as text. It says later on, I only gave you this much because I thought this was enough.

[67:21]

But I'm picking out certain aspects that I want to bring to you. It says in the latter part of the commentary, the entire earth is the practitioner's volumes of scripture. The entire earth is the practitioner's volumes of scripture. See? The entire world is the scripture.

[68:22]

The entire world is the practitioner's eye. Die gesamte Welt ist das Auge des Praktizierenden. How do you use this eye to read this scripture? Wie benutzt du dieses Auge, um diese Schriften zu lesen? This is just entering us directly into what is this we're living in? How do we read it? How do we know it? Das bringt uns direkt dahin, worin leben wir? Was machen wir damit? Wie lesen wir es? So it's not just like a question in Western philosophy, who are we? But what is the world that we are? Weaving, including the forms of spring. Okay. Now, the image of someone studying the sutras and not getting the point

[69:52]

In those days, of course, windows weren't glass, they were paper. Which is actually a much better insulation than glass. Okay. The image of a person studying the scriptures and not being able to understanding. It's like a fly buzzing at a paper window. You can't get through the paper. So piercing the window means to open to the light, to break through the scriptures. Und das Fenster zu durchlöchern bedeutet eine Öffnung hin zum Licht, hin die Schriften zu verstehen.

[71:01]

Now, Mahasamapatra also means the one who brings to the practitioner the power of liberation. Und dieser Name bedeutet auch das The one who brings the power of liberation. Die Kraft der Befreiung. Who brings us the power of liberation. Zu uns zu bringen. Yeah. And so here in this Goan it says, we even have to pierce ox hide. animal skin. Yeah, and sometimes things were written on parchment, you know, and I had to, so, but how do you pierce through? Mm-hmm. Not that I... I mean, I'm doing my best because that's my name pierced through, Zen Tatsu.

[72:13]

Zen Tatsu. So a good friend of mine just calls me Hatsi Tatsi. I say, now, come on. And I say, now, come on. That's enough. Okay. Now, I think it's Edmund Husserl who first used the word sedimentation. I think it was Edmund Husserl. Husserl? Husserl. Husserl, yes. Is that how you pronounce it?

[73:14]

H-U-S-S-E-R-L? Husserl, yes. Husserl. It was Husserl who used the expression of sedimentation for the first time. two years after I was born. And has had a big influence on Western philosophy, particularly on people interested in things close to Buddhism. Now you, in German, have the same word, sediment. Sediment. Sediment, yeah. So, Oestrel's idea, and at least as I'm using it, is we somehow have to get certain minds... from here down to here, sedimented down so they abide and are underneath our other minds. Okay. Now, Buddhism is based on that everything changes.

[74:35]

And the word dharma means that which holds. So there's always here the implied there's always the implied question of continuity, discontinuity. And permanence and impermanence. So we're substituting in through practice an idea of permanence which is flatly wrong, with an experience of continuity, Now, because we do have an experience of continuity.

[75:49]

How can we establish that experience of continuity so it's not an idea of permanence, a deluded permanence? deluding idea of permanence. Okay. So I've spoken about it often in terms of breaking the continuity of thinking by transferring the experience of continuity Ich habe oft darüber gesprochen, diese Kontinuität des Denkens dadurch zu brechen, dass wir unsere Kontinuität im Atem finden. And now I'm speaking of sedimenting certain minds as continuity.

[76:50]

Now, this is in many ways no more than a change of habit. And it's incorporated or lurking, it sounds like a negative word, hiding in simple practices like when you enter a room, feel it before you think it. Und es ist versteckt in solchen einfachen Praktiken wie wenn ihr einen Raum betretet, fühlt ihn erst. Now, when I say something like, when you come into a room, feel it for a moment before you enter and before you think the room.

[78:10]

And when I say something like, he comes into the room and feels the room before he thinks it. Alauddin, this man who has written this listening book, is also my daughter's music teacher. He's written a book called The Listening Book. What's his name? Al-Laudin. Al-Laudin has a... Naftu, but he has a Sufi name. He's written this quite marvelous book called The Listening Book, and he says, in the beginning, if you want to really find the sound text, he doesn't use those words, but... And he describes at the beginning, if you really want to find You want to not look. You want to close your eyes. You want to shut down, particularly looking, thinking, and just listen in to the sound text.

[79:22]

And if I hear that. word for sound in German, the song pops to my mind. Clang, clang, clang, went the trolley. Ding, ding, ding, went the bell. You probably don't even know. I do know. Oh, okay. We'll sing it together. Okay. So if you develop a simple habit like that, and as I said, I don't mean just, really I don't mean just when you come into a room, but if you can develop the habit that much,

[80:46]

Of course I mean expand it to the beginning of every perception. As it says, you know, the volume of the earth and the world... The practitioner should read with this eye, read this scripture without interruption. With this eye, make this scripture without interruption. That's how you re-layer, re-weave your mind itself. Because you're thinking the world without interruption. So you have to bring something else that you do without interruption.

[81:55]

You can almost turn the mind upside down. At a time before beginning, something like that it says? Before the beginning of time, a turtle heads for fire. So it may be as hard as a turtle heading for fire to do this over and over again. But if you do it, If you have the intention to do it fully, the performance will follow, and at some point you'll find you're feeling the world always first and thinking it second.

[83:09]

And in a sense now, you've sedimented a new mind as continuity. Now, if we take the... six of the eight vijnanas, and we consider mind one of the six senses, Okay, then feeling, non-graspable feeling would be the closest to what I would say is the mind text.

[84:13]

The mind is what we really can feel the world with. Feel the field of mind itself. So you're working with this non-graspable feeling as a text. And you're writing the text for yourself, weaving the text for yourself every time you do this. It's like you look at a page of a book and you imagine that in the white of the paper is hidden quite a few other texts. Like might be on a computer screen without a keyboard.

[85:14]

And you don't have a keyboard and you don't know what the pattern would be anyway, but somehow you draw text out from underneath another text. So you're pulling this feeling text. out from the thinking text. And you can look at it the same way with sound, text, taste, text. Now imagine a blind person. There's no discontinuity for a blind person in the world. The blind person, you know, everything is connected.

[86:44]

I don't really have much sense of this if I'm blind, but I have a sense of, Hi, Gerald, it's so nice to see you. Don't have to translate that. Yes, you do. That's my idea. So for a blind person, the idea that things are separate is just not graspable. Blind from birth. So what I'm asking you to do is to practice with us a sound text, a taste text. A touch text, a feeling text. A fragrant text.

[87:48]

Did you ever see that movie, The Scent of a Woman? Oh yeah, it's kind of worth seeing. This guy went up to someone and said, I don't have a very good nose, but I noticed it in high school. And I don't know why, but it's one of the things that led me to practice. I could smell in the classroom how often people bathed. I could, excuse me for saying so, I could smell which girls were menstruating.

[89:03]

I could smell people's moods. I could smell anxiety. So I had all this information about the people around me I didn't know. Was I supposed to know these things? No, I'm supposed to edit it out. But the fact that everyone ignored it or edited it out made me realize that the text that the school was supplying me was a pretty limited text. So with a big nose like this, it was all right. But it's a small thing, but it made me doubt the way the world was being officially presented to me.

[90:25]

Now I want to go on about this. But I think it's about time to stop. Ah, we have another minute. No, I said it wrong yesterday. We go on till six. You did? Not today. You have to keep me up to date, you know. Me?

[91:29]

Yeah. I'm just following instructions. I've got new instructions, but I don't have to follow them just yet. Yeah. I'm not very flexible. And my legs are not feeling flexible. Thank you.

[92:27]

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