It's clear you've never lived in a monastery. I mean, life is intensified in the monastery. I mean, life is intensified in a monastery. Can you imagine, there's what, 40 of us here? We decide, the 40 of us, to be here for two years together and not go anywhere except this room and the dining room. Can you imagine what would happen? the skills you'd need to survive would be of a lot higher order than just going home at night from your job.

[01:13]

Okay. And you had something, Jason? No? I would like us to enjoy the rain for a little bit now. So let's sit for a little bit. If you need to stretch first to go to the toilet, it's fine. I'd like to take a small break, just to stretch your legs and use the toilets if you want. And I don't suppose many of you want to sit out in the lawn. So after five minutes or a little break to walk around, I'd like you to get together in small groups of just the people near you.

[02:18]

Maybe six, five or six or seven people. And I'd like you to see if you could discuss among yourselves if there's anything you all agree you more or less understand. Or what you do understand. Or what you feel, and it makes sense to you. I'd also be interested if each group could come up with one question that you'd all like to ask. To ask all of us and to ask me. And that question could be one you all agree on or one that alchemically you create from all the different questions. This is what the rain asked me to do.

[03:41]

Okay, so let's take a little break and then... Good morning, good morning. What I'd like to try to do today is to on the one hand see if I can make some of this stuff simpler or rather perhaps show you the usefulness of it.

[04:41]

What I'd like to come to is a sense of what real, shall we maybe say, the second stage of yogic practice is. In the first stage we can say is the physical posture and trying to sit sansa. And that's primarily based on the body and what arises through bringing the mind and attention into the body. But what I would call today the second stage is more... Yes? He's speaking to me and I can't understand. And what I would call the second stage is Let's see, the first stage is physical.

[06:06]

The second stage, we could say, is establishing yogic insight. And the third stage, it's kind of ungainly to say it, but it's a kind of mental yoga practice. These pictures I've drawn are helpful in giving you an interior sense of how the practice works. And... And... I give you an interior sense of how the practice works.

[07:23]

I can't think of how to express what I mean but it will come to me. I appreciated, as I made clear yesterday, the amount of discussion we had and the small groups meeting together. And I appreciated this because I recognize that I can't really teach you much. Now, mostly you have to teach yourself. Because, again, it's like being an artist.

[08:28]

You know, an artist can learn something from another painter, but basically it's to just start painting, and then he learns or she learns through the painting. So if you can develop a way of studying the world and yourself in the kind of way we started here. And you can continue that along with zazen practice. Then I have great confidence in every one of you that if you continue, you'll come to some fruition in this practice. Now is Christian speaking loudly enough?

[09:36]

He's swallowing the end of his sentences. I used to, when I first started giving talks, in order to have some intimacy with what you're saying, I spoke more to myself. And then people would say, so every lecture I started, and it became a kind of joke, can you hear in the back, I would say. So I'd come into a room and people would say, oh, hi, can you hear in the back? So I'd like to know this morning to start out with what you came up with as questions or things that you did feel you understood or were like points of reference and understanding.

[11:10]

Does each group have a spokesperson? Yes, Eric. Are all these models of the world at any time relatively medieval, Western, or undisclosed, to us only means to protect our fear about the uncertainty of this world? And if so, why do they help us overcome this fear? Yes, are all these models of the world, which are now on all sides of the Middle Ages or now in our Western world, or even this dualistic model that you have presented to us, only means to overcome our fears and insecurities of this world and to destroy it?

[12:18]

And if so, English. Now go slowly. The first part. Are all these mortals of the world at any high? western or buddhist like we said it was yeah now wait a minute now wait a minute are all these models of the world you mean any models or these models what's the other model christian western So you're asking a philosophical question. Okay, yeah.

[13:18]

I give up. I've been defeated, so. Maybe it only means to protect our fear about the uncertainty of this world. And if so, why can't they help us to overcome this fear? Okay. From a Buddhist point of view, all these models are just as you say. But I think from a Christian point of view, or other points of view, or from a scientist point of view, they're not just models. They're actual descriptions of the world. But, you know, I'm just speaking from a Buddhist point of view.

[14:50]

There may be sophisticated points of view within other traditions that view them all just as teaching devices. But these models, you can call them just rafts to get to the other shore. And that's a useful understanding. It's not a really deep understanding.

[15:55]

Because the raft and the other shore are identical. So also, these models serve more purposes than just to allay our fears. I mean, it says, a quote I've used a lot in the beginning of the Prajnaparamita Sutra in 8000 lines, that when a bodhisattva realizes that there is no bodhisattva, there is no enlightenment, there is no wisdom, there is no practice, and in no way feels distress or fear. Then there is the Bodhisattva and enlightenment and so forth.

[17:17]

So in that sense these models are developed as a kind of candy. So if a Buddhist is trying to construct a teaching, he says, first of all, let's make it tasty. Okay. Second, let's make it so it will disappear. As I've said before, let's make it so all parts lead to every other part. And fourth, let's... And it should be a function in the world that works on all levels of intelligence. And let's let it be a way to function in the world through enlightenment.

[18:33]

And let's let it be a way to progress through the world to enlightenment. And let's let it be a vehicle understood at a higher level as a way of returning to the world after enlightenment. Okay, now that's the basic Buddhist point of view in creating teachings. And I couldn't say that that's the basis for creating teachings in other traditions. Okay, now is that a sufficient response to your group, or do you want more things? I don't think I have any more, but anyway... I don't think I can say more.

[19:49]

Which language are you speaking in? It's an absolute world. And without you it isn't. And two character models... of the world. The imaginary world, you said? Absolute. The absolute world without models, okay. Yeah. And this one is Buddhist absolute world. Yeah. One point. And the new explanations of the world by physicians. Physicists? Physicists, yeah. And go over... The question is, can you see something like two worlds coming together so that science and the Buddhist knowledge, in a way, come together? Or is it only because that was our discussion, are these physical explanations only models

[21:00]

in the unusual world, or are they closely to the absolute world? Do you think the physicists are describing the absolute world? No, but coming closer to. That's the question. It's an interesting question, actually. Because I have to sort of see how it fits in these categories, if we're going to relate it to these categories. If you could say that the misplaced concreteness of Newton... Do you have the phrase in philosophy in German of misplaced concreteness?

[22:20]

It means that you are calling something concrete which is not concrete. Okay, so the error we could say of A Buddhist would say the error of Newton and Galileo and all is misplaced concreteness. But it led to modern science. Now, this is a discussion that David and Hans-Peter and I had. But modern science has brought us to a place where we have now the sense of non-beingness instead of being. So what's interesting is you can take what Buddhism would say is a false idea and actually produce useful knowledge.

[23:37]

I don't know, we could try to think through the difference between the philosophy that's applied and the results that are obtained. For instance, you have a philosophy in a sense of how this building was put together. And it may be accurate, it may not be accurate. This is the Buddhist way of looking at it. But its accuracy is proved in that it produces results.

[24:40]

Ten years from now, you might understand this building in a little different way, but you might still come to the same conclusions of how to build it. You might come to the same conclusions about how to build it. I'm not saying that would be the case. I'm just saying, just using the example. So from that point of view, any system is important in that it's be workable. So the blue's view is, okay, this system is workable. But it may be wrong.

[25:46]

Or it may create other problems that result from it. But we can't solve create antidotes for everything. So the big antidote is that it disappears. So it's only a temporary formulation we put up. I don't know. I think we'd have to have more time than I want to give to it now to discuss it in any detail. I studied at one point as getting a graduate degree in history and science and technology.

[26:49]

I studied this when I completed a degree in the history of natural sciences and technology. So I think you'd have to distinguish between what part of science is philosophy, what part of it is experimental, what part of it is so-and-so, and then lay it out in here. So you have to distinguish which part of science is philosophy and which part is technology, and you have to draw on that. But I guess my feeling at present is that science is the major source right now in the present world through which our thinking is evolving.

[28:02]

And then you'd have to add psychology to that too. And if you put those together with Buddhism, you have the kind of most fruitful area, I think, of contemporary thinking. In general, the difference has been that science has always... What? In general, the difference has been science is always looking at how to understand this, shall we say. In general, science is looking at how you understand a physical object or the outside world. And in Buddhism, the final arbiter of what you do... is how you experience the world and how you are liberated within the world.

[29:26]

So that's going to make a little difference in science and Buddhism. But since Buddhism is very particularly Zen, is intimately involved in practice through the world as it is. That physics and Buddhist view seem to be coming together. I mean, there seems to be almost no difference from what I can see. Yes, Urimpia. Yeah. So I think eventually you arrive at this point that you understand that you can imagine the world.

[30:30]

This world is yourself. You arrive at the point that always is an illusion. And I think through physics, it's quite possible to get a taste of the absolute. From what I've seen since Buddhism, that you can write a language or a thinking process, just keep going for something. It's just a constant state of mind, whatever you're looking for. You want to say that in good old Deutsch? All these natural scientific models were trying to make this possibility better and better.

[31:51]

They were always trying to get something better in the world. And it was clear to me at some point that the documents were blocked. And at some point, one of them said to me, you know, Buddhism, you have to develop a way. And we can now create better and better models. And I thought, people, this is a secret. Then you could have the question of Would a scientist who practices meditation and yogic insight and based himself or herself in emptiness, would such a person be better able to negotiate the intangibles and infinitudes of science or physics or biology than someone who didn't have the personal territory to explore this.

[33:11]

In other words, at what point does the most subtle exploration of the outer world become an exploration of your own consciousness? But a lot of this has to do, developing a dialogue like this has a lot to do with permission and language. You have to feel some permission or faith. And you have to have some language which allows you to go beyond language. And I think scientists are actually contributing a lot to the Buddhist dialogue in that.

[34:26]

And the physicists I know are learning a lot from Buddhism. Another group? Response? You want to say? Yeah. Sure. And our question is also, in the first two categories, there is a very important change in the management, in the management processes, and this is a good one, because there is a substantial change.

[35:55]

See that last part again slowly. If that's the case, then it already starts in category two. Hmm. Well, the Madhyamaka school has divided along these lines. And the Madhyamaka Yogacara have had divisions along these lines. But you can also call this other dependence the middle one. Or perhaps co-dependent.

[37:49]

Now, your sense of being illusionist, the only part you mentioned to me last night, Why I call it illusion? I think what you said is right. From that point of view, this could be called delusion. Here you see it's an illusion, here you don't. What? We don't have the same words delusion and delusion in German.

[38:49]

No delusion. He's not knowing. Desillusionation. Desillusionation. No, not in the machine. It's okay.

[40:02]

It's okay. [...] Yeah, so the way I understand it, illusion is something more active than the illusion. If I thought that Napoleon is standing here, or I thought I was the Pope, that needed illusion. If I think you are only the realist, you checked, it's only illusion. That's an illusion. In other words, if I see you as real, but I know you're not fully real, the usual way, that's an illusion. Yes, the Diamond Sutra says, view the world as a flame,

[41:17]

Anyway, it's a series of illusions. View the world as a series of... Sorry. This is seeing the world as an illusion. This is being fooled by the world, thinking it's real, but you're deluded. But we can call it... The problem is that we understand it as an illusion to see who has been back here. I want these head titles to be a little bit confusing. Is this meant to make you think about us? All right. Now, we call it other-dependent. We mean this world is still the way you function with your mind appearances depending on your being and so forth.

[42:53]

It's this world. But isn't the imaginary world other dependent too? Sure. But you don't know it's other dependent. This is about knowing. These are all the same world. This is how you perceive the world. Yes, you perceive the same way. Absolutely. You perceive the same way, but you function differently. Well, what? Yes, you perceive. But he means still see this as a marking stick, yes. But how do you see it as a marking stick is different. Maybe you could say, if you see this as a marking stick, then how do you see it as a marking stick? My question is, how do you come from one to two?

[44:02]

Because when you just tell me that all is an illusion and I just believe you and say, oh, you must be right, you must know it, and then I change the policy. Just like Tiki. All right. We discuss that, or is it just enough to make intellectual new ideas, or do you have to do that and then really feel or experience somehow that there is now a difference, and then you really perceive it in a different way? Can you not say that? The question is, how do you get from one to two? Yes, there are different values. There is one idea, for example, earth is the most available, you don't know that. So if you say, what is an illusion, then believe me, that is a completely different conceptual concept. Well, first of all, good to hear you.

[45:14]

Good girl. Good girl. The first stage is reason. And that's partly what we're doing here. You get the picture more or less clear intellectually or logically. The second stage is you contemplate this, you turn it over in your mind, you get familiar. You see how it works. You experience your resistance to it.

[46:16]

You confront your resistances with this way of seeing. That's the second. First day you meditate. Das dritte ist, dass ihr meditiert. And that's what I mean here, is this line represents actually going across through meditation of mindfulness theory into this territory. So that you, so that I can experience being here, not just an idea. Another thing we discussed was that is it only possible to get into this second stage through meditation or hasn't... Every human being once in a lifetime been there.

[47:30]

I mean, for example, a sportsman, an athlete, I know one expression from the tennis players who say, I hit the zone. It's not the same. I mean, yeah. So we could say that zoning at the tennis tournament is a phenomenon that occurs in here or somewhere in here. Do you all know what zoning is? No. It's a term tennis players have developed, I believe, but it's also used in athletics in general. For an experience which means that maybe the whole tennis court turns into a liquid. You feel you're moving very slowly. You feel the ball comes very slowly. You feel you know where the ball is going to be before the guy hits it and you move to that part of the tennis court.

[48:58]

You can't make any mistakes. And what I've heard discussed in the tennis world and what I've heard discussed by tennis players And what I've heard is that tennis players discuss... Is the ability to zone what really makes the difference between an extremely good athlete, very accomplished and so forth, and that actually puts you at world class? Is this zoning the difference that really makes you a world class tennis player? And what happens to some of these people who stop and then make comebacks? They can't get the zoning back, but they still have the athletic skill. They don't have the zoning anymore? Yeah, they don't. You can work, have some of the tactics. And this is something in this book I showed you in the seminar, Michael Murphy's The Future of the Body.

[50:17]

I've put a pretty large portion of the book about such things as zoning or metanormal capacities at athlete's passage. Okay. That was interesting about all of your questions so far. So far they're all right on where I thought we should go today. So I'll try to give specific responses as best I can to your specific questions. Also versuche ich, so gut ich kann, spezifische Antworten auf eure spezifischen Fragen zu geben. And then later I'll try to be patient of how this works at the next level. Und später versuche ich euch ein Bild davon zu geben, wie das auf der nächsten Ebene funktioniert.

[51:25]

Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me. What? Ask me again. Okay. What do you consider to be called shame? As you said, we educate it on certain things, but not the perception, because it won't change it, but actually something that may matter in the physical sense of seeing this. What would be a difference in changing matter? Like how I'm going to be intrigued by this. Well, certainly, in a way, the imaginary world was considered a world of pollution, contaminants, and defilements.

[52:49]

In this world you are full of dirt. because you don't know how the world works, so your perceptions are always interfering with themselves. Okay, so those are technically called defilements. Those tend to start being removed here. One defilement, for example, is the idea that the world is permanent. Don't worry, I'll go through it fast-handed.

[54:10]

Okay. What we discussed, can you read it? All feeling, perception involves this consciousness. What happens, and we discussed this in the first seminar on therapy, is if you begin to perceive things, these skandhas, the perception is without ego. But you still have the habit energy of continually looking for or wanting to reify the world. Does that make sense?

[55:12]

We not only have the characteristics of self, Wir haben nicht nur die Charakteristika von selbst. We also have the habit of seeing things that way. Wir haben auch die Gewohnheit, die Dinge auf diese Art zu sehen. And the habit of seeing things that way is harder to be good at than the delusion of self. Und diese Gewohnheit wird man schlechter los als die Verblendung von selbst. Does the habit end you doing that? So, when you start seeing things through these skandhas, the happiness will bounce. And then she keeps looking for help.

[56:15]

Like you put your computer on to find yourself. And it's scanning all the text that it can't find. And that process is considered a cleansing process. And this process is treated as a cleaning process. So the skandhas are a kind of washing board that washes the habit energy out. So when you are going here from one to... you're actually also doing a kind of purification process.

[57:39]

And that will change the way you put together mentally and physically and energetically. If you put together differently energetically, then it's going to affect all your cells. You must really affect your cells. Yeah, maybe, but I think this is something that we've discussed. It's generally thought that the more you live in this area and don't have too much stress, it increases longevity. Yeah.

[58:49]

The world one and one goes from here to here. Yeah. This model that we are using here, this model that we are using, which gives us a certain reflection of the reality of how to describe it. If I make certain experiences, do I can make experiences which are not within the model? And how is that? You want to say that in German? I think this would, this would by definition cover all experience.

[60:08]

I think this model covers, by definition, all possible experiences. Simply because the words dualistic and non-dualistic cover all experiences. With one exception that I would like to come to. pain because based on your experience. But I myself count as a limited set of experience which I connect to this world. It's difficult to see. Yeah. I understand. But I can't say any more except that this is meant to cover seeing the world dualistically, seeing the world not dualistically, and being free of both. I can't say more than this model is meant to see the world as dualistic, not dualistic and free from both. Can you speak a little slowly and more distinctly?

[61:36]

Yesterday, I said, yeah. The absolute is described, not you. And I remember that there is to say, not one, not two, and me is me. The absolute is neither realistic nor non-realistic. And so I had to work with that. Yeah. And one way I understood it is that this crap from outside, the absolute, it's conceived, it's got non-dualistic. And from inside, it's felt like, well, what to do? Yeah, that's OK. I don't know. Yesterday I described this as not the absolute, as non-dualistic.

[63:06]

Today, just now, I described it as Neither non-dualistic nor dualistic. That's all right. Why is it all right? One is because they're different levels. And two is, really, you have to keep remembering these are just clouds. And from this point of view, I can say it's non-dualistic. And that's to help you realize this, because non-dualism is a bridge, there's a cross. But from this point of view, non-dualism still has the quality of consciousness in some kind of limiting sense.

[64:24]

But we're also talking about words which give us some thousands of gradations that group into maybe ten major gradations. From the point of view of your actual life, when you are not thinking in generalities, We have a world of millions of great nations. that fall into hundreds of subgroups. So you just have to use language so it applies to hundreds of different things simultaneously.

[65:30]

That's when you're speaking from the point of your experience. If I'm speaking from the point of your example and try to explain it, then I can be more precise. Did we talk about three groups of questions so far? Two groups of questions. Two. We didn't come up with a precise formulaic question, but we were discussing one part, the approach of seeing the world basically in order, and seeing disorder as part of the test to be ordered, or seeing it as a chaos of nature, and some kind of dis-chaos to come up with a plot. So, one part was,

[66:33]

the relation between border and dischaos. Just explain from which point you started with the basic difference. I think the answer to that would be that dischaos is the same relationship to border that If you can feel the difference between disc s and order, then you can feel the difference between, or imagine the difference between 2 plus 3 equals 6 is different from 3 plus 2 equals 6. 2 plus 3 equals 6. I don't think that needs to be translated. Yes. Is this in some order, Mr. Spectrality? Yes. And order from the writing constructs?

[68:01]

This chaos would be order seen from the point of view of chaos. Order would be order seen from the point of view of disorder. Or probably order seen from the point of view of order. Does that make sense? The problem with order... is that you could say order is a word that belongs here. Because order sees order. And disorder is just a little bit of an interference. And here, if you see chaos, then you're making an effort to go this direction to create order. And that's different. In other words, if we're not in a world of permanent things, If we're not in a world of stasis.

[69:02]

In other words, Vienna arrived at from Rostenberg is different than Vienna arrived at from Salzburg. Going to your apartment in the afternoon is different than going to your apartment in the evening. So see, arriving at order in chaos is different than arriving at order assuming that order is the natural state. I mean, there are koans who say things like, how do you approach emptiness? And the teacher might say, already this is a mistake.

[70:11]

But the meaning is that there's no way that emptiness is only something that can be approached. It's not something that is there to get into. So the teacher is saying, already this is a mistake. He's not denying the truth of the approach to emptiness, but making it even more so by saying, now you have to wipe that away. But he still does it because he says, now you have to wipe that away. I wanted to know where my case of order, if there is one, there was two more cases than there are three cases.

[71:13]

A lot of contemporary chaos theory says that if there is a distinction, that chaos is more basic than order. What's most basic, and I think they have to agree too, is that chaos is only a function, a pulse between chaos and dischaos. And that's equivalent to saying that That we have form equals emptiness, right? And we also have form goes to emptiness. And we also have, of course, emptiness equals form.

[72:16]

And we have emptiness goes to form. And we have all of it together equal to emptiness. And these are different practices. And right now, we're working with, in this chart, we're working with this and this. And at the moment, on this panel, we are working with the two speakers. The absolute is here. The absolute is here. Yes. I've got to start. I was thinking about this order in this case. It's just that it's some kind of a... Sir, will you speak quickly? I didn't ask you anything. You explained the difference between order and discourse, somehow of entering a place or a different time to the other directions.

[73:31]

Why do you use the principle of difference? Because, if you say, gravity, if I go up, gravity, [...] Gravidity, I like. Yeah. Yeah. In this chaos, you say there is a certain probability that we'll fall down. It's quite big. The probability will lift up. It needs to be solved. So that is a big problem, John. I don't know enough science to answer your question. But my guess is that in a world of infinite possibilities, what you say is true.

[74:34]

In a non-random world of possibilities, what you say is so unlikely that it's not true. But... Because you're dealing with probabilities at such a high order of, you know, that... Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Anyway, okay. So let's take one minute of get out of all this mind garbage, I mean, that I've given you. As I said, all these questions are very fruitful.

[75:41]

We have to be careful though not to get tangled up in the questions too much. And the way to do that is to stick to the feeling behind the questions rather than getting too much energy in the words of the question. Because the fruit of the questions is not the answer right now. But how the feeling of the question begins to work in you over time. So let's go have a tea break, coffee break and maybe come back at quarter to twelve.

[76:47]

Thank you very much. So when we discuss this a little too much we get into it shifts to a level of generalization and then reification. And I believe that quantum theory, contemporary quantum theory in physics, arose out of very tiny observations of the world that didn't fit with classical physics. And that in the early part of the century they began to notice that when you really observe the world closely, it doesn't exactly fit classical physics.

[77:59]

And that kind of thing is even more important with this. is that when you observe very closely, it doesn't fit any patterns, including this one. But generally, it falls into these categories. But then if you turn that into a generalization, then you're in trouble. Okay. I think that's clear what I just said. Okay. Now, the question here is, okay, we have ordinary unstudied reality. Then we have what we could call here studied reality or actuality.

[79:11]

But how do you get to the point of these a world in which, when you look at it really closely, it doesn't fit any pattern. And that's partly Nagarjuna's teaching and position he took. And in this koan, this is attempting to present this in a usable way to you. So it's asking the question, among the various ways we experience ourselves, which one does not fall into even any category of experience?

[80:22]

or not only among the various ways we experience ourselves, what if we're able to experience ourselves even through the most subtle ways human beings have come up with, or one of the most subtle, Through realizing the three Buddha bodies. Still, beyond that, which one does not fall into any category? So Dung Shan, this is really a way of saying this question. So Dung Shan says, he doesn't say, oh, that's category 17, point B. He just says, I'm always close to this. In other words, if he says he's in some other category, he's in another category.

[81:51]

So his answer is very subtle in many ways. I'm always close to this. Not quite it, not quite not it. Not really there, but not really far away. But it also suggests a way for you to practice. In fact, you can just take the phrase, I'm always close to this. So I'm speaking to any one of you. In the background of my mind, I'd have to be thinking, am I making contact? What's this person like? I just create the feeling that I'm always close to, I'm always intimate with this. And this means whatever I'm paying attention to. So you can see that in the further dialogue here, how they're looking at the same thing which we've been talking about.

[83:16]

So a Zen master named Sushan asked Dongshan, please teach me a word which doesn't yet exist. And this isn't just a clever question, it's quite a sophisticated question arising out of practice. So he says, please teach me a word which doesn't yet exist. And he might have said, sorry, come back tomorrow. Today the shop is closed. We've run out of milk. But instead of saying that, he said, no, no one would agree. No, no one would agree. On a word which doesn't yet exist, no one would agree. And that's very much like in the early part of the century when they looked at the world and didn't quite fit classical physics.

[85:01]

So he says, no, no one would agree. And then Sushant asked another very good question that came up this morning. And then, can it be approached or not? Can it be approached or not? And you could ask again of these things. Can it be approached or not? And how do you suppose Nongshan answered? He said, can you approach it right now? And that's very much like the story of Daito Kokushi under the Third Street Bridge.

[86:08]

I told you that story recently, didn't I? In Heidelberg? Yeah. Well, for those of you who didn't hear it, they looked for him and he'd been in hiding for 10 years. And they knew he liked sweet melon. So they went among the bums of Kyoto offering sweet melon to them. And they came across a particularly bright-eyed guy So they offered him the melon. And when he reached out for it, they said, take it with no hands. And he said, give it to me with no hands. That's a lot similar to this. Then can it be approached or not? Can you approach it right now?

[87:19]

And then Sushant said, even so, still there's no way to avoid it. If not, or even so. Okay. Now, Madhyamaka teaching in a way was an answer, as I may have said, to the elaboration of the Arbi Dharma analysis of consciousness. the Abhidharma analysis of, elaborate analysis of consciousness.

[88:21]

Where you have many classifications of consciousness leading to many variations in that, leading to many variations in that and so forth. And all of this was a form, an earlier Buddhist form, of the idea of dependent co-arising. But it was understood in a rather flat, causal plane. That this consciousness led to this consciousness led to this consciousness. And so what Madhyamaka says is you can look at it horizontally or vertically, however you want to say it, from another axis and say none of it exists. And what this arises is not a sort of flat plane of one thing leading to other, but a multiplicity of things simultaneously arising.

[89:46]

Which is too subtle to arrive at causally. Okay, so basically the idea of the negations in Majamaka theory, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, etc., is just as if you started practicing now with the word no. So in this room I said, when I looked at the wall, I said, no wall. And you can practice that for a few days if you'd like. No trees. No walls. No people in this room. No Richard sitting here. No voice.

[91:03]

No translator. And you begin, you may, you know, you're not dying, something, you may begin to feel a release in your consciousness. And when you read these Prajnaparamita Sutras, You should remember that they were written in an exalted, ecstatic state. So they were meant to be read so that they were a kind of practice in reading them. A profoundly evolved logic links the negations. But still, the negations are the kind of real substance of it.

[92:05]

Or if negations can be called substance. And so if we were really to translate the Prajnaparamita literature well, the reading of it would give you the experience of enlightenment, which means we might have to translate it somewhat differently using conventions of our culture rather than conventions of their culture. But I suggest you try this for a few days. Just say no to each perception. And this is also the practice of the first koan in Zen. Does a dog have a Buddha nature?

[93:13]

Do you have a Buddha nature? What is Buddha nature? Whatever, however you want to phrase it. And the teacher, Zhaozhou, says, no. Just no. Can you say kind to? I don't know how it feels in German, but in English, no is pretty good. No. No.

[93:42]

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