Good afternoon. I don't know if you ever noticed this Buddha up on the top of the pile here. I've been told you could speak more loudly again. Maybe you sit here. But when I first came here, you know, first sashin here, many years ago, I didn't know what to make of this guy. He's somewhere between smashed, smashed is a word for drunk, He's somewhere between smashed and blissed out. Yeah.

[01:04]

Anyway, I've come to be very fond of him. But Buddhism has... Buddhist teaching has been developed to last for thousands of generations. So there must be many mysterious penetrations. Many layers that unfold at different times in our life. Or at the same time, depending on different I mean by subjectivities, I mean different ways that we're subjective.

[02:07]

And different ways of being subjective in Buddhism are understood to be almost completely different persons. Now today I'm going to try to give you a feeling for this yogic way of thinking, an example of it. Because I gave you last night, I believe it was, this famous koan. Yeah. Monk asked Zhaozhou, all things return to the one. Where does the one return to?

[03:08]

Zhaozhou said, When I was in Jingjiao, I had a shirt, hempen shirt made. It weighed seven pounds. Shui-Dao said, I don't need such a shirt. I threw it in the lake. Now there's a certain nice curiosity to these stories. And a seven-pound shirt, that's pretty heavy. That's what my portable computer weighs, and it's pretty heavy.

[04:10]

Maybe that's my Jojo shirt. Maybe that's my Jojo shirt. Okay. But it says in this koan, don't look at the words. To look to the words is to abide by the zero point of the scale. So does that help you? Does that just make it more curious? No, I think that if we're really going to work with these, it's good to have our provisions, our equipment.

[05:16]

And at least we should be practicing with these koans in the same world in which they were introduced. And we have the advantage that if we can practice slip into the world they lived in, we can often, the koans themselves, the koans reveal themselves. Because it's a big step to slip into this, feel into this world they lived in. So a question like this, where does the one, all things return to the one, where does the one return to?

[06:18]

Grabs us philosophically. Mm-hmm. that it's not a philosophical question. Because in yogic culture, the yogic domain, there's no zero point. There's no scale even. There's not one wind. There are a thousand winds. Each leaf has its own wind. Maybe you could stay with that. Each leaf has its own wind.

[07:20]

Each trunk and branch has its own suppleness. Just as we each have our own Buddha nature. Our own unburdening wind. Unburdening to free us from burdens. Mm-hmm. This koan says, do you know the unburdening wind? No, we tend to think of, there's the wind and the leaves are moving in the wind.

[08:22]

Ja, wir haben die Tendenz zu denken, da ist der Wind und die Blätter bewegen sich mit dem Wind. Ja, so denken wir. Aber ihr müsst sehen, da gibt es Ideen über die Welt, wenn ihr so denkt. Basically, you're imagining each thing exists from its own side. Yeah, it's okay. We can see it from this point of view. Mm-hmm. And it covers all the territory. But there is another way to see it, another emphasis.

[09:34]

There's no general wind. That's an idea. Only an idea. When you look at a tree each leaf has its own wind. And the leaf beside the other leaves has a wind influenced by the wind of the other leaves. hat einen Wind, der beeinflusst wird durch die Winde der anderen Blätter. And the wind is the result of every tree. Und der Wind ist das Resultat von jedem Baum. And the wind is the result of currents of warm and cold air.

[10:36]

Und der Wind ist auch ein Ergebnis von Strömungen von kalter und warmer Luft. And the tree itself is warm. Yeah, at Crestone, the snow melts around the trunk of the tree because the tree itself is warm. The tree is producing currents of air, producing by its own heat currents of air. Okay, I think this is clear. You can understand that. But do you automatically see it that way? Do you say to yourself when you go outside, oh, it's windy today. Or do you really say to yourself, ah, there's a thousand winds today?

[11:49]

That's my wind and that leaf's wind. Some kind of shift in understanding like that or view is very helpful. Mm-hmm. Now I brought this pot in. Mm-hmm. Because a pot is full of potentialities. That's a plug. Um... And there's koans about kicking over pitchers and dumping over pitchers. It's an object. Yeah, there's no question about it. Yeah, it's quite durable. Okay.

[13:11]

But at one time, this was, of course, a piece of clay. And excuse me for being so obvious, but today's the day for being obvious. Banal and obvious. Okay. Okay. Yeah, so one time this was just a piece of clay. And the potter had to look at this piece of clay, hold this piece of clay. He had to hold it in place. And that actually, there's a word for that in Buddhism. The takka. And then the potter had to work the clay to put it on the wheel or start to turn it, start to move it.

[14:18]

And there's a word for that too, vikara. So the potter had to hold it and then he had to work it. So first, when it's just a piece of clay, it has all potentialities, many potentialities in it. So he has to make a decision. So he makes a decision, and once he makes the decision, he's completing this decision, this intention. So he's turning it on the wheel. And then he glazes it and fires it, et cetera.

[15:25]

So that's pretty obvious that this was once just a piece of clay. And the piece of clay had to be separated from the earth. That's vitaka. And then it had to be worked. And now it's this. But in yoga culture, it doesn't stop there. We tend, our tendency in our more mental culture, is to think of this as a fixture. And the word fixture in English derives from to dig a ditch.

[16:29]

Dig a moat or a ditch. Like you're going to fix a house here, you dig the ditch. Or you're going to fix a tree, you dig and plant the tree. Mm-hmm. There's a story I always like of Piaget, the child psychologist. He was observing a little blind child. The blind child, of course, is quite lost, crawling around the room. Unable to find its way. And at some point, it discovers a toy. And plays with it some and then lets go of it.

[17:48]

And then goes to bed. And the next morning he put it down on the floor of the room and it crawls over to where the toy was in the dark. And finds it still there. And Piaget, supposedly this is the film Piaget observes, exclaims, Eureka, object permanence. The child discovered that if something is put somewhere, it might be there in the morning. The parents obviously weren't Buddhists. Die Eltern waren offensichtlich keine Buddhisten.

[19:06]

Ein buddhistisches Elternteil würde sehen, wie das Kind zu dem Spielzeug geht und würde es verschieben. Nicht Dauerhaftigkeit. Okay, but perhaps we have to learn object permanence before we learn object impermanence. No, that's the teaching of the Heart Sutra. Because the teaching is based on ordinary perception, ordinary delusion. And then the teaching of the skandhas and the vijnanas. And then they're taken away.

[20:25]

The teaching of the vijnanas would be eyes, ears, nose, and then no eyes, no ears, no nose. So we have three stages implied in the Heart Sutra. First you have your ordinary way of knowing, then you refine that through the teachings, and then you take it away. You... First you have your ordinary way of knowing things. Then you refine that through the teachings. And you refine it in a way so that it can be taken away. That's just what I'm doing now here. Trying to do.

[21:31]

So let me try to go back through, see if I can go into that Rilke poem. The title of it is Eingang. Which even I know what that means. But it's translated... The title is translated as initiation. But it would be much better to translate as entering or entrance or something. Because it's a play on the house as frontier. It's a play on the house as a frontier. So the poem is something like, whoever you are, go out into the evening.

[22:37]

Out of your room of which you know every little bit. It makes me think of what His Holiness the Dalai Lama once said, if you hold an egg up to your face, it's as big as a mountain. He said, that's what you do with your problems. Okay. So, Rilke says, whoever you are, go out into the evening. Out of your room of which you know every little bit. Lift whoever you are, your house is a frontier.

[23:46]

Lift your eyes from your well-used or worn threshold. And raise up a tree. And place the tree, as I understand he means, and place the tree on a tree. And You've made a tree in yourself by seeing the tree and you've put it on the tree that's there.

[24:56]

And put it in front of the sky. Mm-hmm. And like an unspoken word, it will ripen in you. And when you let it go, it will free you. It will ripen in you like an unspoken word, And when you let it go, it will free you. So see the tree in such a way that when you release it, it frees you.

[26:00]

See the tree in such a way that it ripens within you. This is also the Heart Sutra. At least I understand it that way. Rilke says himself that it takes the maturity of life experience to write realized poems. But I find, as a Buddhist, many of his earlier poems more interesting than his later poems. But I find his earlier poems more interesting from a Buddhist standpoint than his later ones.

[27:18]

His more mature poems may be more mature as poems, But it seems to me he diverged from the insight of his earlier poems. I don't really know what I'm talking about, but this is my impression. And it fits in with my understanding and feeling of broken lineages. Mike Murphy's idea, my friend's idea.

[28:21]

That there are many in philosophy and poetry and painting, many lineages in the West have moved very close to Buddhism. in the direction of Buddhism and yogic understanding. But they haven't had the yogic teachings or support to carry it the next step. So they often then looked for Western teachings to carry an insight which is essentially not Western, an insight which is somehow non-Western. Now, I'm not being critical of the West here.

[29:28]

I'm just saying these are two great civilizations, West and East. And both are trying to understand each other. And both are trying to see what anticipated each other in their own culture. What anticipated each other. What do you mean by anticipated in this sense? What in Western culture anticipated Asian culture and what in Asian culture anticipated For I think each of us has our own Western lineage that led us to Buddhism.

[30:31]

It's not just some meeting Asia. Okay. So we tend to think of objects sort of as permanent. So we make objects that tend to be sometimes so delicate, if they break, you can't repair them. Like fine-boned china or something. Or we make, I don't know if it's, maybe porcelain.

[31:42]

Or we make objects so durable, they might as well be plastic. But in Asia, they tend to make objects intending them to be repaired. Or they make things that are almost meant to be broken eventually and then repaired. And one art potter in, I don't know where, America or Europe, makes big beautiful pots and he smashes them and he glues them all back together and he sells them glued back together. This is carrying the Asian idea a little too far. But the idea of this pot as changing doesn't stop with just the potter making it.

[33:00]

For example, this pot, if you had it upside down on the surface, it could be a tiny mouse palace. Or it could be a stand for my stick, wherever it is. Or we could It's too small for Joe's Orioki tray. I think, Joe, you need a little platform in front, but this is too small. Or it could be a distant ocean memory machine. Or hearing the translator's voice, angelic voice. Okay, so from that point of view, We could call it a use object.

[34:21]

Because it has lots of possible uses. In just the way the potter looked at this as a piece of clay, saw potentialities and then completed it. Even though this was designed as a picture I can turn it over. I can use it for anything I want. It has less potentialities, but it has some. But its sense of it changing doesn't end there. Because the basic teaching of Buddhism is everything's changing.

[35:39]

So if you want a serious koan as a westerner, see if you can see everything as changing. And never as not changing. See trees as treeing. See the wind. Good. See the wind. See the wind as a thousand winds. See the tree as the tree you make on the tree. Grilka says, whoever you are, your house is the edge of the infinite. And although this is as big as a mountain here, it's also my house, it's also the tree on the sky.

[36:54]

And if this is a problem, it's also made by my mind. If this is a beautiful gold vase, it's also made by my mind. And my mind is always pure. That's the teaching of the Dharmadhatu or Tathagatagarbha. So if... If this is a big egg of problems, it's no different than enlightenment. They're both made from your mind. Your mind is pure. So like Humpty Dumpty, you know, you can... egg can break open.

[38:14]

And all the Buddhists in the world can't put Humpty Dumpty together again. You don't know Humpty Dumpty? No, I don't. There's a nursery rhyme in America. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. It's British. And Humpty Dumpty is shaped like an egg. And nowadays he has a baseball cap on. Humpty Dumpty, and it looks like, you know, a big egg-shaped guy. Humpty Joachim sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. And all the king's men, nowadays, all the queen's men and all the king's men and all the king's soldiers couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again.

[39:29]

Yes, and I said, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall and all the Buddhists could not put Humpty Dumpty together again. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I told you this was the time to... But now. Okay, so this... changes also because it's an object of perception. And again, if you're practicing, when you see this, you see your mind. Now, coarse perception is considered to be things like distraction, attachment permanence continuity seeing this as continuity those are coarse perceptions subtle perceptions are to see mind

[40:53]

As your habit to see mind. This is the beginning of the eightfold path, right views. Incorrect views is to see fixture object. Or to see object permanence. Right views is to automatically, before perception arises, to see object impermanence. or object function or object use. Okay, this has a function. So it's only a picture when you're using it as a picture. So until you use it as a picture, that's some sort of thing.

[42:19]

And this is a very useful shift in views to develop. From object permanence to function object. Okay. Now I spoke yesterday about one objectness. Or one thusness, we could say. Or maybe thusness object. You don't have to translate all these variations.

[43:20]

I'm trying to find a language. Object thusness. Something like that. Okay. Okay. Now I have to define lessness. I should define lessness. I've been trying to define it the last month or two. As Something known only through itself. And the simplest example again to give you is we're sitting in this room together. And there's this particular feeling in this room. That wasn't there when we came into the room at the beginning of the lecture.

[44:32]

It's now present. And it's different than a moment ago. And it will be different to keep changing. And it can't be grasped. And it's known only through itself. There's no outside observer point. So this is also what's meant by one objectness. Das ist auch, was damit gemeint ist, mit einobjekthaftiger. Meine Intention zu sitzen. Meine vollständige Intention zu sitzen. Und dem Atem Vorzug zu geben über dem Denken. And my own intention to give priority to stillness over movement is always finding itself in some delicate balance.

[45:56]

Sometimes there's a little more movement. Sometimes a little more stillness. Sometimes my intention feels like a big clear ball. Sometimes my body feels ten feet tall. Sometimes my body feels clear as if there's blue sky or water or whiteness all around. From a yogic point of view, each of these is real. And I can give you some newspaper reports, you know, about it. But I can't even reproduce it.

[46:40]

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