I'm always struck by, you know, that at Creston we're on this mountain, which is, I don't know, one of the few highest mountains in Colorado and in the United States. It's, I don't know, 14,400 feet about. That's about 4,600 meters or something in that area. And we can't see the mountain. I mean, you can see the dirt, but you can't see the mountain. But right beside it, we see the other mountain, actually called Challenger and Kit Carson. The locals call the whole thing Crestone, but technically they're named different mountains.

[01:03]

Yeah. And it always makes me feel, you know, what's more obvious than our face? But we can't see our face. Sometimes I see my face in your faces. I can look in the mirror and I see a face. It's not my face. I mean, I guess it's my face, but it doesn't feel like my face. All I can say, it feels familiar, but it's not the experience I have of my face.

[02:04]

So if it's so hard to see our face, and if it's so hard for the eyes to see the eyes, How much harder for the eyes to see what is seeing through the eyes? Is there a what or who seeing through the eyes? Yeah, it's harder to see, you know, it's at least as hard to see whatever we mean by self, soul, spirit. Yeah. I don't know what you said, but I'm sure.

[03:15]

The souls. The souls, yeah. They say hope springs eternal from the human foot. That's why we turn our feet up, so our soles are visible. And yet we live our life through these experiences, through what we could call soul, spirit, self, etc.

[04:28]

But it's as difficult to get a hold of as it is to pick up water in your hands. Is it possible that what Tendon Yojo means is that the true form of practice is the means to know how we actually exist? I bring these things up again just to bring us into the elusiveness of what's central to our life. Do I only know my face through your faces?

[05:48]

I certainly do. certainly from high school on, have shaped my face according to what you'd like. I guess shaving my head, well, that's Sukiroshi wanted me to do that. But what glasses I wear, what... If I had hair, what... Brille cream, a little dab will do you. That's what we used to... They sang in high school over the radio. Get my hair right. Did they sell such things in Germany? Sure. More than ever.

[06:48]

Does my face belong to me or you? Ja, also, gehört mein Gesicht mir oder euch? What's we say in Zen? What's your true face? Ja, sagen Zen, was ist dein wahres Gesicht? Okay, anyway, I'd like to now that I've talked last evening and this morning, I would like to listen to you. What do you think about all these things? What do you not think about all these things? Yes. I was just about to say, please don't everyone speak at once and... I noticed when you talked last night about loving through another person that that stuck to me.

[08:04]

And I asked myself, why did this stick to me? going from the nice side about things being sticking, I got to my resistance. And then I thought about it for a longer time and got the idea that it is easier to love through another person, because then And then I got the idea that it might be more simple to love through another person because then the object of your desire is more in the wide space and not so focused on the object of desire.

[09:41]

Mm-hmm. And I was happy that by your thought I kind of got myself to this answer. Thank you for that observation. Someone else? Yes. Regarding this heart and love theme, I remember something happened to me several weeks ago. I was in a seminar where we were kind of investigating ourselves. We were sitting in a circle, about 20 people, and there was a woman. She said that she has problems with me. With you? Yeah. Wow. And she said... And she just met you that weekend?

[10:48]

No, no. Oh, before she met you. Okay. She said, I would say strange things she cannot understand. And she said, feeling it would be something like I'm somewhere in the space. And then something happened. I just felt I had to look at her constantly. And with this very intense eye contact, it was like something, an energy of... pure consciousness floating and I felt that I couldn't feel my body anymore and like the self going away. And then I felt some kind of very deep and intense love. And she said that then she could feel my presence very strong. and this was they gave the interpretation that that this love came from her and the presence from me so everybody was acting like a mirror reflecting the other person

[12:00]

I have always wondered what happened to me some time ago. I was at the seminar, so to speak, researching my inner father. And there was also a participant who said that she had no more problems, that she couldn't really feel me, and then I somehow, I don't know how that happened, but in any case I came into very intense contact with her, so only eye contact, and there was a very intense energy flowing into me, like only consciousness, so that everything dissolved. and at that moment I felt a very intense love, and she suddenly felt me too, that is, my presence, and it was interpreted in such a way that the line came from her and the presence came from me, as if everyone had acted practically as a mirror in order to reflect on the other.

[13:05]

It does seem that the intimate gaze is only possible in love or in challenge. It seems as if this intense eye contact is only possible in love or in challenge. With animals you have to be somewhat careful. If they're dangerous animals, how you gaze or don't gaze at them. And if you're a teenage boy in America, you have to be careful how you gaze at them. intimately at another boy because it's a challenge to fight. Seriously. Because there seems to be some kind of uncovering. I find actually, you know, this is not inconsequential.

[14:26]

I remember as a high school student, it seemed very difficult that I couldn't gaze at other human beings, boys or girls. And when I was in school, it was very difficult. I could not look at other young girls. But I have found a life where I can gaze at you quite truly. The Sangha, the realm of free genesis. Someone else? Yeah. The breathing exercise that you mentioned yesterday. Should I then hold my breath after inhaling and after exhaling?

[15:37]

But it seems so difficult to me that I have to stop and wait. When you said about setting the pause after the in-breath and before doing the out-breath, shall I stop there? Because it seems very difficult and interrupted. And then three more times in between. Don't take these instructions so seriously. It's just a suggestion to kind of feel your breath more clearly. So do it any way you like. I suppose if you... I mean, you know, our thinking takes a lot of energy. And definitely if you have been practicing long enough that really thinking subsides.

[16:47]

It becomes much easier to pause in your breath because you don't need the energy. Your breath can slow down a lot. So think of the pause as just a hesitation in your breathing for noticing. Hesitation? Hesitation? A hesitation in your breathing for noticing. And as your breathing becomes more calm, then you can have a more melting feeling in your pauses. But this isn't a formal breathing practice.

[18:02]

It's just a suggestion as a way to notice, to articulate your breathing and the experience of breath pervading the body. I have a question about ritual space. I understand how you created a ritual space here, but how is it possible or what's necessary to construct a ritual space when we don't have a community around us to support it? Well, without going into the wideness of what I mean by ritual space, which is also, let me just say, in effect all space virtually is ritual space.

[19:31]

Around, usually around between four and six in the morning, Sophia decides to get in bed with us. There's definitely a ritual of how she lets us know she's coming from the other room and so forth. And when she gets in bed with us, she immediately establishes ritual space. Her right foot goes against me, her left foot goes against Meridians. And your right foot touches me and the left, Marie-Louise. She finds my head and checks it and finds Marie-Louise. Then she goes to sleep. I mean, she's asleep while she's doing it. And why are you suggesting we all get into bed with you?

[20:33]

LAUGHTER Are you trying to alter the ritual space here? I feel I'm in bed with all of you. I said that this morning, first thing, you know. Shucks. Anyway... Yeah, it makes me... Oh, no. Anyway. And then once she establishes this contact, there's pretty soon a metabolic flow. A kind of field you can feel passing through the three bodies.

[21:37]

But if she's completely exhausted and sick or something like that, then sometimes she's just out of it. But she's still in the ritual space of her own metabolism, body, and so forth. And we can say that the Bodhisattva's practice is to, in all circumstances, establish ritual space with each person he or she meets. And it's most obviously done by taking your energy out of your thinking and consciousness and putting it in your heart. And if the other person feels it, there's an immediate kind of intimacy.

[22:44]

There's a dropping away of thought coverings. Yeah, so, again, like all these things, if you establish it in yourself... It affects the world. And the Sangha would be those who are most open to it. Because you can feel when somebody, through practice, through intention, willing to enter into this kind of nakedness with each other.

[23:45]

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Someone else? Yeah. I would like to talk about smiling as maybe one gate to heart. I remarked this morning that here in Johanneshof, people smile a lot, a lot of people. And this is quite different from usual life, at least in Germany. And so I thought we could, we smile, but we don't talk about it as a practice of changing state of mind and relation to other people. And, yeah. Well, that's the case at a Deutschbundet. Yes, it just occurred to me that a lot is being laughed at in the Johannishof during this seminar, and I find this to be very different from normal, at least in German everyday life, and I think that for me laughing can be a practice to change my own state of mind and my relationship to other people.

[25:10]

Well, in Theravadan Buddhism and Thich Nhat Hanh's practice too, he emphasized that smiling is an intentional practice in Buddhism. Yeah, when Colorado advertises itself, it advertises its mountains. On its license plates, on its brochures. When Thailand advertised itself, it advertised its smile. I mean, all the CNN ads for Thailand, which come on regularly, are all about, in Thailand, people smile.

[26:17]

And, you know, it's not artificial. And it's not artificial. Just because it's a practice doesn't make it artificial. If you shake hands with someone, even if you don't feel too good about it and you're forced into it, something happens when you shake hands. So as a practice, you cultivate an outer and an inner smile, a feeling of smiling in your body. But even if you don't cultivate it, it tends to happen through practice. Why is that? I think this is something we should look at

[27:19]

Why does carving a cave in emptiness, if that's what we're doing, mean we're sitting at the mouth of the cave smiling? Okay, someone else? I wonder if during the course of the seminary you're going to say something about making love. We'll have to talk together. Well, I wasn't planning to. But certainly if you ask yourself the question, when do I most enjoy being alive, it might be when you make love.

[28:43]

So now I've talked about it. We'll see what happens. Someone else? Yes. And she is concerned about the smiling. You are? Okay. So maybe in the last three years something really changed. And I think that in our culture we mistrust the smiles that we make. I think it's artificial.

[30:12]

And I had a very hard time to trust this smiling, for example also with the Dalai Lama, to really trust him. Obviously, I have never thought about it, but now that we are talking about it, I notice that what has changed very much with me is that I have experienced, for example, that in meditation such a deep smile comes up against which you can do nothing at all, which is simply wonderful, as if something blooms. And it occurs to me that this inner attitude, this smile that I experience with you,

[31:19]

I experienced through meditation, or within the meditation, sometimes from very deep inside, this smile starts and arises and starts blossoming and flowering. And so when I encounter now smiles from other people, they don't seem weird anymore, they don't seem artificial, they... It's an attitude, it's familiar. Yeah. I feel it now, and so I like... So now you like the Dalai Lama better. Yeah, well, it's also important to not, to free ourselves from any necessity to have a social face.

[32:22]

Friendliness as a professional attitude is, you know, So, I mean, Sangha is also a place where you should be, we should be, we're not always, free to just have Bodhidharma's reverse smile. Yeah. It's the expression actually of Manjushri. Yeah, sort of drawing everything inside. But it's nice if we flower also.

[33:23]

It feels good. Okay, someone else? I hear your questions like, how do we exist? Or how do we perceive the world? Or what makes it worth living? Or when do we feel the best? And it raises questions that I had at the beginning of the practice, on the one hand, On the other hand, I do not have the impression that you ask the questions as if you wanted to have answers. It also reminds me of the statement of Durgen who says that Buddhism or Zen is primarily something that we do to get to know ourselves, to study ourselves and to forget ourselves.

[34:34]

I hear your questions like, how do we actually exist? And how do we find out how we notice or what makes it worth being alive? Or when do we actually feel best in our life? And it reminds me at the time of the beginning of my practice where I had all these questions. It feels to me as if you're giving us these questions not with the idea that they should be answered. It's more like a remembering.

[35:43]

And what comes up is the saying of Dogen that Zazen, the practice of Zazen is about studying ourselves, learning to know ourselves and then forget about ourselves. So in that regard, it seems to me as if the practice, through the practice, is answering these questions. Yeah, hopefully. But I'm also... Yeah, hoffentlich. Yeah, yeah, good. But I'm also... Partly I'm asking the questions as stirring the soup of our life. But it's important and sometimes necessary to come to answers to these questions when we're at a turning point in our life.

[36:54]

Should I stay married? Should I get married? Should I stay in the same job? Should I go to practice period at Cresto? You often can't make... When we find ourselves in a turning point, it really helps to find out what makes sense, what makes us feel alive, what makes us be willing to make a life. And if you come to only one or two, three, two or three things, you can actually shape a life around those two or three things. If you have the existential courage to do so. Ivan Illich says, if you make these basic decisions too much in terms of security, he says, funnily, all you do is create larger insurance companies.

[38:29]

Okay. I think it isn't lunch. We're supposed to stop in a few minutes. Anybody else want to say something? Yes. This lady? Oh, but she's spoken so many times. Are you pointing her out or are you saying something? I don't know. David, okay, yeah, go ahead. It doesn't mean I'll exclude you. I was often asking myself... how do I respond or answer the questions? And obviously I tried always to find words for it or to find words for the answer. And when I tried yesterday, for instance, your exercise with breathing, I came a little clearer to the point that, I mean, I know that answer, but I didn't respect that answer more.

[39:57]

That is, especially when we see this, the personal self and the social self, these three... Societal self. Societal self you mentioned. And with the shift to the question, what is breathing? The answer is a feeling. So, yesterday evening I tried this exercise with the personal self, the social self and the social self and then this switch or this leap to the question of what actually breathes, and the answer was actually a feeling, Going back to my memories of my body, I can say this feeling is actually the answer in some way. And I can't give words to that, but I developed some kind of a trust to that feeling.

[40:59]

So I can say the point now is that This is the answer and this also gives me, like an answer, a way or some kind of direction to continue or to go a path or something and in that sense make a decision, for instance. found in this feeling reminded me of my physical memory, that I know this feeling, this trust in this breathing, in the feeling of breathing, and that this is actually the answer, and this answer also opens up the possibility for me to make a decision, such as the questions that have been asked now, and then also to make a verbal decision. The basic answer is in some way a feeling, I would say. One of the ways I'm speaking today and last evening and during the prologue day,

[42:03]

is implicitly in the framework of the five skandhas as a way of looking into the structure of our knowing and the second skanda is if we take them in the order in which the world appears to us. The second skanda is feeling. And as a teaching, and in my own experience, it means that everything we know is rooted or is basically a feeling. And I think now, I'm not sure, because I don't follow it too closely, but I think contemporary neurobiologists trying to study these things,

[43:25]

is that they can see what happens when there's feeling in the brain and the body and the system and so forth. But it's quite difficult to see what's happening with consciousness except they can see that consciousness is a feeling. And I think it's useful to begin to feel our thinking, to notice the basis in feeling for thinking. And I think that's the key to Dogen's commonly untranslatable and mostly un-understandable by scholars phrase to think non-thinking. Das Nichtdenken zu denken.

[44:50]

The key to understanding that is to know the feeling of thinking. Also der Schlüssel zum Verständnis davon ist, das Nichtdenken zu fühlen. Yeah, and I'd like us all to come see if we can come more into the realm of feeling than thinking. But this is not so easy to do. It's like if you have a boat. If you put it in the air, it falls down. If you put it in the water, it hopefully floats. And if it floats, you have to have some sort of keel and rudder and... motive power or, you know, sail or something.

[46:04]

Yeah, and it's like that. You know, we're so used to negotiating our life and thinking. It's something new to actually find yourself afloat and able to steer and move in feeling. So all of these things, you can have insight into them, but to make them your own in your experience, body, practice, mind, takes some maturing, some time. Some familiarity. To set sail in the sea of feeling.

[47:09]

Yes. It's something similar to what David said. When I ask these who questions, who is thinking who, sometimes it brings me more in this thinking mind, so a lot of things go on there. When I ask this, what, it brings me immediately to the host mind, because it's not so logical. And sometimes I even feel some kind of resistance against these who questions, because I think I cannot answer them, I don't want to answer them. I'm glad you've discovered that. Deutsch bitte. I'm talking about these questions of who and what, similar to what David said, that I often notice in these questions of who and what that I rather come into the mind and start to think a lot. These questions of who and what actually bring me right into this guest mind, because the question is somehow not so logical.

[48:15]

And sometimes I have such a real resistance to these questions of who and what, and I say, I can't answer them, but I want to. I'm glad you've noticed that. It didn't translate that. No, it wasn't necessary. Neil? I found this, what you just said, Roshi, changing more or moving more into the feeling realm, I found this, this is, when you do this in the course of your sort of normal life, it's difficult because first you get very forgetful, then you get sort of, you feel sort of dumb because you don't really sometimes, you function different than other people around you and so it's not so easy really. We have to have some trust for you that this works. And if in the last second you have the... it comes up what you need, because it's really first things get lost. The normal memory functions, it's like it's full or gone.

[49:17]

So there's really hard times sometimes. What does that mean? It's like when you switch, and you feel it, when you do it during work, in a normal work process, it's really like you feel stupid sometimes, because it just comes to you so conventionally. That's right. This forward thinking and this forward memory, it just disappears, and you feel really stupid sometimes. I wanted us to feel what you were saying. Sorry. Yeah. Didn't want to make it turn on. Yeah, oh, yeah, that's an idea. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Hi. Hi. I'm always trying to get Neil to slow down.

[50:22]

He's slow inside, but his outside gets fast sometimes. Yeah. You know, I understand exactly what you mean, but sometimes you have to say something intelligent now and then so people think you're not a completely dumb. Then you could kind of lapse back into your... Paul? As I notice what's arising, and I notice that I'm noticing the direction you gave, and I felt a direction of that breath before you made it explicit. As do I. I feel a rest in the noticing, noticing not the content.

[51:26]

And the questions arise and subside. And in the middle I feel that breath. And I've had difficulty since yesterday afternoon asking a question from this place. So where is the question in this kind of place? If you can't find it, don't ask me. I'm so grateful, really, for each of your practice and our practice together.

[52:55]

Thanks a lot. Thank you again for translating. You're welcome. We say, register it. I'm grateful to be here with you again this afternoon.

[54:08]

And I'm finding out what register, in the sense of music, in what register are we playing, singing today. What music are we in the midst of? Yes, that's anyway what I feel. And I found in speaking with you about this topic, the discovery of the heart, I found somewhat to my own surprise that I need to want to speak to you about discovering emptiness. Yeah, there's an old joke that the Irishman, excuse me, there's an old joke that the Irishman thinks a fishing net is a lot of holes tied together by string.

[55:45]

Yes, sort of Paddy Fitzgerald Nagarjuna. No, I'm just kidding. I strung together a couple of Irish names. It's a great... A fishing net is a bunch of holes tied together by string. What is the inescapable use of emptiness? Certainly couldn't be a fishing net without emptiness. And Nagarjuna says, you will be lost if you don't know the application, the use of emptiness. I think we all have a general feeling for emptiness as a necessary background for our practice.

[57:10]

Yeah, it makes a kind of, for most of us, I think it makes a kind of intuitive sense. But I'd like to bring it into the foreground of our practice. Yeah. So, I mean, the example I sort of discovered recently as a way to speak about emptiness is imagine you're here, for instance. Now, the question comes up, if The past is momentary and the present is not yet here.

[58:36]

I mean, how narrow is the knife edge of the present? Yeah, it's past and it's future then present. There was this this was a Insight, you know, a kid's insight years ago for me. I don't remember how old I was, but I think I had not left Indiana yet, so it must have been I was nine or eight or nine or ten.

[59:50]

And I mentioned this, I've mentioned it, just told this story before, but I mention it now in the context of today. And it's important that I said it to my father, I mean... My father was, of course, fathers and mothers are your reality. Big, big way. But I had to say it to someone, not just think it. This face-to-faceness of realization is... Yeah, it's the center of our lineage practice.

[60:51]

So I had to say it to someone. Why not him? So I said, you know, Dad, it's... It's a minute to twelve. And then it's half a minute to twelve. And then it's a second to twelve. And then maybe a millionth of a second before twelve. And then it's a millionth of a second after twelve. So I said, Dad, there's no 12 o'clock. Yeah, and he gave me an answer which satisfied me for some years.

[62:02]

He said something that's approached and then passed, we can say, has a temporary existence. Well, he is speaking as a scientist. More just from his own intelligence. But he wasn't speaking from Majamaka philosophy, but that insight is at the center of Majamaka philosophy. Mahayana Buddhist teaching philosophy. So I don't know, you know, it's no big deal to have thought that, but it's a big deal to bring that into your living experience.

[63:12]

Also, es ist keine große Sache, darüber zu sprechen, aber es ist eine große Sache, das in deine eigene Erfahrung zu bringen. And I didn't know I had to do this because, you know what, you have to lead your life and your kid and you go to school and so forth. Und ich wusste nicht, dass ich das machen musste, weil als Kind musst du einfach dein Leben leben und in die Schule gehen. But this insight hovered unresolved, really unresolved, in some background of my life. thinking, feeling. And I think that such insights, probably similar ones, related ones, different, also are in the background of your thinking. Unresolved?

[64:15]

Yeah, because we don't have the maturity to resolve it. But ignored also because our culture so thoroughly ignores such things. Yeah, results of, you know, thinking. Our culture presents the world, describes the world, languages the world. As if we were living in some kind of real enclosure. Some kind of present that is real. Yes, we can't ignore its reality or actuality.

[65:20]

But we It's slippery to try to speak about these things. It runs through our fingers. And yet, if we take this present to be real in the sense that it's our reference point, And hence then implicitly permanent. And this is what Buddhism calls delusion.

[66:25]

Now how do we have actuality without reference point, or what would that mean? Now another question arose from this, there's no 12 o'clock, is how do we establish duration? Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it's recently at Creston, I think it was, I found this question coming to the fore again in me, how do we establish duration? It seemed at the center of our practice. Well, our consciousness, of course, is not subtle enough to experience duration.

[67:27]

a millionth of a second. So just the nature of consciousness establishes a certain kind of duration. So how do I establish duration if I think about it, experience, feel into what I do, actually? Well, it's, of course, a process within consciousness. First of all, sensorial scanning. So actually what I'm doing right now, sitting here with you, is I see the floor, I see this column, I see each of you, and I put it together in my senses.

[68:48]

Yeah, I mean, I'm always struck again. Let's go back to the mountain at Crestone. When you live there, that mountain is like right here. I have to tell you a story since the cat jumped in. Once at Tassajara, I was giving a... No, I was doing... You weren't there, were you, when I did the Shosan ceremony? That's our one practice period. Yes, I was there. You were there? When Jerome was your Anja. Was he my Anja? Okay.

[69:49]

Sorry, everyone, we're just reminiscing here. So I'm answering questions, you know, after another 65... practitioners in the practice period, and I have to ask, respond to each person's question. And in a window over there where Valentin is, about on the meditation platform, a bobcat jumped through the window. And where Valentin was sitting, a robber cat jumped through the window. And he dominated all our cats. He was sort of half wild and half not wild.

[70:56]

And somebody got up during the ceremony and went over and picked him up and put him out. Yeah, it's good to have meditation centers in the wilderness. I don't know quite what will happen. Okay. And if I go back to this mountain at Crestone, it feels like it's really right here. But unless you're an excellent photographer, if you take a picture of it, it's way back there a little bit, you know. Because when you scan it in yourself, you look at the mountain, and then you look at this, and you bring them together.

[72:03]

As if the camera could look with different focuses. and put the different focuses together in one picture. So we basically scan with all our senses, hearing, smelling, seeing, et cetera, and we put together an image which has a certain duration. Is this real? Well, it is a product of your mind and body and senses. Is exactly what it is the same as the outside?

[73:17]

No, it's made from the ingredients of the so-called out there. And then it creates a background because it's held for a little while in your senses. It creates a background for a fly to fly through. Or for Charlie to come in the window. Charlie did come in the window and walk through the room, but... In my experience, he came in through a background with extensive duration that I created. Without that background I've created through sensorial scanning and memory, because I remember this and hold it together as one piece,

[74:23]

Without the background I create through sensorial scanning and memory, because I have to remember this, which is already in the past, all together at once. And if I don't create that scene, Charlie would be nothing but a bunch of molecules coming through the... I mean, I couldn't know much else beyond that. So, basically, I establish a... background on which to know something that happens in a foreground. And Charlie can come through or a fly can come through. And if I had a fly swatter, I could probably hit the fly if none of you were here. Once I killed a fly at a seminar, sort of by accident.

[75:58]

There was an uproar. How could I kill a fly? But anyway, I did it. Yeah. But if I was caught in a swarm of killer bees, which I was once in Peru... They're swarming around you like this. They can kill a cow. I can't single out one to swat it. If there is a background, it's mind itself.

[77:07]

And in such a circumstance, you do find mind itself as a background, and in this case, you try to escape. In this case, it was very good that I was a monk. Because the other people in the same situation, the bees got stuck in their hair. You'd be in trouble. And they were for quite a while trying to get these things out, which were biting them at the same time. But I escaped. I didn't get bit. The monk slipped through. Okay. Okay, now let's go back to the scene where here Charlie comes in, there's the pillar, there's the floor, each of us, right?

[78:24]

And we see the fly against the background of a sort of semi-permanent background. Und wir sehen die Fliege in diesem halbdauerhaften Hintergrund. But actually, there's really no difference between the fly and the pillar. Aber wirklich ist da kein Unterschied zwischen der Fliege und der Säule. The pillar is only slower. Nur ist die Säule langsamer. So I am taking slow moving things, because this pillar once wasn't there and at some point won't be there. So what we've got here is actually a bunch of slow and fast moving flies.

[79:26]

that I take as real. But when I actually can feel them as all moving or all impermanent, suddenly in non-referential space. I actually realize there's no reference point for this except my own mind's momentary creation. Now Nagarjuna again says you will be lost if you don't know the use and application of emptiness. You don't... We don't really know what the application of emptiness is.

[80:47]

But perhaps we can get a feel for it. Or perhaps I can... we can nudge ourselves close enough that maybe the emptiness of all things will be revealed to us. Probably in non-thinking, unexpected circumstances. Maybe in non-thinking, sudden states, unexpected?

[81:48]

Yes. So if a feel for this is in us, it's likely that something will make us see it. Lao Tzu, one of the founders of Taoism, He says, when the superior man hears of the way, he immediately starts, he or she immediately starts to practice it. And he said, when the inferior man Oh, poor guy.

[82:59]

And when the inferior man hears of the way, he really doesn't hear it. And if he does hear it, he laughs at it. And Lao Tzu goes on to say, if he didn't laugh, it wouldn't be the way. Don't say I haven't warned you, he said. Certain humor in Lao Tzu there. Now, I don't like these statements much because it makes most of us who don't practice the way feel inferior. And most of us are not going to practice the way. I mean, let's face it. And our compassion should extend to those who don't practice the way. But actually there's no meaning to practicing the way unless some people don't, and that possibility of choice is there.

[84:17]

And it's those who don't who give us the power to choose the way. Die, die nicht praktizieren, die geben uns die Kraft und die Macht, diesen Weg zu wählen. We can't choose it just for ourselves. That would be some kind of weakness of ego. Wir können es nicht einfach nur für uns wählen, weil das wäre so eine Schwachheit des Ego. So we choose it through and for others through ourselves. And so we need the power of those who don't choose and the power of ourselves who for a long time didn't choose. And so although I don't like this kind of statement of Lao Tzu too much, Perhaps we need such a statement when we really do hear the way and are close to making the choice.

[85:38]

And are willing to face the laughter of others who think there must be something wrong with us. Alan Watts tries to speak about this sense of duration and non-referential space. In terms of frames. Quite effectively, he uses the idea of frames. I remember once I was asked to do a television interview. Years ago, you know. I was very stupid and arrogant and didn't want to do the interview.

[86:46]

I said, I'll do it if I can hold up a frame. And you bring the camera in until it goes through the frame. And then somebody says, smash the television set. They decided not to do the interview. Yeah. I get a certain kind of stupid of me, but it's like asking somebody at a party, what's your philosophy of life, to get rid of them. I'm getting a little softer with my old age.

[87:47]

I hope. Okay. So if we see things in frames, we have to create frames to see things. I mean, if we say, what is it? What is it only has meaning in relationship to what it's not. If we say there's motion, it only has meaning in relationship to stillness. If there was only motion and no stillness, there'd be no meaning to the word motion.

[88:49]

And we can't have a frame that includes all frames. Because there'd be no meaning to a frame with nothing outside it. So all that kind of You know, thinking brings us closer to the feeling of no reference point space. Now, let me... Someone recently had an experience at Tassajara I'd like to share with you. At Crestone, I mean. Eine Erfahrung, die ich in Creston gemacht habe, mit euch teilen. You know, everyone goes out after the end of a period of Zazen and there's a whole lot of people trying to get their shoes.

[89:59]

Alle gehen raus nach einer Zazen-Periode und versuchen ihre Schuhe zu kriegen. There's a fair amount of snow and the steps are wet and so forth. Und da gibt es ziemlich viel Schnee und die Stufen sind nass. And this person was getting their shoes and they were a little annoyed by all these people at once trying to get their shoes and trying to get on the stairs and so forth. And they got their shoes and then you reach down to the first step to put your shoes down because you don't put the shoes on the deck itself. So this person was holding their shoes, reaching out toward the stair, and then she had no feeling that it would be there. She was just moving the shoes through space. And in all this buzzing of people and shoes and wetness and so forth,

[91:23]

She just lost the sense of a reference point. And yet she just proceeded without any sense of a reference point to move the shoes toward where she thought the step was. Some memory told her it was there. And suddenly the step was there. It like appeared from nowhere. She felt an immense sense of gratitude. And all at once all the people around her didn't annoy her anymore. By finding no reference point suddenly, she found herself in some absolute intimacy with the people around her.

[92:30]

In simple ways we practice this. One practice is when you walk, you walk with no feeling that there's a floor there. This is a kind of standard Zen practice. It's a little martial arts-like. to not have any expectation that suddenly the floor comes up to meet the foot. This is a simple practice which sensitizes you to no reference point. But suddenly this person actually unexpectedly was in the midst of and found herself without a reference point, but she continued to act with faith.

[93:57]

Even a kind of devotion. And this is at the center of Dharma practice, is that things appear. But we appear into this duration that we momentarily establish. And when it happens, for some reason, we're often surprised, singular, full of gratitude, and even...

[94:44]

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