It's the Japanese, you know, they make everything Japanese. They work very hard and have had several generations of people learning English. And they speak English quite well. But they have another English, which is a kind of Japanese English they made themselves. Like they have Japanese versions of German bread and Japanese versions of German coffee shops and Japanese Italian restaurants, which aren't Italian. Does anyone remember what the coffee shop, what's it called, Sum Time, across from our house says on the sign? Does anybody remember? Sum Time. Anyway, I should have written it down.

[01:19]

Anyway, this means for the Japanese person that they find out a new sense of individuality. We find out new personal. By taking a part of their daily life which they call space. And their dream, of course, of Europe is to have more of what they imagine as a kind of leisure that they imagine Europeans have. And which they connect with individuation being more individual.

[02:24]

But they end up sort of giving some oblique description of the Dharmakaya. Or a sense of practice. I mean, you could describe your own practice as finding out new personal in the space of apart from daily. Now, I can't imagine the German telephone company writing something in English that strange or in Japanese. They'd make sure it was good Japanese or correct Japanese or correct English. But the Japanese appropriate everything and make it their own, including European languages. Now I want to say that I think you're all practicing quite well.

[03:34]

Now I present a... I present Buddhism in a pretty, maybe, complex way. Now, I try to make it clear, but I also may make it sound like it's difficult or far, far away from where you're at and so forth. But really I have almost nothing I could say to any of you that you do more than you're doing.

[04:38]

I think you have a real sense, most of you, of practice. And I don't think this has just happened instantly. i wouldn't have said that in the last two last but this is that the how many sessions have i done in europe this is the sixth six session fifth first year including sharps at six okay so among the six sessions that he forgot about austria you know there's just Austria is part of Europe, though you can't convince... You can't convince anyone in Japan. Because every time you say, no matter how you pronounce it, they say, Australia? And everyone in Japan is convinced that I came to Japan with five or six Germans and five or six Australians.

[05:53]

And they actually couldn't understand why these Australians spoke German so well. But we brought them. You're supposed to bring omiyage. which are traveling presents from where you came. So we brought how many boxes? 20 boxes. We could have used two or three more, actually. But we brought 20 boxes of Mozart's eyeballs. Do you know what those candies are? Sure.

[06:55]

They all got that right away. They knew of Vienna, Mozart. That was clear. Yeah, es haben alle gleich gecheckt. Also, Mozart, Wien, klar. Where was I? Everybody practices prayer. Yeah. And I wouldn't have said that in the previous sessions. Quite a number of you and some of you who aren't here, in fact. I would say didn't really have a sense of how practice works. Some people have been practicing for five or ten years on their own or with various other teachers and hadn't got it clear how it works actually.

[07:59]

But I actually think you guys have got a pretty good sense of practice. Now, I only see you in Sashin and under special circumstances. If I spent 24 hours with you or a week with you in your hometown, maybe I wouldn't have such a clear idea of your practice. I can imagine I might become discouraged and say, oh, jeez. But still, I have to believe what I see here in Sesshin. You see, practice is a little bit like you're driving on a road somewhere.

[09:20]

And one day you stop the car and get out and you walk. And maybe I think because you know the road so well, you, when you're walking, see it differently than, of course you see it differently than when you were driving. And as I said, as I implied, I think you would see the road, things you hadn't seen there, more vividly because you knew the road so well. Now, this image that I'm trying to make is not so clear, but what I'm trying to say is you get the feeling of practice and you do it pretty well. But many of the things you do, you don't really know where it goes.

[11:03]

And you don't, I mean, it's as if on this road there were cities that you couldn't see. But you just kept going by. They were a little off the side road a little bit. You just never knew there was a whole city there. But you go by it all the time. And I think that's where your practice is at. You're actually on the path. Now, if you just keep on the path, you'll start to notice things that you haven't noticed before. They may not be such a big thing, just a kind of softness in your body, perhaps.

[12:06]

On a kind of a certain ease. The Japanese... Rickett kept telling me I should speak about the Bridge of the Gods. The Japanese have this place near where... near where the house that we stayed in is. In fact, we took someone to the train, Sally and Antonio to the train, and we kind of got lost over the mountains and the route, and Ulrike and I all, we drove into Amanohashidate, which means the Bridge of the Gods. And that's a picture of the Bridge of the Gods.

[13:16]

And although you can't see it from here, there's a small person standing looking at it, bent over from between their legs. So the person is seeing it this way. And the sense of it is that if you just look a little differently, you see this bridge where the gods come into everyday life. So Rika and Ruth and I all stood... We have photographs attesting to this peculiar sightseeing. So practice is again like that.

[14:31]

It's a little, you know, it's a little strange. Now, one of you told me they, after night sitting, they... went outside. And it was so dark they couldn't figure out even where the bridge is. So they're kind of walking along on all fours trying to find the bridge. I'm glad Frank didn't see. Or the neighbors. You leave the Zendo, people aren't all... Feeling your way across the bridge. And we should all go out that one day.

[15:54]

Then you kind of special kin him. So anyway, he went, this person went up and walked on the grass in the dark and it was quite satisfying. There's a story of Daowu and Yunyan, the brother and brother team. Maybe it's a little like Christian and Ruth, except we need in the future brother and sister teams that practice together. And Dawu says, why is it that Avalokiteshvara has so many hands and eyes? And hands and eyes. Avalokiteshvara has 11 heads and thousand hands, and each hand has an eye in it.

[17:14]

So, how would you answer this question? Why does Avalokiteshvara have so many hands and eyes? And Jungian says, it's like looking for your pillow at night. You know. And that's, we have to practice that way. You don't want to know so much about what you're doing. You don't want to have too many reasons and explanations. This is another story of Monk Astario. What is the way?

[18:18]

In another story, a monk, Hario, asked, what is the way? What is the way? Hario says, an open-eyed person falls in a well. So you can't practice really too open-eyed, or you have to have sort of... Anyway, it's a little different. Now, if you asked after yesterday's lecture, if you asked asked me, or perhaps I asked you, rephrasing some of the, restating some of the lecture, the, so I'll ask you, the reality body of

[19:40]

the true reality body of the Buddha is like space. The true reality body of Buddha is like space. It manifests in response to beings. It manifests in response to beings. Like the moon in water. Like the moon in water. What is the principle of response? Now, this would be a quite good question if you'd asked me this question. But if you spend some time practicing with thinking about yesterday's and the day before's talk, thinking about this sense of continuum or sphere or realm,

[21:16]

In which we experience the exterior as it is perceived as interior. Or we talked about the... the non-graspable continuity of being. So this must be a kind of body of Buddha. So you ask, what is the reality body of the Buddha is like space? And it manifests in response to beings.

[22:30]

Like the moon in water. What is the principle of response? And he asked somebody named Elder D. And he asked somebody named Elder D. And Elder Dues says, it's an ass looking in a well. So at least the ass didn't fall into the well. And asses aren't too smart, you know. Smarter than horses, but still not real smart. What? What does he say? The donkey, yes. Does someone else want to translate? Well, Ulrike, you've created a great image.

[23:56]

Are you OK? Anyway, it's like a donkey. Like a donkey looking at a whale. And Zhaoshan says, well, that's good, but you've only got 80%.

[25:02]

And Elder Deh says, well, what would you say, teacher? And Elder Deh says, well, what would you say, teacher? And says, it's like a whale looking at a donkey. So this is actually technically called answering in kind. In other words, you answer using the material of the previous question or the previous statement. So here you have both these ideas.

[26:03]

You don't want to be too open-eyed in your practice, or you'll fall into the well. And perhaps you need some of the qualities of the donkey. And when you do, the world, the manifold dharmas, the reality body begins to manifest in your life. Now, I'm using some metaphors or images, language from koans. Because I'm not going as deeply into the koan as we went into the one about breath.

[27:16]

But I'm just using some of these vivid images. Like a Milarepa, somebody asked Milarepa about the Dharmakaya. And Milarepa says that Dharmakaya is not in the category of thinking. And he says, don't ask me about the Dharmakaya. It's not something that can be described as being like this or like that.

[28:19]

So in that sense, Elder De and Saushan are trying to find some way, you know, so they say it's an ass looking at a well, looking at a well. You can do it. Now, another koan, the first one in the Shoyoroku, is the... The Buddha, the world-honored one, gets up on his seat, gets up on a seat. And the root of the word throne, actually, is the same root as dharma.

[29:26]

Which means in a world in which everything's changing, the word dharma means to hold or to support. So the koan says the world-honored one ascended the seat. Now we looked at this koan in Japan quite a bit. And Manjushri happens to be there. And Manjushri says, behold the king of Dharma. Look, see. See the king of Dharma. The Dharma of the king of Dharma is thus. And then the World Honored One gets down from the seat.

[30:36]

And the commentary says something like, Manjushri didn't have to say all that stuff, he's leaking. And again, this teaching, this con, emphasizes a bit of what I was saying yesterday, to find your seat. And I think, I mean, I'm still trying to find my seat. And I think each of you, maybe your whole lifetime, will be finding your seat. And there's always a dialogue going on, as you know, between the sense you have of the ideal posture or really having your seat and how you're actually sitting.

[31:45]

And this koan doesn't mean just when you climb up on your zazen cushion. It means each moment have you found your seat. When you come and serve a Niko, say. When you stand between the two here, say. And when you put the bowl down and you sit down as the best you can on the floor. And you put the bowl down and you sit down as the best you can on the floor. At that moment do you find your seat? Or are you kind of balanced, about ready to fall into the bowl with one foot in my bowl?

[32:52]

I know that these narrow aisles require special skills. But when you're serving like that, this is a unique moment in which you can find your seat. And that's actually a kind of physical feeling of... And you know, the gassho has a quality like that. And it's just in India and Japan and many places, it's just a greeting. But this is also one of those roads you travel, many times you travel down this road putting your hands together.

[34:01]

But one day you do it and you can feel the whole energy of your chest and heart and chakra here coming into your arms and into your hands. And when you bring your hands together here in the middle of your chest, you're specifically emphasizing this chakra. And when you bring your hands up so that the tip of the middle finger is at the tip of your nose, You're bringing that sense of this area of awareness of your body and energy up into awareness here in front of your face. And it actually can be a kind of purifying experience.

[35:12]

You do it all the time. It's just something you're in the habit of doing. But you don't know the source of the road, or you don't know how to be stopped on the road yet. But sometime, at some moment, with the gassho, you'll stop at that moment on the road. And you may feel the reality body of the Buddha between your hands or in your hand. So, again, you have the feeling of practice, I think.

[36:33]

Now the thing is, in imaginative ways, you find ways to bring this into your daily life. practice because it is the reality body of the Buddha, or practice because it taps into or arises from the continuity of undivided being, Actually, we could say more powerful than your conventional one.

[37:38]

It's like you can have maybe some fields which are pretty barren and dry. And you find one well on the field. And then you can begin to water all the fields. The well isn't very big compared to the number of hectares it can water. Or you can think of practice as sort of a homeopathic doses. And if practice is one percent of your life or something like that, it won't have too much effect. But if practice is five, seven percent, ten percent, it begins to change your whole life. So if you just make small efforts and kind of with a sense of being an artist or creative in how you bring practice into meeting another person.

[39:03]

secretly. This is not accumulative. You don't want anybody to know you're doing this. Or what you do during the day. And this is actually far more important than zazen meditation. Zazen meditation gives you direct contact with your real body, shall we say. And tastes of your real body. And it will give you a sense of well-being.

[40:08]

But it won't change your life or open up your life or let you find your seat in everything you do. And it's actually called secret practice. Maybe like an ass looking into a well. And if it's 80%, the well starts looking back. We had fun yesterday with the translation of donkey. And one nice thing about Zen as a religion is both translations are believable.

[41:09]

In fact, so believable that Arika asked me afterwards, are you sure that it means donkey? She said, how do you know? Can you show me in the koan what? I think I have, there's two people I haven't seen yet in Doksan. And I should have time to see some more people. If you want to come, I'll just start ringing the bell. And if anybody appears, I will visit with you.

[42:10]

And I'd like to... Some of you have asked me for cons. And I've given koans to a number of you in the past. And some of you are still working on them, of course. And I'd like to respond to everyone who wants a koan or who would like to take a koan. I've tried to present enough in this session so that you have a feeling for koan practice, a little bit.

[43:12]

And if I'm teaching Zen at all, well, then much of what I say actually functions as koans for you in the way that it works in you, hopefully. But to give you a specific koan requires a... I mean, I can do it sometimes, but it also requires a kind of... intimacy and time that it's hard to have in a sashin. So Frank has been asking me what the title of this extra week next September will be connected with the sashin. And I think it will be something like koans and lay practice or something like that.

[44:21]

And what I'll try to do is give koans, work on some koans individually with people And together we'll work on one or more koans all together somehow. And then practice the teachings that come up during the Sashin and of course during the seminar too. Hopefully, all together in a way that helps you practice Zen in your daily life. My dream is to know join, to be with you, to be with people.

[45:43]

Let's see, how can I say that? My dream is to, that there be many people, realized lay people, practicing here and there in the world. And I have a rather big idea of the importance of that. Because I see that the intimacy of the world now as a kind of global media village, Because I see that the intimacy of the world as a global media village means that historical processes are speeded up a lot and that the situation actually has considerable volatility.

[46:46]

able to catch fire or to be unstable. And you know, there's a phrase, misplaced concreteness, which means to make the world concrete when it's not, to see it as concrete when it's not concrete. And I see a perhaps even greater danger in misplaced wholeness. Is an attempt to make, to realize wholeness through externals, through external systems. That's why I brought up the other day how I see communism and probably national socialism of Germany

[48:03]

As having significant dimensions of a corruption of religious or moral insights. And to create through political and government systems wholeness, which is actually a spiritual realm, not a political realm. and in the present world we have minds are so connected that all minds and one mind have a very powerful relationship flipping back and forth So I really believe from the observation of my experience, somewhat more than half a century of sort of experience, that

[49:19]

that one person or a few people actually seeing things as they are makes a very big difference in the world. Sounds like a sermon, I'm sorry. Oh boy, maybe I should go out and change my robes and come back in again. Or put on a t-shirt with Yoda on the cover. There's an expression in Buddhism, in Zen, People like to talk too much about the crowning achievement of the age.

[50:52]

People pay too much attention to the crowning achievement of an age. And not enough to the sweating horses of the past. And this has several meanings. One meaning is that we pay too much attention to achieving enlightenment and not enough to the many practices that make the capacity for enlightenment possible. And it also means we value too much our own personality as the crowning achievement of the age. As if we arrived at this naturally and we belong to me.

[52:05]

Without being aware of how much the mind you have inherited is inherited from the effort of many people. I mean, I think... Just a few decades ago, Bertrand Russell was still talking about inert matter in contrast to being something like that. And it wasn't too long ago that novelists had to depict their characters as arising out of circumstance and rationality and so forth.

[53:05]

and circumstance. And a lot of this actually, excuse my little historical side, goes back to the intolerance of Christians for each other in the Thirty Years' War. which turned Germany into a killing field for the rest of Europe. And for a long time, people were afraid of any kind of tolerance or ambivalence or pluralism. And it's really only in this century that we've come to accept things like stream of consciousness and how mind and the world are mixed.

[54:28]

And insights are ways of viewing things that we take for granted now. But this much of, I think, much of... We're at a place in Western culture, we're at a kind of cusp in how we look at the world. Cusp? Cusp, a point, like the curve of a wave or something. The cusp of a cupa? Can you say that again? We're at a kind of cusp in Western culture. In terms of science, psychology and so forth. In how we look at the world. And the whole situation is ripe for a next step.

[55:30]

And I think that Whether you know it or not, you are part of the next step. Why, I don't know. What happened that we're stuck together in this room? Or each of your different lives have brought you to a place to look at the world in terms of Western culture and Asian culture and your own culture. And to trust your own individuality. It was a breakthrough for Jung just to be able to look at his dreams without thinking they were the work of the devil. It took tremendous courage for him to do that.

[56:46]

To immerse himself inside. So it still takes you courage to do it, but not the kind of courage that is taken for the sweaty horses of the past. So I think that if you, my feeling is that if we see how we're not just individuals but part of our time, it gives us more confidence and courage And more humility. And less ego. Because this practice requires less ego.

[57:51]

We could say that I could define humility as a combination of enormous confidence and small ego. A hard place to get to. We usually think the way to confidence is through ego. That's a serious mistake. Okay. So maybe the sermon's over. No, I've... been meaning for the last four or five days to talk about several kinds of emptiness.

[59:01]

And somehow it hasn't fit in or arisen when I've been talking with you. But I think it's useful to say something about it just because it's part of the assumed teachings that go into what we've been talking about. And emptiness naturally is rather confusing. So one kind of emptiness is the conception of emptiness which is used to transform your worldview. And to establish a worldview which is called three natures. And many of you have gone through this in some detail.

[60:15]

It's extremely important, but I can only touch on it here. And the three natures are conventional reality, The three natures are conventional reality, relative reality, and absolute reality. And absolute means emptiness. And relative means to see the world as conventionally real, but only conventionally real. And then conventional reality is to take reality as real when it's not. Or misplaced concreteness. Maybe conventional configuration in some ways would be better in English. Vielleicht würde man in Englisch besser sagen, eine konventionelle Abbildung oder Konfiguration.

[61:31]

Because the word configuration very literally means to shape in dough or clay, to knead like you make bread. Und das Wort konfigur oder abbilden, bilden auf Englisch bedeutet ganz exakt, wirklich etwas in Ton zu formen. Now, the importance of this three natures and not just, it doesn't just say there's two natures. You could just say, oh, there's two natures and the yellow one's a mistake. That's not the way it works. Because there will always be that mistake. And in that so-called mistake of conventional reality, which you could also call Manjushri's leaking, in Manjushri saying too much when he pointed out that this is the Dharma of the Dharma King, in a sense, all teaching is leaking.

[62:45]

Okay. Now, the reason conventional reality is... We can also say that conventional reality is a form of compassion. It's how we exist with others. But as a configuration, it's where the world's energy and individual energy is tied up. If you mess around with conventional reality and don't know what you're doing, it's like putting your hand in a light plug. So you may end up in prison, immured, which means surrounded by walls. And you could say, this is not the conventional reality, but...

[63:53]

you'll have a hard time getting out. So the adept uses the energy of conventional reality to break through into emptiness. So these three natures and how to practice in the realm of conventional reality, the relative and the absolute, are the basic teachings of Zen. Both upaya, skillful means, wisdom, and compassion. OK. One kind of emptiness is the emptiness that's used to, through understanding, through observation, establish three natures.

[65:23]

Another kind of emptiness is what happens when you... experience the absence of permanence. Absence of permanence. So when you really see that the world doesn't have any inherent identity, That we in fact are all falling in space right now and just happen to be falling at the same speed. And you can see that without trembling. Or to stress, this is the beginning of bodhisattva practice, it says in the sutras.

[66:37]

So to really see the absence of permanence is a revolution in the basis of your personality and worldview. Okay, so that's the second view of emptiness. Okay, the third view of emptiness is not the experience of the absence of permanence. but the experience of the presence of impermanence.

[67:39]

Now, this is a very important point, and this is the vijñāvāda, vijñāvāda and yogacara position. The first I mentioned is more the prajñāpāramita, nagarjuna type teaching. The second is the Majamaka position. For those of you who are interested in these things. The third is more the Yogacara position. Which emptiness is not just an absence, it's actually something you can directly experience. And original mind, again, beginner's mind, the uncorrected state of mind. The teaching that the primary inner posture of zazen is uncorrected mind. Is the gate of emptiness as presence.

[68:56]

Experienceable presence. That's the third kind of emptiness. Kinds of emptiness. Four kinds of emptiness, please. And the grocery clerk who happens to be an adept said, shut up, you've got them already. The fourth kind of emptiness is the huayen position. In which form is seen as exactly emptiness. And form and emptiness are experienced simultaneously.

[70:04]

And this is called dustness. And one of the gates of that, as I've talked about, is non-conceptual perception. Do you need a rest? Is that all right? Are you doing okay? What? You need a bath, you said? A what? A bath. A path. Oh yeah, I mean a way of practicing. Well, that comes next if you're ready. I mean, I'm trying to, I guess, since this is our last day, I'm trying to give you some teachings that tie up the package a bit so you can make use of this and unwrap it when you get home. But sometimes I try too hard and everybody gets exhausted and doesn't remember anything.

[71:09]

Now I get very excited about this teaching. And I'm feeling inside, wow, wow. And yet I can't get it across, you know. You guys are saying, jeez, won't he stop? My legs are killing me. Sorry. Now that we've seen sort of the, one of the,

[72:26]

end products or developed descriptions of practice, as we've done in the last few days, now I think it's easy to go back and look at the beginning. Now, if you're going to practice the instantaneous or sudden school, sudden enlightenment school, the conditioner of that or the approach of that school, this school, is to firmly establish you in the view.

[73:31]

Without being firmly established in the view, no matter what experience you have, it will cause confusion. Okay, so you're attempting, I'm attempting practice the tempting is to firmly establish you in the view. And firmly establish you in the clarity and possibility of uncorrected mind. Or fabricated mind. Which is what Sukhreshi calls beginner's mind. Each way you phrase it is a slightly different gate. Now, basic practice is called shamatha and vipassana. And these are usually translated as absorption and insight.

[75:03]

And or tranquility and insight or something like that. I think absorption is a pretty good translation. But as good as I can find in English. But insight is not a very good translation. It suggests that you're going to suddenly have a lot of insights. And really what it means is more a... Seeing from inner. An inner seeing. So inner sight might be better than insight. You may have insights, but this is actually a way of seeing. So let's call it absorption and inner sight.

[76:13]

Now, inner seeing might be a possible translation. But the problem with inner seeing is it sounds, at least in English, like you're seeing inside yourself. And that's not what I mean. I mean you're seeing the outside from inside. Now, so I call that, I'm calling that today inner sight instead of insight. Now, What is inner sight based on as basic practice?

[77:17]

Basically, it's based on the establishment of absorption. And that's what you're trying to do here in this sashin and in your zazen practice. Okay, are you with me so far? Good. I'm with you. Okay, so the first, in other words, you can't have inner sight unless you have an inner calmness and stability. Unless to some extent at least you have established your seat. So one of the things you do when you have the experience of maybe almost all of you have the experience for at least a few seconds of establishing your seat.

[78:37]

And if Wednesday or Thursday morning at 10.10 you had 10 minutes of establishing your seat and then you went into displays of ego Still, those ten minutes, if they actually happen to you, you can pivot your life on that knowledge. If you want to. And if you, I mean, real thinking is consequential. When you think in ways that doesn't have consequence, oh, I thought that once, that's not thinking.

[79:42]

That's just stuff floating through your head. But when you think something or experience something, and there's a degree to which we are open to experience, to which things actually happen to us, But if this ten minutes happens to you in the context of your life, so you see how it refers to everything that's happened to you, And you can feel or see its possibilities, what it means in this life of ours. Then you'll immediately take the precepts and... I mean, even if you only take them inside yourself. You'll say, here is the pivot of compassion and wisdom.

[80:55]

And our lives are open to such changes. Have a little courage. It's all up for grabs. You're probably the freest people this planet has ever seen. In a sense that you are more free to make choices about your life than any group of people have ever been. You may have to give up your second home. I don't know. But you may turn it into a zendo.

[81:56]

What I mean is the sacrifices, external sacrifices that we have to make aren't very great. The internal sacrifices are hard. But they're possible. When you find your seat for ten minutes or ten times, you are establishing this continuum of being. You are establishing the possibility, the capability of interiorized seeing. But in any case, you are coming toward the possibility of one-pointedness.

[83:07]

Of being able to see things with clarity. Without too much ego and so forth. Now, going back a little bit, one of the gates of this kind of practice is non-conceptual perception. Now, I know it sounds contradictory, non-conceptual perception, but just accept the phrase. Now, one of the most direct way, one of the shortcut ways to learn non-conceptual perception non-conceptual perception is also the perception of emptiness. Because conceptual perception is the perception of the world as divided.

[84:25]

And non-conceptual perception is the perception of the world as undivided. Not the world is one. That's a theological idea. Now, non-conceptual perception, by definition, is that way of seeing the undivided world. Okay. Now, one of the, as I started to say, shortcuts to realizing non-conceptual perception is to practice the undifferentiated, to practice the differentiated vision. To practice the sense fields. Because the sense fields have more immediate possibility of being a form of non-conceptual perception.

[85:45]

In fact, the sense fields are non-conceptual perception unless you add thought to it. And you probably most of the time add thought to it. Now, hopefully during our walking meditation outside, you were able to have occasional or often perhaps feelings of non-conceptual sense perception. The only other times this happens to us, you know, sometimes sort of feeling poetic in the forest, it happens to us. And it may happen in sunbathing. Or lovemaking.

[87:02]

And sunbathing is actually, I think, a disguised form of meditation in which you have resting your sense of identity in the light and sound continuum. which, as most of you know, are specific kinds of meditation, resting your location in a light continuum or a sound continuum. And if you're on the beach, getting burned in the process. Okay, so this sense of the senses as being the teacher of non-conceptual perception is often represented in the koans by animals. Because animals represent non-conceptual perception.

[88:19]

So the ten oxherding pictures or the buffalo, these represent non-conceptual sense perception. They also represent enlightenment and the Dharmakaya and so forth. But because it's an image, it can have a shifting meaning. Shifting in related meanings. Am I going too fast? A little bit? Okay. I wasn't waiting for you.

[89:29]

Hello, tape. How are you? I'm fine. The walls have ears. No, we don't. Here the cushions have ears. Okay. So in the process of coming to tasting non-conceptual perception, Catching it, learning it from your sense fields. And learning it from the times when you find your seat. And you become a Dharma king.

[90:57]

And the Dharma of the Dharma king is thus. You can begin to look at the world more, we can say the first stage of this inner sight is rationally. Now, this isn't the usual way of being rational. It's looking at things very clearly and stably and rationally. And because of your clarity and stability, the conclusions you come to are able to change you. Now, Dickens, in his novels, he has one of the kind of breakthroughs in our consciousness. He wrote about characters who were so driven that they were unable to understand themselves.

[91:58]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_76.1