Spectrum is equal in all points. This is not a statement that less is more. This is less is just as much. That all points in the spectrum are the same. What's important is which direction you're going in the spectrum. And practice is to go back and forth both directions on the spectrum. So you're reaching out and you're also turning in. Am I going too fast? Am I going too slowly? OK. Now, I asked Yamada Reiron Roshi once.

[01:28]

Actually, I received my first Raksu initiation from him. I was Sukhyoshi's disciple, but... Yamada Roshi was the bishop of America, of North America, so he used to come to our sashin sometimes. And so out of kind of politeness, he had this first group of people to receive a raksu, which I was the last of the first group. Because I had just practiced a year at that point. So Krishi said, only people who would practice a year could get a raksha. So the other eight or twelve or something. I had started some months earlier or a year earlier than I am.

[02:50]

So anyway, he used to come up and join our Sushin sometimes. And I... Asked him when he'd come, sometimes he'd only stay two or three days. And instead of a lecture with Roshi, we'd have a kind of discussion with him. He was a quite learned Roshi. Yeah, nice guy. And so at one point during the one day, he had questions. I asked him, what is reality? And he paused and said, yeah, good. We'll answer that tomorrow. And so the next day, when it came for this question and answer period, instead of the question and answer, he asked us all to sit.

[04:07]

And he, in effect, did a kind of guided meditation where he tried to get us to be pretty free of thoughts. And just to feel the presence, something like the presence of being alive or sitting. Yeah. In the purest sense, Dogen would call this something like dropping mind and body. Because you can't say this experience is the body and you can't say this experience is the mind. It's what I would call now something like non-graspable feeling. One of the answers to this, how do you grasp space? Oh, as soon as you grasp it, it falls down.

[05:32]

So anyway, I had got some kind of feeling from his response, Yamada Roshi's response. At the same time, I... I felt it wasn't too good an answer. Because if you're going to be asked what is reality, you don't have to wait till tomorrow. And And also it was a little mechanical to have us sit down and all that stuff. And Sukhiroshi wouldn't have answered that way. But now in my old age I'm more generous in my feeling of his answer. And it wasn't bad and it stayed with me. Yeah, how would, if I answered in the vein of Suzuki Roshi?

[06:46]

Somebody asked me, what is, how do you grasp space? I might say, nothing to be taken away. And I think nothing to be taken away is better than nothing to be added. Although it's kind of the same. Or you could say, neither added nor taken away. And one of Nagarjuna's eight negations, And Nagarjuna is the founder of the Madhyamaka school.

[07:54]

And the kind of formulator of the Prajnaparamita teaching. Into a philosophical system which emphasized emptiness. One of Nagarjuna's eight negations is no elimination. The eight negations that manifest open up the present, generate emptiness.

[08:56]

But no elimination is something like nothing to be taken away. But if that's going to be anything actual to you, Again, you'd have to bring skin, flesh, bones, and marrow to it. Yeah. Nothing to be taken away. In each situation, each observation, feeling nothing to be taken away. It makes everything at least profoundly okay. Now I could say also a similar thing, you know, just as it is. Yeah, nothing wrong with everything just as it is. Or we mind only another expression.

[10:18]

Or this very mind is Buddha. If you practiced with a phrase like this very mind is Buddha, which is one of the most classic Zen phrases to put you on the edge of reality, Yeah, and one of the basic practices that I mentioned earlier that, you know, when I made my sort of list of first stage, second stage, is to find ways to keep yourself on the edge of what you know. And that's as I understand Paul to be using this koan of many hands and eyes. And it's the particular technique of Zen is to use phrases to keep you on the edge of what you know. This very mind is Buddha, it's good.

[11:39]

But it has its particular fruits. What's interesting is that these various phrases which are on the surface of the same teaching. The same understanding. Are in different points. On the surface. It's a little bit like if you come in this door, it's a different room than if you come in this door. So the phrase in the context of what we're talking about Nothing to be taken away, I think, is the most useful in our context right now.

[12:54]

Because nothing to be taken away engages us in the interaction. Yeah, interrupts the impulse to either add or subtract. Now, if we look at the four marks again, what happens if you practice these marks? You really do, after a while, get the feeling of things just appearing.

[13:55]

And you get the feeling of your actual experience of what appears. Having only a certain duration. And that duration itself is changing. And this dissolution and the act of disappearing. So everything starts swelling into awareness. And then melding back in. And this directionality even here of appearing and then melding. After a while, you don't just experience the appearance.

[15:07]

You start experiencing the source of the appearance. And you start experiencing... what it disappears back into. What are you doing when you do this? Again, it's not just that this, what it appears from and returns to is already there. And you're waiting for a revelation of that. Although sometimes something like that happens. But still, much more accurately, when you feel something appearing and disappearing, that very practice with skin, flesh, bones and marrow begins to generate that from which it appears and into which it disappears.

[16:15]

And this is called many things. Original mind. Or perhaps more accurately, philosophically, originary mind. Originary means the source rather than the beginning. But it means the mind before your parents were born. Or your big mind or background mind. So if you choose to practice this, you're not... I can't say you're discovering the truth. you're discovering an experience of truth in yourself.

[17:34]

But I can't say the truth, because if there's the truth, there's a unitary reality. And one of Nagarjuna's eight negations is no unity. Which means no theology. Yeah. So if you make this choice to practice this, you're discovering a truth. You practice somewhat differently, you discover perhaps another truth. So you're making a choice of what kind of existence and mind you want to construct. Because you're not here making a choice of discovering the truth.

[18:35]

You're making a choice about what kind of truth you're going to discover. You're making a choice about what mind and existence is constructed. That's the meaning of form is emptiness. Form constructs emptiness. Emptiness constructs form. If you think emptiness is there before and form is on, then you've basically got a theology. A prior emptiness is not emptiness. So we're in this kind of bubble, making the bubble.

[19:53]

But some bubbles, heaven, make us healthy. Some bubbles make the world understandable. Some bubbles keep popping in our face. For me, this is a bubble that works very well and bounces here and there. So as you begin to generate this originary mind, the teaching of Yamada Roshi, of my discovering this non-graspable mind that's neither mind nor body,

[20:55]

And my own practice of kind of developing or becoming aware of a background mind. All begin to kind of come together. And as you practice this appearance, Appears and disappears each thing. And as I begin to feel the... If I say mind, it's not right. So what word should I use? Mind is something slightly wrong with it. Yeah. If I say body, it's not quite right.

[22:09]

What should I say? Eureka, emptiness. It's the best word because... I want a word which nothing can be said about. I want a word which anything I say about it is wrong. So shunyata is such a word because it means both fullness and emptiness. So if we have to say a word, We try to say a word which says nothing. So as I begin to, again, really feel each thing appear and disappear, And I really know the limits of knowing of the senses.

[23:14]

In other words, as I say, each of the five senses is only a small piece of the pie. Yeah, we don't know, again, what television programs are in the room. Even few of us probably have a telephone call there somewhere. Such a mechanical example, but gives the feeling that there's a large part that's not in our senses, in our five senses. Again, when you hear a bird, you're not hearing what other birds hear. You're only hearing what this bird, I mean, what you hear. So that to know everything is mind is also to know the limits of knowing. The senses don't present a full picture of the world. Yeah. Each sense is limited and in between the senses there's a manifold reality.

[24:52]

So things appear and I can see that every appearance is mine and every appearance is marked by non-knowing. Every appearance is within the limits of knowing, within the limits of reality. And as I again feel this more and more, this kind of wave of appearance, the space between the waves starts getting bigger. Things appear, but they disappear, and nothing appears for a while. Or things appear, and yet there's a kind of silence that's not about silence at the root of it.

[26:06]

So you can see why the Yogacara school emphasizes the field of mind as emptiness. Because Yogacara always wants to say all of this teaching must be experienced. So if we identify emptiness with the contentless field of mind, And then recognize that the content of this field of mind is also the field of mind of content. Then you have the Yogacara understanding of emptiness.

[27:11]

And Dogen says, if this understanding doesn't reach your consciousness, don't mind. If you practice this, it will reach your living, we could say, if not your consciousness. So let's say that I practice appearance. And let's take another typical Zen example. The hundred grasses.

[28:12]

The hundred grasses means everything. But it's kind of nice to practice with grass. I like the story of Harry Roberts's somebody goes to the Indian medicine man and says, I'd like to become your disciple. And the potential disciple says, ask this, and the medicine man says, Yes, maybe I can accept you, but bring me six flowers first. And Harry said, if the guy goes away, to find six flowers, he's probably not going to be accepted.

[29:16]

If he at that moment reaches down and picks up six blades of grass and presents it, He'll probably be accepted. If he picks up six stones, he'll probably be accepted. In this world, the reality is the offering, not whether it's flowers or stones. And if you don't know that, that the relationship is it, then you're not ready to study medicine. Indian medicine. Okay, so we've got the hundred grasses. Yeah, and I look at the grasses. I, for some reason, particularly like grass. Mm-hmm. I've always kind of... I used to always take a walk and kind of roll it.

[30:32]

When I took a walk, I'd always pick up grass and spend 20 minutes or half an hour rolling one piece of grass at a time. As a kid, like some country hick. Probably. I'd always have a piece of grass in my mouth. So I like grasses. So anyway, you look at a blade of grass and it appears. You feel it appearing, you see it appearing. But you also feel what doesn't appear. You feel its roots. Because once this kind of relationship is there, you can move more toward the object or more toward yourself.

[31:40]

Which is another important key of this vijnana practice is to recognize the field of the object as well as the field of the observer. And if you move, you know, if you really just let the grass appear, it's impossible, I find, anyway, not to feel its roots. And not to... and not to feel its need for rain and not to feel its need for the whole earth which comes up through it. And now at each moment, each blade of grass is doing its best.

[32:46]

It's not permanent, but at that moment it's kind of standing up. So if I feel this interdependency, and Nagarjuna's main point is actually appearance and interdependency, He would say, nothing dies. Or nothing disappears. Because whatever disappears reappears as something else. There's no way to get rid of it all. Because whatever disappears everything is so interdependent that it's always going to start appearing again. So, you know, this is, you know, kind of ecology.

[33:55]

But when it's the way your mind and body work, And you approach this in this Majamaka way or Nagarjuna way. You really feel, at least for me, I really feel the phenomenal world is a field of presence. interdependent and interpenetrating. The hundred grasses are appearing and disappearing. So now it's no longer just an experience of my mind, the field of mind. But when I look at everything, it's appearing out of this same originary source.

[35:16]

Where does the grass appear from? It disappears and disappears. Trees, buildings, hotels. Still even there, there's a feeling of this source that's not just mine, but everything all at once. And here there's a kind of isomorphism. Isomorphism means same structure but different history. So in a way there's a different history in the practice of feeling emptiness as the field of mind. There's one history of practice in coming to feeling emptiness as the field of mind.

[36:22]

And there's also another kind of way you practice to come to the feeling of the field, interpenetrating field of interdependence. And you really kind of relax into this spectrum. So it's now, emptiness is now not just a mind phenomenon. Phenomenal world too. Seems to be coming in and out of this potentiality space. And potentiality space is a good term, I think, for us. Because it's not just it can be this or that.

[37:30]

There's so many potentials in this field. Hans-Peter Dürer or somebody or I can't remember whom. Who he is. Oh no, I know, Stuart Kaufman, yeah. Stuart Kaufman. It was a chaos theory person. Eine Person aus der Chaostheorie. Calculated once that the number of possibilities of atoms and so forth combining to form things. Der hat einmal berechnet, dass die möglichen Kombinationen aus Atomen So far in the history of the universe. In der Geschichte des Universums We've used about less than 1% of the possibilities in the last some billions of years. Even in the given, this room, our genes, the 66-year-old thing,

[38:33]

Skin, flesh, bones and marrow. There's still a surprising plasticity. So emptiness asks us, what kind of mind and body and existence do you want to create? You're creating a particular mind and body already. And you can continue. And you can also open its potentialities. And strangely, the opening of those potentialities is also inseparable from a deep relaxation. A stillness and ease in the world. So the bodhisattva of compassion is also the bodhisattva of emptiness.

[40:01]

The one who sees with his ears or her ears. Or hears with their eyes. Yeah. I said too much and too little, I guess. But we have five minutes before lunch. So why don't we sit for a few minutes? Thank you very much for letting me try to do this. The entry we all can go through is practicing the mind of appearance.

[41:13]

Every chance you can get whenever you have a chance Even for a moment. Practice the mind of appearance. And it's likely emptiness will unfold in your life. In a way in which it's not just an idea. But a feeling of you yourself appearing, disappearing on each moment.

[42:13]

And there's not a continuity of self. but a continuum in which self covers everything. A wide sense of self. of familiarity or intimacy. We can call self. Jeder von euch ist eine Blume in Leerheit.

[43:55]

Thank you very much, Flowers. Vielen Dank, Herr Blumen. You're welcome.

[44:53]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_74.27