You know, I'm well aware that Sashin is often very difficult. But I really feel that in some way we're mostly just playing with each other. Have you ever seen those nature movies in which bear cubs and so forth all roll around and roll down hills and fool around? Yeah, that's what I think we're really doing. But it just looks like we're always figuring out how to do it. Yesterday, we thought that the lecture was not recorded.

[01:14]

Which, given the lecture, from some points of view, it might be good. But I felt if yesterday's wasn't recorded, we should erase the day before's. Because the day before's makes not much sense without yesterday's, I think. But the batteries became very low. Carl went out on an emergency run. And Karl started in an emergency operation. And came back in about a minute. So it appeared anyway with batteries and cables and so on. And when we got a little more electricity into the machine, we found that it was sort of recorded, except we sound like Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

[02:31]

Actually, I sound just like a good friend of mine, Bill Thompson. Never thought he sounded like Mickey Mouse before. I don't know if I should tell him. So maybe it can be slowed down, or maybe I could play with it by redoing it, commenting as I go along. I mean, I'm saying that in the context of usually some people want tapes. Now, the use of the stick is precipitated the usual crisis in some people.

[03:47]

One person even told me they'd begun to hate me. I wasn't even carrying the stick. What would have happened if I was carrying the stick? So I don't know. In America, there's not this strong reaction to the stick. So can I ask you a question? Excuse me for asking you a personal question. How many of you parents physically disciplined you? Not just you bad person, but actually thankless of that. How many people? Yeah. Yeah. How many of your parents never spanked you or hit you?

[05:06]

Yeah. I've never hit my children. Though Sally remembers who some of you met. That once she had a mouse in a box when she was a teenager in the kitchen. That we'd spent weeks trying to catch and finally we caught it and it was in this box. And she... She was looking at it and showing it to everybody. And I said, you know, you better put a top on that or we're going to lose that mouse again. And just as I said it, the mouse jumped out. So I said to her, you dummy. She's never forgiven me for that.

[06:08]

She said, you hit me in front of my friends. She still reminds me. So I don't know what it is, but I don't know if we should, if all of you tell me, if the majority of you tell me, all in all, we don't like the stick, we won't use it. Well, if the guy, if the person carrying the stick, if it sounds really loud, don't ask. Yeah. Too strong, yeah. Well, that will happen. And the only thing we can do is if we carry the stick more regularly, people get better at it and know how to hit and so forth. And you know who to avoid if you can tell who's carrying the stick.

[07:43]

But I don't know whether we should do it or not, but... Anyway, after the sashin again, you can tell me what you think. Now this, what I called yesterday a somatic message, Ulrike asked, why is a somatic message more in the presence?

[08:48]

Why isn't writing in the presence, for instance? Why couldn't you write down this information? And I said, you can, that's what the koans are. And that's why so many statements and koans seem to be discontinuous. It's like there's this one and then there's this over here which doesn't seem to have any relationship to this one and so forth. Then there's one over here. But if you suddenly feel how they're all connected, they make one shape. It's like each koan is a little rubric cube. It kind of suddenly comes into a pattern. And that pattern will only appear, really, if the presence...

[09:51]

is established through a presence or you feel a certain presence and the koan makes sense of it. So I just was using again somatic as a or I could use proprioceptive, or I could use, probably most appropriately, just use the word wisdom as a kind of message. It's like you turn the present into presence. No, I think I've said enough about how, at least for today anyway and yesterday, how this sense of presence is related to both lineage transmission and the immediate present Sangha.

[11:40]

I think that Sangha is probably the most difficult aspect of contemporary Buddhism to understand. And it's the most fraught with problems. Do you know the word fraught? Like a fraud on a ship? No, fraught means filled fearfully, filled with things that are dangerous. German is fraught with dangers for me. Okay. A ship, that's a frigate.

[12:43]

Fraught. Because I think, I don't know if we've talked about this before, but I think that If you practice zazen together, if you open up this inner seeing, and just physically you become more sensitive, you actually begin to create a shared interior space. particularly if you live together. And we don't have any accepted understandings of this shared space. So it becomes a an area of a lot of transference, counter-transference, confused feelings, misbegotten affections.

[14:03]

It's really a shared interior space of great intimacy, And yet it has to be cared for and understood a certain way. When it is cared for and understood, then we all play together, like I was speaking about. Now, there's a koan. You know, the famous... One of the famous questions that's the basis of many koans is... What is the meaning of the ancestor coming from the West?

[15:19]

What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West? Meaning, what's the point of Buddhism coming from India? And of course, Buddhism travels through people. It doesn't travel through books. It takes an actual person practicing with you. You can read hundreds of books on Buddhism, but it takes an actual person practicing with you for Buddhism to really take root. So not why did a certain sutra come, but why did this person, Bodhidharma, come from the West? And Bodhidharma, of course, is well known for sitting supposedly for nine years Some people say his legs turned to dust.

[16:44]

He's still seen in certain cities begging. Yeah. You can understand this image though. And this question also is really anything you can think of around it. Why are you studying Buddhism? Why do you study with other people? And so forth.

[17:46]

What is way-seeking mind? Now, in this particular koan that I'm referring to, which is number 17 in the Blue Cliff Records, someone asked Sean Lynn, Why did, what is the meaning of the ancestor coming from the West? And he said, sitting for a long time is sure boring. Or is tiresome or difficult or hard work or something. And this is the most unusual probably of all the answers to this. Because people usually say things like the rhododendron in the garden.

[18:51]

But this guy, you know, responded to everybody's secondary process. He got tired of sitting in India, so he came to China. Shang Lin was quite an interesting guy. He was a kind of slow learner. he practiced with Yanmen, who is one of the really two or three most famous and definitive of the Zen masters. And he was his attendant for 18 years. And this is not easy to do. You get to be about 35 or so and you say, shit, I'm still an attendant.

[20:08]

I want a brown robe and a stick to carry me. I want to be a real man. I want to grow up. I want my own temple. You know, people actually think this way. It's quite normal. Shinran Roshi, who some of you met in Japan, He's a funny guy. Funny just to look at. He's got very pockmarked skin and a big bulbous nose like a clown. And Yamada Mumonroshi was really the most famous Zen master of Japan. And Shinran Roshi was his attendant for, gee, I don't know, 25 years or a really long time.

[21:21]

And Shinran Roshi had quite a few other disciples who were quite famous Zen teachers and very talented. But Shunran Roshi has the real feeling of Mumen Roshi. You can't quite take him entirely seriously, but he's... At the same time, just completely present, receptive person. He's not a glamorous person. And I imagine Sean Lynn was rather like this. So, you know, all these years he was his attendant.

[22:44]

Young men would ask him, would call his name, Sean Lynn. He'd expect to be asked for a rhinoceros fan or something. And he'd say, yes. And young men would say, what is it? And for 15 years he didn't know what to say. No matter what he would say things and explain, uh-uh. It says in the koan, for 15 years there was no mutual accord. One day he said, I understand. And Yang Min said, say something above and beyond that.

[23:51]

He stayed another three years. Yeah. Imagine how many mosquito bites he had. So, but it also says that young men's elucidations or presentations of states of being were so powerful and effective But it also means that Jan Men's presentations of the states of being were so powerful that Shan Lin could enter actively at any time.

[24:57]

Now, this might not be quite clear what this means, so I'll try to make it more clear. It means that even though Shan Lin did not understand what Yan Men was teaching, In that he couldn't explain or elucidate the teachings. He could feel them and enter into them at any time. So now, this also speaks well of young men as a teacher. Because most teachers would acknowledge somebody who had this capacity. And also probably Shanlin had a kind of deep honesty.

[26:17]

And wouldn't also himself accept understandings that were too easy. So after all these years with Yan Min, he understood really deeply the teachings. Da verstand er die Lehre wirklich tief. And actually, of all young men, many, many disciples, realized disciples, von den vielen, vielen verwirklichten Schülern Jan Menz, Shan Lin's lineage flourished the most strongly.

[27:19]

Da hat sich Shan Lin's Linie doch wohl am meisten entwickelt und entfaltet. Shun Lin is also famous because Yan Min wouldn't let his lectures be tape recorded. That was because there were no tape recorders. Sorry. It was also, he didn't let them be written down either. But it's quite a famous, Shanlin had a inner kimono and inner robe made of paper. The sleeves were made of paper. So during the lectures, he supposedly wrote on the sleeves. Since they didn't have ballpoint pens, I don't know what he used.

[28:32]

Did he have a little secret inkwell? Anyway, that's the story. And because of Sean Lynn, the young men's teachings have been recorded. So someone asked Xianglin, what is the lamp in the room? He said, if three people say it's a turtle, it's a turtle. Probably looked a little bit like a turtle. But this is actually a rather interesting remark.

[29:35]

You know, they've done studies with, psychological studies with people and they have two or three or four people say that such and such is the case. I don't know if anybody, does anybody remember the example? I can't remember. But anyway, they say, is something that's obviously false. And you're the third or fourth person in the line. So this person says, no one is sitting there. And the next person and the next person. And you get to this person who's the only one who isn't initiated. And almost everybody says, oh yeah, no one's sitting there. It's quite extraordinary, these studies, people. Very few people will say,

[30:35]

I think I see it. It's a scary dimension of human being. So, mensch, you said, that means men, doesn't it? Humans. Sorry. I want some windmensch. I said windmensch. Like women? So the lamp in the What he meant, usually when to ask about a lamp means to ask about the relationship between meditation and wisdom.

[31:38]

Because the lamp means the body or meditation. And the flame means wisdom. What he meant, usually when to ask about a lamp means to ask about the relationship between meditation and wisdom. Because the lamp means the body or meditation. And the flame means wisdom. So the question in practice is, how is your meditation strong enough to keep the flame of wisdom from being blown out? By distraction, by passion, by whatever. So his saying about the turtle means really that this is a flame you have to maintain yourself whether other people agree with you or not.

[33:05]

It has to be your own truth. OK. So Shanlin's answer to this question sitting long becomes very tiresome and boring, emphasizes that meditation itself is not sufficient to keep the flame burning. This is also called a flavorless answer.

[34:07]

Because you can't make anything of it. I mean, you think about it, it doesn't make any sense in terms of Buddhism. He also says in the introduction, To be a true master, you have to be able to cut nails and shear iron. And if you're the kind of person who runs away from arrows and swords, you can never be a competent adept. And unfortunately, these are a little bit too masculine images. These guys chewing iron.

[35:35]

Being beaten with a stick. When actually the kind of energy that keeps the flame alive is much more, even if you did PET brain scans, is much more feminine energy than masculine energy. You know, it seems that when they do these PET scans of brains and magnetic resonance imaging and so forth, To solve certain problems or identify certain words and connections, women's brains light up quite differently than men's brains. It's also interesting that, this is something I was just reading recently,

[36:44]

that more intelligent people seem to have less energy displays in their brain. Retarded people's brains are alight with stuff going on all the time. What seems to happen is that more intelligent people, one of the measures of intelligence seems to be how efficiently the brain uses energy. So I have some ideas about why that's so, but I won't try to go into them today. But this cutting iron... shearing iron and cutting nails, we can find another image for it.

[38:02]

I've told you before, but not for some time, what the five fears are. With the five fears in Buddhism considered five hindrances, are the fear of loss of livelihood, the fear of loss of reputation, the fear of unusual states of mind, which includes like going crazy or also trance states and meditative states. And the fear of death. And finally, the fear of speaking before an assembly. And the fear of speaking before an assembly is exactly like the person who says, oh yeah, that's a turtle. Again, in studies of creative people, they're almost always the person who is willing to, and not just for their own sake, but for others' sake, say something's wrong when it is wrong, when everybody else says it's right.

[39:36]

So the fear of speaking before assembly means the courage to speak out, if necessary, even against your whole society. And this strength, this kind of strength is what they mean by shearing nails, cutting iron and so forth. You can't be shaken from your resolve. And when one of the most basic things Shan Lin used to say to people who asked him about Buddhist practice, was the root is your resolve. What is resolve?

[40:55]

Resolve your deep intention. Bodhidharma, he said the Siddhartha or the historical Buddha's wisdom was his resolve. So the question I'm bringing up here, which I know to what extent I'll resolve it, but bringing up is the balance of the lamp or meditation and the flame.

[42:07]

Which has a lot to do with how you use your energy. And one way I would describe this today is that you have an inner horizon and an outer horizon. And your outer horizon is like seeing the woman across the pond. Or looking at the world in terms of generalizations. Germany is like this, America is like that, Europe is blah, blah, blah. Or such and such is such and such a kind of person.

[43:10]

Those kind of generalizations use your energy very badly. So in a way, what we're doing in practicing is bringing our horizon in, particularly away from generalizations. Bringing it into the immediate details. Again, using the oriokis. How we walk in the room together and bow to each other. How you sit down, what your state of mind is as you sit down. So forth. Now, if we say that a leaf is not made just by a tree a leaf is also structured by the medium of air doesn't that make sense

[44:35]

If air isn't the way it is, leaves would be different. And if a tree had leaves that weren't structured also by air, the tree would die. Couldn't be such a tree. So you can say that air has a structure. So you can also say then that, by analogy, that space also has a structure. Because everything that exists in space is structured by space just as much as The leaf is structured by air. So not only is space understood as interactive in Buddhism, but it's understood as structured.

[45:49]

So when you talk about the Dharmakaya body as space, it's not exactly what that word usually connotates in English at least. So there's a kind of delicacy in perceptions when you begin to see this way. So you bring your horizon in and you And you bring it into the immediate details. Now again, masculine energy tends to structure things a lot and compartmentalize. And at least what's understood as feminine energy in Buddhism looks at things without so much discrimination.

[47:03]

more evenly looks at things without compartmentalizing. So there's a kind of awakening of, at least in technical Buddhist terms, of a feminine energy that begins then to, after you've moved the horizon in, begin to move the horizon out. So you don't think so much in terms of generalizations. Like if I look at Werner. But I also feel the cushion. and the floor and so forth.

[48:22]

It's a more detailed feeling of the connection between Werner and myself. That sense of the details of the phenomenal world as the stream of being. I mean, this phenomenal world is an extraordinary continuity of being. Everything seems to be right here. But where does it go when it goes into the past? And it's not yet here in the future. So we're in a little hard bubble that seems to be passing through, I don't know, or what is it? We don't know what it's doing. Can you translate that?

[49:25]

It's totally mind-boggling. Mm-hmm. So I don't mean that you don't think in generalizations sometimes. But there's a more fundamental and basic and home-based state of mind where you really think just in terms of what you know. I'm sitting here. I feel certain things. I can hear Ulrike. I can actually feel her warmth. And when I'm doing service or just before I start, You're all sitting there, and I feel a kind of field of warmth.

[50:46]

As soon as the bell rings, there's an amazing increase in heat. And I feel all these units from behind me. I just feel you, and different people's heat is different, and it all starts flowing off you as soon as you start moving. And some of you think not... Washing, not bathing also means not changing your clothes or not washing, and there's more than heat that comes across. So I don't know.

[51:53]

There's this stuff that I really do sort of know. I mean, if I know anything, I know that. So this kind of bringing your attention into the details and then extending this horizon as long as you can extend it within the details. This is practicing with your outer horizon. And then your inner horizon we've been talking about. And most of us start out practicing with no horizon inside. There's only a kind of burps and things.

[52:55]

There goes my inner horizon. Whoops, here's my inner horizon. I can actually burp at will, but Ulrike has asked me not to. So I will not demonstrate one of my minor skills. But as you practice, you begin to find out there's an inner seeing that's pretty big. And as you sit, one of the first signs of that is you begin to feel boundaryless. You don't know exactly where your boundaries are. And that's just one example of your being able to create an inner horizon.

[54:03]

Now, when you bring the inner horizon and the outer horizon together, you're really using your energy very efficiently. We could say it in several different ways. These are all ways of speaking about non-duality in an instrumental, craft-like way. This is not non-duality as a generalization, but ways in which it actually works. So one thing you could say is that this is beginning to be able to simultaneously perceive the undivided world and the divided world. So when you can do that, you can keep this flame of wisdom alive.

[55:20]

And Dogen says, we realize enlightenment with and through our body. And he means the body which is not experienced as different from the phenomenal world. When this phenomenal world is really perceived as the actuality of sentience, of the stream of being. So this is the image of the lamp and the flame. And how do you use your energy? How do you keep your state of mind so that the flame doesn't go out? All of you have some feeling for or even quite a bright flame.

[56:23]

But I'll bet you when you get to Frankfurt or Berlin or someplace else, it might go out. How do you keep it going? This koan begins with a statement. I won't mention where a needle can't even enter. Where a needle can't enter means a state of mind that's continuous. Not at a thinking level, but at an energetic level. So exactly how you feel your energy in your sitting position.

[57:26]

And then working in the kitchen. And going to bed and so forth. Now some of you push your energy too much. What you're trying to do is find more of a continuous energy that's present when you do things like eating with the Present in the listening to the lecture. And some of you have the experience and one person told me about his experience of this recently. Of staying, of being completely asleep, the body being completely asleep, but the mind being completely awake, hearing conversations and so forth. This is a sign that the flame is being alive even while you're asleep.

[58:40]

That your energy is a certain presence, that's a certain presence that arises of awareness but isn't drained off in conceptual thought. So I started out this seminar, this session, talking about way-seeking mind. And part of way-seeking mind is to be in touch with the way or to be on the way is to be in touch with your actual energy. No, I don't mean just energy that can be measured by some scientific experiment. I mean many things which I think you intuit. Including how you change the present as an abstraction into presence which connects you.

[59:50]

Which allows you to feel connected. Which is the space in which everything happens. That's enough. Thank you very much. They are intention.

[60:40]

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