Oh, nice day. Sun's coming in. Yeah. Maybe you can go walking again today. So it's... Well, maybe it's sometimes nicer to be outside. It's quite nice to be right here, too. No, I don't... Before I start, let me say, after lecture sometime, I have to leave until this evening or tomorrow morning, before lecture. Did I say before lecture? Oh, before lecture, yeah, right, which isn't really...

[01:02]

Anyway, to give you a little more of an explanation, I agreed to do a series of lectures at the university at Oldenburg. And I did partly because a friend of mine gave the same lectures, series of lectures once. So I felt I was doing something with him. And a very nice persuasive man asked me to do it.

[02:14]

And I also wanted to see, get to know Germany better and see something like a university from the inside. Though I don't know if an outsider like me can ever see anything from the inside. And also I thought it was a It might be an interesting chance to present to a non-initiated audience a simple version of the teachings as I can come up with. That latter is probably the main reason. And I didn't think, you know, I could possibly do it.

[03:24]

They wanted me to be there and so forth. But they adjusted it till finally it overlapped only on this one afternoon of the Sesshin. So anyway, I... We'll be back either this evening or tomorrow morning at least before lecture. Now, going back to what we're talking about here, Let me say though, I hope you miss me while I'm gone. I hope you miss me when I'm gone.

[04:28]

But you'll have, you know, the Ino-sama, Christina, and the Tantorets of... The thin monk and Gisela. And you'll have to... Auntie Gisela. And you'll... You have each other. So maybe the reason I want you to miss me is I want you to understand the emptiness of an absence. In other words, an absence is considered in Buddhist analysis as real a thing as a non-absence.

[05:45]

It's complicated. All right. All right. Yeah. Okay, so I don't know how starting out the beginning of Sashin with a kind of feeling about something I might talk about. And then finding myself on the fourth day In deep trouble. How the heck do I talk about what logically comes next? Plus it's absolutely no use to you. Or very little use anyway. But since I'm not trying to make this teaching convenient, I might as well be as inconvenient as the teaching leads me to be.

[07:09]

So we got ourselves into this koan. And we're sinking fast. And the koan says that this means the same as the Sando Kai. And if you want to read this, it's, you know, 91 and the Sheri Lopu and 40 and the... Blue Cliff Records. San means Sekito Kisen, Shido's poem. Sandokai means sun, Shekido means sequence.

[08:32]

I wondered what you do. I'm changing subject here. So, san means three. And it means things and it means many. So it means many things. And do means same or sameness. And it also means one great being or big mind. So san means, do means also then in the sense of sameness and big mind, it has the sense of a practice in it that big mind is realized through sameness.

[09:41]

San heißt auch, dass Praxis realisiert wird durch Gleichheit. Okay. And kai means something like shaking hands. So we could say shaking hands with the great being. Or shaking hands with oneness. Or shaking hands with oneness. So Kai means one and many and one or many and one which includes many and many which includes one. Maybe you don't have to translate that. Yeah. Yeah. This is the Buddhist way of changing vegetables into Buddhist food.

[10:45]

Cooking the words. Okay, so Sandokai means it's almost like through the realization or the experience of saneness you feel with your body this great being. Sandokāi bedeutet, durch die Realisierung von Gleichheit fühlt ihr dieses... You feel the... Feel with your body this great being. Fühlt ihr mit dem Körper dieses große Sein. So this phrase of Sanjau's, dieser Satz von Sanjau, of heaven and earth share the same root. And myriad things and I are one body.

[11:54]

is a kind of prescription. You can get it, maybe go to the Buddhist apotheke and fill for realizing oneness. The Buddhist dharmacy, I mean pharmacy. or what at least Buddhism means, what Zen and Buddhism means by oneness. Yeah. I have a better translation for oneness. Okay. Good. Okay. Yeah, so Sangjiao says the body of subject and object, the entry is non-attachment.

[13:19]

And the emergence is subtlety. And the result is... The outcome is sensitivity. The outcome is sensitivity. You know, when you say it a second time, you say it so quietly, I can't even hear it. Sorry. So what is... Also das Resultat ist ein Feingefühl. Okay. Now what does this mean?

[14:23]

So was bedeutet dies? This is a little hard to explain. Es ist schwierig zu erklären. Non-attachment. Non-attachment means in this context that things are seen as having no basis. And seen as having no basis, then they do not rely on each other. and not relying on each other, they're quite independent. And this independence means that, and non-basis means that myriad things don't hinder you. And when myriad things don't hinder you, you can move between things And realize the one body that we share.

[15:41]

Do you understand? It's a problem, yeah. Okay. Okay. The body of subject and object is what Sanzhao is calling, what I'm calling, in-betweenness. The palpable experience of in-betweenness. The body of subject and object, which Sanzhao describes, he and I also define as in-betweenness. Okay, now let's step back from this a moment.

[16:44]

What's Buddhism trying to do here? What are we trying to do here, whether you realize it or not? We're trying to establish personality and your experience of Reality, your perceptual base. Your perceptual base. On an absolute experience of consciousness. In contrast to what? In contrast to establishing yourself through experiencing your story. In contrast to understanding your story or to developing an integrated emotional base.

[18:08]

You should probably do both. A wise person would do both. But Buddhism emphasizes that both happen best when first you establish as much as possible. An absolute basis in consciousness. Okay. Now, that's not quite true, because before you can establish a basis in consciousness, you have to establish a basis in ethics and morality. No, I don't know the words in German, so I can only analyze the words in English.

[19:18]

Ethics means in English those customs, excuse me, that conduct which develops character. And morality means those customs which develop your mind. So morality The root of the idea means that if you don't practice a pretty strict morality, pretty clear morality, what you've analyzed and worked out, that you will not ever really have a stable mind.

[20:27]

Your mind will always be shaky, sometimes clear, sometimes cloudy. And ethics then too is a similar idea but aiming at the development of your character. The patterns of your behavior in contrast to the state of your mind. Okay. Now, precepts and would be understood then if you add to the idea of precepts as a kind of ethics and morality. Precepts are those practices which free you from the obstacles that hinder the realization of enlightenment.

[21:32]

And what is dharma then? Because dharma is a kind of precept. Dharma is that perceptual moment that is conducive to enlightenment. What's conducive? Leads to. Conduit to lead. And karma then would be those perceptual moments which lead to encumbrance. So you're involved on each moment with a kind of awareness of ethics, morality, precepts and dharma or karma as each mind event unfolds.

[22:55]

They're nice words, karma and dharma. Nice to say. Okay, now let me analyze them. Yeah, let me analyze something kind of dumb. I'm giving you an example of the Buddhist way of doing things. We pass a tray around and we collect the gamachio or the hot drink dishes. So we go around with a tablet and collect the gomasio bowls or the hot drink bowls.

[24:10]

Yes. I feel so stupid telling you this. But it's a pretty good example of a Buddhist way of looking at things. There's only two ways to put your... your cup, the bowl on the tray. One way is based on analysis and the other way is just the relaxed way. And what's the third possibility? a way based on an inconclusive analysis. Okay, so what would be a kind of Buddhist analysis of putting a bowl on a tray?

[25:17]

You have a person carrying the tray. It's easier if the weight is toward his body. It's easier for him to carry the tray if the weight is toward his body. So you put the bowl to the back. And it's also easier for the next person to put his bowl on the tray if all the bowls are to the back. And then you have to take into consideration whether there's handles or spoons. So you don't want the spoons to bump into the stomach of the carrier.

[26:27]

And you don't want the handles to bump into the cup of the next person who puts it on. Okay. So, given this kind of analysis, there's really only one place to put the bowl, which is toward the back, taking into consideration the spoon and the handle. Now, since we're human beings, there's two possibilities. One is that we follow this analysis, or that we are careless, or don't care, or feel relaxed, or we just put it on. Now, We're also humans, so there's a third possibility, which is we don't analyze it at all or very well.

[27:50]

Or we have another system. I'm embarrassed. I don't want to waste his time. I want to do it quickly, so I'll put it in the nearest spot. The problem with this is, is that when you have two systems, they conflict. And everything will get mixed up on the tray. But if you only have two possibilities, relaxed and formal or analyzed, usually it works pretty well. Now, if you're a well-trained dog, I mean Buddhist, no matter what the situation is, once you've analyzed it, you always do it that way, even if you're putting only one tray down, one cup down, you just follow the system.

[29:12]

Or you just relax and put it on. You only have those two choices. No. This is not etiquette. It's not social customs. The difference between Buddhist customs and social customs in Japan His social customs in Japan are often based on arbitrary things or hierarchy between people and so forth. So, like in the orioke, I don't think there's anything arbitrary in the orioke.

[30:32]

Everything is given that we use bowls and chopsticks and spoon. When we talk about the Uriyoki, I would say that there is nothing artificial in the Uriyoki practice. Everything is structured up to every spoon and every movement. Everything is analyzed down to its simplest way of doing it given physical motions and what comes and what precedes. Okay. So why does Buddhism get into this? Partly it's just to be efficient. But it really comes out of the process of analysis.

[31:34]

Now, you don't realize emptiness by turning away from objects. You realize emptiness by turning into objects, toward objects. Putting yourself in the midst of objects. And from the side of the objects, not always from your side. So if you get in the habit of doing this... If you get into the habit of doing this... Then every time a situation is presented to you, you immediately, without even thinking, analyze the arrangements.

[32:50]

It might take two or three times before you see the pattern, but once you see the pattern, you just do it that way, or you do it the relaxed way. And once you get into the habit of that other Buddhists, if you meet somebody, they will have done it the same way. It's a kind of universal Buddhist pattern. Okay, so what again is this pattern of analysis? Well, it's nothing and it's a great deal.

[33:58]

This koan says, it starts out, cease and desist. Cease and desist. Stop, stop it means. Cease means stop and desist means don't do it anymore. Cease and desist and an iron tree blooms. Now these are means the practice of cessations. The practice of finding myriad objects have no basis. When you do, your body, even an iron maiden, will walk or sink. So your habit of seeing this tray and the bowls,

[35:17]

is through analysis you constantly see it as an arrangement. Permanent, nothing's permanent Buddhism. You constantly habitually see things as an arrangement. Okay. And the sense that it's a bowl and a tray is secondary. And it literally called, in the Korans when they talk about secondary consciousness, you fall into the secondary, it means that state of mind which sees bowls and trays.

[36:38]

A deeper state of mind, no not deeper, a more subtle state of mind which even is a kind of finer liquid. Sees the bowl and tray as secondary and sees the arrangement as primary. So this process of seeing, of analyzing leads to a habit of seeing arrangements. And it begins to refine your mind. It's like you're massaging your mind with a different perceptual mode. You're massaging your mind, you're stirring your mind with dharma rather than with karma.

[38:12]

And your mind becomes more refined. And your mind becomes more refined. So you see that these bowls are the bowl and trays. The tray and bowls is nothing but an arrangement. And you see that the bowls themselves are nothing but an arrangement by the potter. And an arrangement by the person who purchased them and so forth. And so you see the presence of the purchaser and the culture and the potter.

[39:21]

They're right there in the arrangement of the handles and the spoons and so forth. Also ihr seht die Schale und ihr seht gleichzeitig den Töpfer, die Kultur und den Käufer, während ihr die Schale vor euch habt. So you're beginning to see the do of Sando Kai, this one great being. Or you're beginning to shake hands with myriad things. Because in the arrangement, again, is the potter and the purchaser and the... So forth. But the bowls are also just an arrangement of molecules and atoms. And the person carrying the tray is an arrangement. His or her hands. What kind of robe.

[40:45]

If they are holding the tray to establish how you put the cup or bowl on it. And so forth. And when you have this habit of seeing The bowls, the tray, the carrier, the purchaser, all are arrangements. For a moment you may see emptiness. Between all these things There's emptiness. You'll see maybe for a moment in this arrangement the field which allows all these things to be arranged.

[41:48]

The absence becomes... a kind of positive thing. The absence which allows all these arrangements. The field, the emptiness. And this is always, as Geoffrey Hopkins says, you practice with the experience of an emptiness, not emptiness. So, rather than a generalization, although you can have a direct experience of emptiness, for the most part, in practice, this is a generalization,

[43:00]

And what we actually practice with is in specific circumstances, like the tray and the bowls, you suddenly feel an emptiness. This is called a cessation. A cessation because objects have ceased to have a basis. So, and in this sense it's a cessation which the objects, when you really realize this, don't come back with a basis. So your mind has...

[44:15]

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