Okay, now I don't know if any of this makes sense to you, reading this text, but please tell me what you think. Anyone have anything to say? Yes. Yes. We like this text very much. Oh, you do? Yes. Good. and some aspects who seem quite clear, but on the other side, something is not clear at all. Yes. We talked about many things I can't repeat because we have been talking half an hour.

[01:05]

Made a big circle, many aspects. And one question. What means, I said in German, im Dunkeln sind hochwertig und minderwertig, nicht zu unterscheiden, im Hellen wird der Gegensatz von rein und unrein deutlich. What means dark and light? Dunkel und hell. To den ganzen Kontext übersetzen einfach. Okay, what does the kind of dark and light? It cannot be distinguished in the dark, but if it goes into the light, you can see the two. Yeah, okay, good. Did anything you say in English need to be translated into German, or is that okay? No, it's okay. Yeah, since that's such a big question, let's leave it for a minute. Anybody else?

[02:07]

That's, of course, central to the whole thing. And did anyone have any ideas what it means, darkness and light? like clearness clearness of the mind and bliss that would be the light side yeah Okay. Yeah? I had an image of the yin-yang sign, that everything's included, like there's something white, and white, something white, in comparison to light and dark.

[03:09]

Yeah, this is, as it says in the text, I believe, that... Is this on paper, or...? Yeah, it's paper. Oh, that's good. Not that slimy stuff. It says, I believe, in the lecture that the Sandokai was originally the name of a Taoist text. So this is related to Taoist ideas. Which were especially strong at the time of Shido. I will call him Shido, not Sekito. Because Shido is his Chinese name, and he was Chinese. Okay. And Sukhirashi, I think, says in there, too, that if a Taoist eats a vegetable, it's a Taoist vegetable, and if a Buddhist eats a vegetable, it's the same vegetable, but it's a Buddhist vegetable.

[04:33]

In general, Buddhists don't like being identified with Taoist teaching. Yeah. But certainly the yin and yang sign, which has two commas rolled together, is commonly also shown with a little dot for the black and the white, and the white has a black dot on it. And that's an expression of, of course, a very similar idea.

[05:40]

So I believe that circle expression actually comes from Buddhism and not from Taoism. Since I haven't done research on it, I can't say it's for sure. But my understanding is that in the 10th century, the Taoists adopted Buddhist circles and turned it into this yin-yang circle. Also natürlich habe ich darüber nicht nachgeforscht, deswegen kann ich das nicht sicher belegen, aber ich glaube, dass sie im zehnten Jahrhundert die Taoisten, die buddhistischen Kreise übernommen haben und vielleicht es dann entwickelt haben. And Dung Shan, who is a descendant of our ancestor, our Buddhist lineage, and a descendant of Shido, I had a teaching called the five ranks. Which are five circles. One's all black, one's all white.

[06:45]

And one has got a dot in it. And one is moving toward, it's like a circle like this, and the black is like, leaves a section of half moon, of a sliver of a moon. Oh, so it's like an eclipse somehow. Yeah. And the other is the reverse. There's just a slit of black or a slit of white. Or which way? Now, the way this is understood in this teaching of the five ranks is that you don't have a dot in the middle of the circle, like in the yin-yang.

[07:59]

It's not just a dot over here. But as I said this morning, it's always a movement. So the dot is seen as expanding into the comma. And the comma is seen contracting into the dot. So it's not just a simple thing. These two are related each other this way. Each one is becoming the other. So that's part of the understanding of in light there's darkness and in darkness there's light. Okay, so someone else has something, yeah. I'm not sure if that has to do with the metaphor of light and dark in two different meanings.

[09:08]

I think one meaning could be wisdom and delusion, and that's probably the first line, and one could be the differentiated and un-differentiated. I think they use it in two different metaphors and different meanings. I'm not quite sure if brightness and light are two different conditions. In the first one, I can imagine that it has to do with wisdom and blinding. And then afterwards, in the second text, in the second section, it is differentiated. I left the poem in the room, but... Yeah, um... In Dunkel sind hochwertig und mittelwertig nicht zu unterscheiden, in Elb wird der Gegensatz von rein und unrein deutlich.

[10:09]

Except the poem in the beginning is enough. I have the slimy stuff here. Yes, you just hand me the book, I know. Thank you. Oh yeah, it's way in the back. The mind of the great sage of India. was handed down closely from east to west. There's another translation in the beginning.

[11:21]

People may discriminate dull from keen, but in the true way, there's no ancestor of north or south. Yeah. Yes? Um... I just wouldn't really like to see like the one is the good and the other one is the bad. Like the one is delusion and the other one is wisdom kind of thing. Because they kind of, they have both of both in each other so I kind of feel funny if you say this one is the good one and that one is the bad one. I think that Gerhard... But he didn't mean it maybe like that. No, I think he's right in what he says. At the same time, we have to be careful in understanding it that way. So what we're doing here is... I think maybe the most important thing we're doing here is just getting familiar with some Buddhist ways of thinking and describing things.

[12:59]

And that will make it easier for you to read something like this in the future. And... But more important is we are getting acquainted with some Buddhist ways of thinking. At least I'll try to make it that way. That are useful in thinking about your own life. Okay, so anyone else have a sense of this darkened yet? We didn't speak directly about the text.

[14:00]

We talked a little bit about what you said yesterday evening. Why are we here? What's the motivation? What attracts us? So something fitted very well to that the big mind was transmitted directly from the East to the West. And how do I study wisdom teachings? The teaching plays the teacher. So that became clear that this has something, that it's transmitted by human beings, and it's not philosophical but practical, practice practical.

[15:04]

Yes, let's use this seminar time, although this is a rather long day, but maybe we can handle it. How was your outside walking? Did you go somewhere? Soggy? Did you have rubber boots? It was all right. Too fast, I say. Did you leave it? Yes. Yeah. It should be really slow, yeah. Contemplative. So you have to do kin-hin, the rest of us walk. Okay, thank you. So let's use this afternoon time, this afternoon time each day, as not only an opportunity to speak about tsandakaya and your studying of it and your meeting together, your discussion,

[16:18]

Let's also use it as a chance that we can talk about what I said in the lecture this morning or whatever occurs to you about why the heck we're doing service or something. Okay. So in any case, you felt some relationship, unless we can mix it all together between what I said last night and the Sandokai. Mm. Okay, so we have to find some way to not approach this so analytically to find a kind of feeling entrance into something. And for example, when you look at something analytically, and again, I have to keep reminding people because people always take it that, oh, can't we sometimes analyze something?

[18:02]

Analytical thinking is just a normal tool of human beings. But if you know the way of mindfulness thinking as well, of thinking with the world through mindfulness, Then you have to read the text differently. Maybe you have to read the text in darkness. More like it was an archaeological dig. than reading it in light. Okay, so what's the difference?

[19:07]

Well, to read it as an archaeological dig, it's like you were out here fussing around in these ponds. And you found a pot in the mud. And it was a Navajo pot that usually only found in the southwest of the United States. He said, oh my God, ancient Celtic culture was like Navajo culture here in northern Germany. Oh, no, back in the year 2000, we had some American teacher from the Southwest, and he threw an old pot in there. He always traveled with old Navajo pots. Anyway, you find some kind of shard. Shard?

[20:08]

Shard is a piece of pottery. So you read the text for shards rather than for meaning. You read it for what happens to stick with you even though you're just kind of going through it. And you don't try to understand as you read. And you read it for what happens to stick with you even though you're just kind of going through it. It's like if you... I used the example the other day at the lecture in Hamburg about a way of approaching dreaming, a Buddhist way of approaching dreaming.

[21:20]

And I used it as a little example, the group picked up on it more than anything else I spoke about. Okay, and the example I gave was, you wake up in the morning with a dream. And, yeah, it was, say, a strong dream, and you can feel it. I mean, you must have woken up when you had a dream, and your whole body feels the dream. So instead of trying to analyze it, If you try to analyze it, you're immediately taking the tools of consciousness to the dream.

[22:24]

And as soon as you apply consciousness to the dream, most of what belongs fully to the dream can't be grasped by consciousness. So consciousness will miss many aspects of a dream. The other day, you know, I had this Borealis, Borrelia, recently. Just recently, a few weeks ago, I had borreliosis. Which is you get from a tick biting you. In the States it's called Lyme's disease. It wasn't from a deer tick in the forest, it was from a rodent tick.

[23:32]

I think mostly in my car, and Rocky's there. The mice and chipmunks get in my car, and it's hard to keep them out. So that's, you know, they use it more than I do. And they had little mouse travel posters on the windshield. You should imagine, you should be surprised where they like to go. Anyway, and they bite you can't see or you feel. So I got quite sick. And then I got very ill. And I had a fever up to 40. And we found it very early and today I have my last antibiotic. If you don't catch it right away, it's real serious. You soon start, after a while, years, you start having brain damage and heart damage and things like that.

[25:11]

And you should see how I would interpret these things with brain damage. For the first year, you might not notice the difference. But, you know, I never take medicine, but, you know, I had to take this, I guess. So the first two or three nights I was really incoherent. And Marie-Louise would ask me, what the heck are you talking about? And I could see my mind all folding out in different directions. And I could not make her understand what I was talking about. Yeah. So anyway, you read for shards.

[26:22]

Things that for some reason you're sensitive enough to pick up. So instead of looking at the whole text, you just let that turn in you. And particularly if you feel some shard with your body. And it's like the dream, if you wake up with a dream in the morning at any point in the morning, say. Instead of trying to apply consciousness to it, You try to hold the feeling, the physical feeling of the dream particularly.

[27:31]

Or maybe one vivid detail. And you consciously choose not to analytically think about it. And you just hold it within you or before you. Now that's what the practice of mindfulness thinking is. Okay, now why do I call it thinking? It's not really thinking. Yet we think in order to produce a result. To understand something. But surprisingly, if you hold something in mindfulness, it also produces a result.

[28:34]

Instead of your thinking doing the movement, Dogen speaks about thinking, non-thinking. Thinking, non-thinking, one way to understand it, is to hold a subject or a topic in the mode of thinking, but you non-think about it. Then you, in a sense, use the world as a washboard. Because the world, everything's changing around you all the time.

[29:37]

As I said, you know, if I hold up this finger, what do you see? If I hold up this finger, what do you see? You see a different background every time. Another field. So consciousness looks at the finger. Conscious singles out things. And then immediately attempts to identify it, name it. That's a four finger. No, it's a one finger. It's not a forefinger. Okay. You don't call it a forefinger, right? Anyway, and even if I hold my finger up in the same place repeatedly, the background's still different.

[30:44]

But not only is the background different, me holding the finger is different, you looking is different. So this is always contextual thinking. And as I said the other night, The other night, though, I think it was a little too much for this little one-hour lecture. You look at this for contextual coherence, but not cross-contextual coherence. To look at it with contextual coherence means to feel that right now in this situation there's some coherence.

[31:51]

And that coherence is discoverable. Why is there coherence? Because basically we're generating what we see. Does that make sense? In other words, yeah. No, coherence is in harmony. In harmony. So what is coherence? Parts fit together in some way. You mean what you see or you mean what you hear and what your sense is? Everything together. Okay, I'm sitting here in this moment. Okay, and there's, I don't know, 15 of us or something, 17 or 18 of us. And there's a perceiving agent.

[33:01]

Each of you is a separate perceiving agent. Okay. There's a lot of objects in this room. As well as people. And the objects are more or less in the same place when I go outside and come back in in a few minutes. The world has moved a little bit, but gravity glues everything in place, more or less. But still, exactly what I see, whether I see the Buddha or the yellow-white paint, is some selective process of my own perceiving.

[34:11]

So it's each moment there's some coherence in why I noticed the yellow trim in the white where I didn't before. And maybe I feel you strongly right now. And you four here strongly somehow. While a minute ago I felt you guys strongly. So at each moment there's a slightly different configuration. Now, this practice is to assume that the particular configuration of this moment has a coherence.

[35:18]

You have to go... As a reason is too narrow, make sense is too narrow. But in my words, I can only describe it as if it made sense or had a reason or something. But I can't approach it as if it has a reason, then I narrow it. And I don't think about the conclusions I'm coming to. I let my body decide.

[36:30]

I don't know what, something decides. So I may feel that these four people and you have a similar understanding of the story, of the Sandokai. I'm not saying I feel that, I'm just making this up. But I'm probably making it up for a reason. And I may feel you guys... have a slightly different understanding, which should be somehow brought together with the others. And that may affect how my chest feels when I'm speaking, maybe looking at you, but my chest feels over there. Now, this kind of thing I'm describing is the more you practice a yogic teaching, you start feeling your mind and your body this way.

[37:36]

Like I feel something this way, I look this way, and so forth. So going back again a little bit, so a dream, you pick up a shard from a dream, might be a vivid detail might be a physical feeling might be both and other things and without thinking about it you hold it in the mode of thinking and as you go through the day You let the day rub against it.

[38:48]

You let your breakfast rub against it. And while you're going to work, whatever happens there, you hold it in the changing world. Now I call that thinking with the world. to be in the mode of thinking without thinking, but let the world think with you. It's sort of like, as I said, using the world as a washboard. You know the old washboards? So the whole world is a washboard rubbing against you. You're either getting purified or bruised.

[39:54]

What? Destroyed. Completely destroyed, yeah. Yeah, the big washboard in the sky. Okay, so what I just described is could be called by Shido branching streams flow in darkness. Do you understand why I say that? Oh, branching streams like a branch, like a tree, or like water. No, like water branches. Yeah. Um... Because I'm not thinking.

[41:06]

Thinking in this case means a kind of light. I'm not using my senses in the service of the light of consciousness. I'm reversing my senses and using them in the darkness. So when I say something like, I feel the way you and you are thinking, that's something in the darkness. It's not something we can point out even in language barely. And if I say I'm looking this way and my chest is going that way, that's branching streams. In English, we have two words for rivers, a river, and then it goes into tributaries.

[42:16]

Tributaries are the ones coming? Yeah. And when it divides out, it's called distributaries. Yeah. So the things are distributing and flowing back and forth. So this image of Shidos is meant to give you a feeling of how to function outside of ordinary consciousness. Okay, now quite a while ago you had that question. It's about the coherence again. Does it mean that each moment in itself is coherent, and that I open myself towards it?

[43:33]

Yes, that's right. Because there's a perceiving, knowing, interacting subject, Whatever's happening somehow is arising within and from the subject. We can call that coherence. Potential coherence. But we can also call it potential chaos. Or potential destructive non-coherence. But that's the same as calling it... Was that good?

[44:38]

Okay, because that also is a kind of coherence because it relates to us. Sorry, I didn't get it. That's also a kind of coherence because it relates to us. In other words, if what I'm perceiving here is somehow destructive to myself, I also want to move into what that is. Because it has something to do with me. Yeah, it's me. Or I may also want to learn how to avoid that and move toward more constructive coherence. And here I'm just meaning that things fit together. They might be negatively fit together or positively fit together.

[45:39]

It's a kind of inner awareness which you are sometimes aware and sometimes not aware of. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you have the illusion that your thinking is steuern. Guided. Guided. That's an illusion. Controlled. That your thinking is kind of This is a craft. So you have to feel out what makes sense. We might have the feeling our thinking is guided as a kind of schizophrenia.

[46:58]

We might have a feeling because we have some belief in God or something that our thinking is guided. But we also might have a feeling our thinking is guided. But because we're very deeply engaged in something and the thinking is on the surface and thinking just reflects something deeper that's happening. And that you have to sort out for yourself. But in general, I think the way I would describe it as feeling is your thinking reflects something deeper, but it doesn't feel your thinking is guided.

[48:12]

So this practice of non-thinking, which does not mean not thinking, the practice of non-thinking, is to, in a sense, withhold thinking. So I'm in a situation like this. And really, out of respect for you, I don't think about you. It's especially easy for me because I don't know German.

[49:17]

So to really think about you, I'd have to think about you in German. And the English language doesn't apply to you. And I'm joking, but sort of serious. So I withhold thinking. And I just feel being present here. And I restrain myself from singling out. As soon as I single out, say, I single out you. It's very nice to single you out. But at the same time, I actually feel my consciousness somewhat diminished. But at the same time, I feel my consciousness somewhat diminished. I feel less connected with everyone else.

[50:32]

In the same way, I could single out Senkin. Or I could choose not to. But I can, while I'm talking, I can feel him completely, not completely, but quite a lot. So if you want to practice non-thinking, you practice being in situations where you withhold thinking. that you don't withhold your presence. And you try to refrain from singling out. And in Zen, this is technically called something like no-notion mind. Okay.

[51:34]

So Gerhard, do you want to say something earlier? The idea of what? Coherence, yeah. I thought you said Koreans. The Koreans have a translationist undertone. I'm not up on it. This applies also to the jnana practice, so that I can create a coherence by maybe a breath mind or by a phrase, and I put everything into this coherence. Would this be a technical application? Yeah, I would say that you should try that. Deutsch. Yeah, Deutsch, bitte. Is dinner, by the way, at seven, quarter to seven or seven?

[52:45]

Seven, okay. We can go a few more minutes if it's all right. And if some of you are feeling confused in this conversation, this is actually simpler than thinking. It's as simple as the mind you have when you're sunbathing. Es ist nämlich so einfach wie dem Geist, den ihr habt, während ihr Sonnenbadet. And blissed out, worshipping the great sun god, Othami.

[53:46]

So what Zen practice tries to do, is try to make a very complex way of looking at the world fairly simple in the way you practice it. And to read a text like this, And a text like this is written to be read analytically.

[54:49]

And it's meant to be read analytically in a way that has analytical gaps in it. So it makes a certain amount of sense. It's much like Indian baskets are supposed to, American Indian baskets are supposed to have one little place where the design doesn't quite work because you let the mystery in there. So the text makes a certain amount of sense, but then it doesn't quite make sense. But if you assume Shido wasn't a complete nut, and he's trying to say something to us, then you have to approach the text in another way.

[56:02]

So a text like this is also meant to be read In mindfulness. And despite all our intellectual talk this afternoon, reading it in mindfulness is actually quite easy. It might be boring, but it's easy. You just read along without trying to understand. Mindfulness, the great sage of India, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I am not a scholar. I don't need to know all this stuff. But something sticks out.

[57:02]

Is intimately communicated. Or Sukersi's first section is called Things As It Is. How is it translated in German as things as it is? And it sounds wrong? Yeah. Things as it is is completely wrong in English too. And people tried to correct Suki Roshi's English. If they know things as they are, that's wrong, things as it is. Okay, so maybe things as it is sticks in your craw.

[58:03]

You don't know that? That's a bird who holds something to chew later or something like that. So maybe intimately communicated sticks with you. This is the shard you get from the text. And that doesn't require scholarship or anything. And you don't have to read anymore. Just stay with intimately communicated. And see what that pulls up for you. So I'll say simply, and I'll try to speak about it more later, that your conscious mind draws out of memory your karma.

[59:32]

Your mindfulness thinking activates the whole of your memory far beyond your karma. The totality of your experience in the world is drawn up through the practice of mindfulness. To go back to the image this morning, we don't fill our tank to sit there and smell the gasoline evaporating. And some teenagers might get off on it. But we fill our tanks so the car will go somewhere. But when you fill your tank with mindfulness, it's as if your car tank was simultaneously drawing energy from the road and from the air and from the tires and from the fragrance of the flowers.

[61:22]

It was a special fuel that turned everything it touched into a kind of fuel. So this story is attempting also to teach us a kind of thinking in these branching streams. A way of thinking in darkness. So have we gotten somewhere this afternoon? Did you get some feeling of what this text is trying to do?

[62:25]

To me it's wonderful. Okay. Did someone else add something over here? I just wanted to make a suggestion. Sure. Go ahead. All kind of connected, no, totally perception. Say it again. All-connected total perception. Must be good. Okay, I would like to say something. We have to end right in a minute or two. I'd like to say something in regard to what Gerhard said. And at least what it made me think of. These are glasses. I always liked the story when Sukhiroshi, once he was giving a lecture, he said, these are your glasses.

[63:46]

We were all, you know, in our 20s and in the 60s and, you know, what the heck is he talking about? These are your glasses, he said. And he said, but you know about my tired old eyes. So you let me use your glasses. So it was great. After you said that, I always thought, oh, I'm such a nice guy, I'm letting him use my glasses. Oh, another time, once he was stepping up into his cabin after his jisha, Anja, had taken him to the bath. So another story is... And he was kind of wrapped in a bathrobe towel. And as he stepped up his steps backwards, because you take your shoes off and you step up backwards. This young woman for no reason at all, she just reached out and took his big toe and tweaked it.

[65:19]

And he said, oh, that's the activity of a Buddha. And she said, what do you mean? He said to give someone exactly what they need. Angelica will be right there. Yeah, we'll be there in just one minute. Oh, okay, seven o'clock, okay. No, two minutes. What? Two minutes before. Two minutes before, okay. So, Salim, we'll finish this. He also, so this is also a... A percept object. Instead of calling it an object, call it a percept object.

[66:37]

To remind yourself that you're perceiving. And in a certain way it's true. You know, I mean, one of the reasons our century, our society is so productive... Because I think in the 14th century in Italy, eyeglasses were invented. Which immediately extended the life of the workforce, particularly for office work. Because around 40, most people can't do office work anymore unless they have glasses. So after that, you get these guys sitting, you know, working for hours. So in a sense, glasses are the work of our society. They do belong to everyone. So Sukhiroshi also emphasized thinking of this as a six-fold object.

[67:50]

In Buddhism we have six senses, not five. So I can feel it. Sort of smell it. Or I can not smell it, which is the same as smelling it. It's the category of not smelling. I'm a taster. So it has six aspects, and it's something I know mentally. Es hat nämlich sechs Aspekte, weil zu den fünf Sinnen kann man das auch geistig verstehen. Okay, so tomorrow morning or this evening when you do zazen? Also morgen früh oder heute Abend, wenn ihr zazen sitzt.

[68:51]

When you settle yourself. Wenn ihr euch niederlasst. Settle yourself is a six-fold object. Dann lasst euch als ein sechsfaches Objekt nieder. Bring your attention to your physical sitting, to your feeling of sitting. Bring your attention to the eye consciousness, whether interior or exterior. Bring your attention to yourself as a mental object. Bring your attention to your ears as a hearing object. And settle yourself in the six ways you can know. That's part of merging with the location and the place.

[69:59]

And then imagine a seventh fold. Because you're not contained in just six. So let the seventh dissolve the other six and open up. So that's a practice I suggest in relationship to what you said, Gerhard. Okay. Thank you very much. Tomato soup! Now I have nothing to write on it. LAUGHTER You have the option.

[71:03]

Yeah, I like options. Sorry, what did I say? Nice fall day, nice autumn day. Now you've had a chance to read this poem more, and at least some of Suzuki Roshi's lecture, isn't that correct?

[72:21]

And we've had various brain damage discussions from me. Und dann hatten wir noch zusätzlich einige gehirngestörte Vorträge von mir. So, is there something you'd like to repair? Gibt es irgendein Bedürfnis nach Reparatur? To bring up. So, please. Also, Informationen, er hat Frank hat nicht kopiert. Also, die weiteren Informationen gibt es dann nicht. So they couldn't read further lectures because Frank didn't copy. Did you give it to Frank to copy? Yes, but he didn't. He didn't get to it? No. Okay, so if we need more, we can do it in Mirren tomorrow. We can do it tomorrow. Okay.

[73:23]

But aside from that, is there anything you'd like to say? Is there anything you'd like to say? question to the talk this morning. You said that everything interpenetrates everything else. Does this mean that everything affects everything else, or is it a process without influencing other things? Oh. I never had to operate these modern pencils.

[74:50]

They're supposed to keep squirting out, but I can't. Well, we're not talking about science here. We're talking about a sense of practice to carry knowledge the particular beyond a sense of just simple interdependence. We're not speaking about science here. Of course, ecologically everything affects everything else. We've got our ice caps melting and things like that. But this is from the point of view of practice,

[75:52]

It's like assuming a drop of ocean includes the ocean. It's to feel that each particularity is almost like there's a totality here and you draw it down into each particularity. Or an all-at-onceness that appears in each particularity. When we act with this kind of confidence. I think that's the most I can say right now. Yeah, but I want to... Yeah, let's leave it at that for now. Someone else? We spoke about this part about the darkness in our group.

[77:35]

My impression is that it seems now less clear what it is, what darkness actually means. We interpret it in the direction that this is that which we don't have access to. So at least not a rational access to. Yeah, that's good. I think that's right. Which part do you mean? Do we have it in two different places? That's why we're branching streams. Okay, that's this place where it's branching streams in the darkness. The two darknesses, we ask ourselves if there could be a difference between the branching streams that dwell in the dark and in the light there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness.

[78:51]

It seems for us to be a contradiction if we take the branching streams as the end of the darkness or flow of the dark, as a kind of mindfulness practice in holding a present. And in light there is darkness, but don't take it as darkness so we couldn't understand it because it sounds a little bit contradictory for our interpretation. Mhm. These streams were thought to be in mindfulness If there is the dark in the light, why shouldn't you keep the mindfulness practice upright in the light?

[80:07]

Well, don't take it as darkness. We can take it simply to mean don't conceptualize it as darkness. This kind of, you know, sometimes when I'm walking along, particularly in some natural situation, I can, I suddenly find a, usually it's a particular pace. And it might be just slightly faster or slightly slower. I can feel myself drawn into the, what I would call the field of the place.

[81:16]

And instead of my walking in a place, the place, I don't know what to say, I'm sorry to sound so, you know, strange, but the place begins to walk me. I feel I'm walking in a place that keeps stopping for me. Yeah, a little bit with the feeling, the path as it meets your eyes, from the Sandokai.

[82:46]

Yeah, so once I have a sense of the field of a place, I can usually change my pace and still be carried by the field. And in a way, I think, to understand a poem like this, we have to come into the field of the Sandokai. And into the field of Shido. And if this happens, you actually begin to feel you know Shido.

[84:09]

Know his mind and what he's about. Now, I don't want to keep making something like this seem too obscure. But so we're sitting here. And we have to talk about it. But I'm also looking for some way we can come into the field of the thing. Okay, so that's as much as I'll say right now. I haven't answered your question, I know. Perhaps I thought this is a practice instruction. For instance, a sentence.

[85:19]

Senses and their objects are closely connected, but at the same time they're independent from each other. Then I ask myself, how do I do this? I can think about that real fast. Then I thought about what does sense actually mean. Then I looked at a tree. Then I looked at a tree and said, these are the senses, this is the sense, and that's me. And then working about that a little bit. Then to find the connectedness. And then this kind of surpassed the words.

[86:21]

In experience it did. I could feel the whole field of myself, of the tree and of the surrounding. And the same I tried with the headline. The harmony of difference and unity. What is harmony, I asked myself. Closed my eyes and tried to feel it. And then I thought, oh, like this I can actually really work with it. And I kind of get out of this intellectual understanding of this thing. I put lead in here and it just keeps disappearing. I'm paying attention to what you say. That's the best approach. To take it as a prescription. Like a, as I say, a pharmaceutical prescription.

[87:31]

Yeah. So if we look at the poem, we can see the title, if you have your copy. Don't you all have, we're given one? Yes, I have one copy. I'll open it. Bad girl. Bad girl. Yeah, why don't you go get it? I don't have a German one here also. Where's yours? Bad girl. Oh, bad girl. It's so far away from my room. But we made 15 or 16, so there's... You want the English one? I don't know if I should have to use the right words for it. Yeah, see, but the German one. That's the thing, if I find the right one. We have two translations, and they are not a secret.

[88:33]

I know. But try to ignore the differences. Ignore the German one? Ignore the differences in the translation. Oh. Oh. Oh. This is the one, I think, the soto-official one, and the other one is the... Yeah, no, it's not soto-official. It's American soto-official, which... Yeah, the English official one. So I'm looking at Tom Cleary's translation. Okay. Now, we could take the title itself... Wir können jetzt einfach mal die Überschrift an sich nehmen. As a challenge. Als Herausforderung. Merging of difference and unity. Das Verschmelzen von Unterschied und Einheit.

[89:34]

And we can assume, we can take that as saying this itself is a gate of realization. Und wir können sagen, das schon selber ist ein Tor für die Verwirklichung. So it's not just a title, even though it is a title of a previous also text. As I've said many times, that in China, the titles usually were considered the main instruction of the whole text. There's your German and English there if you want. I'll use your words and they can look up the German words. But I'll try it off. So he says there's already a big difference that the German title is Harmony of Difference and... And that's wrong.

[91:04]

And yours, the English one, is the Merging. Harmony is wrong. Oh, this is the English version starts with Harmony, so it comes from this one, the Harmony thing. Yeah, this is the translation of the Soto Shu Liturgy Conference at Green Gulch Farm, and I'm afraid they didn't know what they were doing. I know, no, just that's what... Okay. No, but nobody who really, nobody edited this who actually understands the Sandokai, if I dare say so myself, I'm sorry. So they're nice folks, but they had a bunch of people sitting around all saying, well, this word's good and that word's good and that sounds better. Yeah, and most of the... Turn it off.

[92:21]

It'll be an investigation. I mean, you know, it's okay to read it, but to practice it. You can't really practice harmony. Then it's just a title. You can practice merging them. Okay, so if you're reading this as a practice text, you stay with the title, first of all. Yeah, just merging of difference and unity. And in a sense, if you take a text like this... The historical difference does make a difference.

[93:46]

Texts were extremely prized. If you were lucky enough to have a copy of some book, it was magical. If you owned eight books, you were, you know... I was extraordinary to own eight books. They were expensive, difficult to do, etc. And there's many Zen stories about people who carried their library on their back. And he would stop and every place study it. One book could be gone through many, many, many times. So if we really want to practice with this text and not look at it intellectually, If we really want to practice with this text and not just want to look at it intellectually...

[95:12]

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