Some of the background of bodhisattva practice is you had large, commonly defined, large populations with a common definition. I don't know. I've never actually checked this out, but I'm pretty sure early Buddhism was more in lots of sort of tribal, almost tribal groups. But when Buddhism came to China, it was... Especially China, it was one for many centuries defined almost national population. A common definition. At least it had a common language since sometime before time of Christ. I think this change, and it was changing more than just China, they began to relate to large populations, not just the individual practicing for his or her own benefit.

[01:36]

And you had a much more, I think, lay psychological kind of situation. And I think what strengthened this Paramita practice was the recognition that it was psychologically very powerful. What did it do? If you can practice this Bodhisattva practice, more and more through an evenness of mind being equally open to each person generous open patient ready

[02:43]

it freed you from the patterns of your own personality. It freed you from being controlled by your personality. And as each person has a dimension of enlightenment, Again, this deep recognition that enlightenment must be something that's everywhere present, if it has any existence at all. So this is, you know, you're actually approaching people with the qualities of a Buddha. It was understood in this way, friendly, patient, generous, etc.

[04:08]

Through your evenness of mind now you can express this. And let everyone into your heart. And there begins to be a mutuality of enlightenment. You kind of draw enlightenment into the situation. You're approaching people from the point of view literally of Buddha nature. And they're likely to feel something deeper than just their personality come alive with you. And you begin to be in the neighborhood of

[05:13]

the realm of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. So this is Bodhisattva practice. So we could say there's three parallel practices we're doing. Buddha mind practice, which is most exemplified by working with a phrase. So Buddha mind practice, dharmic moment practice. like with the Genjo Koan, to complete just that which appears, to allow each thing to arise, hold, dissolve and disappear. That's the dharmic moment practice.

[06:30]

Which at least stops the reification of karma. reification, to reify. And may also, can also transform and dissolve karma. And the third is what I call not dharmic moment but sentient moment. of the bodhisattva practice of the six paramitas, which frees you from the control of personality and the patterns of personality and creates the conditions for enlightenment. and draws forth the mutuality of enlightenment in this world.

[07:42]

These are big words, maybe. But try it. If Buddhism is true, if you're practicing something that's true, this is true. And if you practice something that is true, if you practice Buddhism that is true, then it is really so. Thank you very much. So that we should look at our own way and say, hey, you know, what do you want to say? Say, hey, you know, what do you want to say? I would like to thank all of you for being here today.

[08:51]

I would like to thank all of you for being here today. I would like to thank all of you for being here today. Thank you.

[10:12]

It's only been a thousand years since I've been here, and it's only been a few days. I'll be back in a few days, and I'll be able to go with you. I hope you'll be happy to be here. Being interested in history and aware that these stories, these teachings we're speaking about are from a very different time, historical time.

[12:08]

I sometimes try to imagine what it must have been like. By the time you're 30 to 40, probably maybe even most of the people you knew as a young boy or girl are dead. And after 40 years, 45, the only ones left are the genetically healthy. The genetically healthy probably live to 80, 70, 80, 90 even. So already a few are as old as some of us are. A lot of the people we grew up with are gone. Nowadays, when you talk to somebody 60 or 70, they say, not 60, 70 or 80, they say, so many friends are dead.

[13:24]

And nowadays, when you talk to people who are 70 or 80 years old, they say, so many friends have died. That happened much earlier, in those days in China. And it was dark at night. There were no street lights, no lit streets. And mostly you went somewhere you walked. I think quite more different than we can imagine. And if you were a male, You probably had to be prepared to, or you had to be aware you might have to, kill other men in hand-to-hand combat.

[14:42]

I think there's a James Joyce poem where he dreams about armies clashing at night. But in recent, we don't have to, although this century more, this last century, more wars and more killing than ever in all of history. That's different than having to have hand-to-hand combat with another person. Even if you were a shopkeeper's son or a farmer's son, if an army came through, they might just take you and make you join it. Even if you were a shop owner or son of a shop owner or a farmer, something could happen that an army marches through and simply pulls you in.

[16:04]

And if you were very smart, you hid in the basement with all the girls. And feeling macho, you went out and let them grab you. And both men and women, lots of deaths and childbirth and so forth. You're just faced with life and death in a very, very different way. In the relationships you imagined, other people were quite different than we imagined. Maybe people who study martial arts have a little of this feeling of having to have bodily fighting with another person.

[17:04]

But that's different than having to be prepared to kill someone. So in these monasteries, there was a tough atmosphere. At the same time, I'm trying to say there was a very different pace of life. I would say all in all a more, what we would call, spiritual pace of life. It was probably also enhanced by being confronted with a certain toughness of life. And I'm struck by simple things like when you live in a monastery in Japan,

[18:07]

When you enter, you still dress up like a 13th century monk. And then you have your photograph taken and after a few days you don't dress up like that again. But then you live as maybe a 17th century monk. It's still pretty ancient. When you have to go to the toilet. You have to take off your okesu. Then you have to take off the one or more ropes that are around your koromo. And you have to fold up your kesa a certain way and hang it. Then you have to fold up your koromo a certain way.

[19:35]

And still, it's not so easy to go to the toilet, whether you're male or female, in a kimono. Yeah, so, you know, you go through all that. And, of course, there's no toilet paper. And of course, as you know, there is no toilet paper. And then there is a method of washing your hands. And then you come out and you put on your robes again. It's a half a day production to go to the toilet. Well, that's an exaggeration, but it takes a while. I did it. You don't wait till the last minute. So it really is a different pace. Das ist wirklich ein anderer Rhythmus.

[20:40]

Und man wird sich also sagen, wahrscheinlich muss ich heute Nachmittag auf die Toilette gehen. Und da werde ich mir jetzt mal 20 Minuten reservieren, um das zu tun. And you have to plan. And it takes patience. It would be hard for us to live that way. These robes we wear, a lot of them have to do with how you launder them. They're meant to last all... Launder is to wash? To wash, yeah. They're meant to last your lifetime, pretty much. Sie sollten eigentlich das ganze Leben von einem durchhalten. This is 30 years old about, beginning to fray a bit. Und diese hier ist 30 Jahre alt und die beginnt jetzt schon ein bisschen auszufranzen.

[21:46]

Das Leinen. Das Leinen. It's the ordinary black robe for beginning monks. But you can't really wash it. You can't wash it. So you wear it in a way that doesn't get dirty. But when you wash your kimono, for instance, traditionally, Wenn man aber jetzt zum Beispiel sein Kimono wäscht, traditionellerweise, hat man alle Teile auseinandergenommen, dann hat man alle Teile einzeln gewaschen und später sie wieder zusammengenäht. Das macht auch das Wäschewaschen einen ziemlich großen Akt. I think I'll wash my kimono this year. I think I'll wash my kimono this year.

[22:48]

I think it's hard for us to imagine the patience to do your laundry this way, to go to the toilet this way, to get to another building over there in Bab Sekhengim. And the ones who, at least I don't know what people did in America, I mean in Europe, but it was very common for people to walk, say, the distance of, you know, here to Berlin. Distances like that in a week or ten days or something like that. We had a lot of time to say a phrase like this very mindless Buddha. Now we can't recreate that kind of pace.

[23:56]

Most of the world wants the kind of fast pace we have now. It's another historical period. We live in this one. But we can still find another pace. One reason I keep us doing the orioke And I think most of us wouldn't eat with an orioke if you weren't in Sashin or in a monastery.

[25:01]

I think I'll have a quick lunch. Man sagt sich eher, ich hätte jetzt ein kurzes Mittagessen ein, dann muss ich wieder zur Arbeit zurück. So you cook up three bowls, you set off your real tea, you wipe your set suit. You wouldn't do that. Und dann würde man sich dann drei Schüsseln kochen und dann die drei Schüsseln austeilen und den set so abwaschen und das alles, das würde man, glaube ich, nicht machen. But there's a funny story about that. Aber darüber gibt es eine witzige Geschichte. You might be in David Chadwick's book. It's maybe in David Chadwick's book. At Tassajara, there was one point where two or three times it happened where the road was washed out and the stream was so, the river was so full, you couldn't get out to get food. So that happened three times or so, that the street was swept away and that the river was so high that we couldn't get out and then also couldn't go shopping, go shopping for food.

[26:07]

And so there was a little bit of food stealing going on in the kitchen. Because they were trying to figure out each day how much food they could use. I think they were cut off for six weeks or something. Too bad. If Ottmar wasn't there, he could have taught people how to browse, graze plants. So they locked the kitchen at night. I wasn't there. It was, I don't know where, Japan or San Francisco or something. They locked the kitchen in the night and I wasn't there at the time.

[27:12]

I was in San Francisco or in Japan, I don't remember. And somebody, I can't remember who it was now, who was supposed to make sure nobody took food, noticed about one o'clock in the morning or something, a light on, paint, kerosene light on. So the door was locked. But he found a window open. In the center. The window into the kitchen. Oh, so he was sitting in the kitchen, the light. He could see a light in the Zendo. Okay, sorry. They were connected. They were near each other. So he climbed in the window. He peered in the Zendo. And there were three or four people, maybe two, I don't remember now, sitting with their Oyuki spread out and they made themselves a meal. Okay. And at first he went in there quite angry.

[28:27]

But then he looked, he was so amused that he got a pitcher and came in with water to clean. So sometimes if they do decide when they don't need to, they have an orioke meal. But my sense of it is to, you know, the orioke brings us into the pace of the physical world. Some of the other things, the way we do the horn and the bell and so forth, do as well. Just chanting the same things, virtually the same things, every morning is a little strange. Well, what was service like this morning?

[29:44]

We chanted the Heart Sutra. What was it like yesterday? Oh, we chanted the Heart Sutra. I've been doing this 40 years. What was it like? Oh, I chanted the Heart Sutra. Yeah. I can't invite people to the exciting life at Yohan Asafa. The ones who want to live the exciting life here bow nine times and recite the Heart Sutra. But at some point you get into a kind of different rhythm. And it's okay that the morning service is virtually the same every day.

[30:49]

And it takes forever to get anything done around here. The work period ends just as you're getting started. I'm sorry. Yeah. But it's some kind of different pace we're coming into. No, I don't even say it's good. Again, I want to somehow, when you come here, there's a different pace. And in the orioke meal, you can almost feel a secret pace that moves through the meal. And in this orioke you can almost see a secret rhythm that moves you through the meal.

[31:56]

Little silences appear and we all finish pretty much at the same time. And although the meals are the same and the chanting is the same, it's also quite different every day. But still it's quite different every day. Feng Shui went in to see Nan Yue.

[32:59]

And he didn't bow. And Nan Yue said, don't forget the host. Well, you don't need to tell you the rest of the story. But don't forget the host and guest. Guest means the relative. Ordinary circumstances. And host means the Buddha or the one who is not busy. Sorry, the guest is the relative. Oh, the relative, not the relative. Not the cousin. Okay. Ha, ha, ha. The guest is the relative of Beate. And the host is the absolute best friend of Carolina. And the host means the absolute.

[34:08]

Or the one who's not busy. So it's the sense that when you come into the room, like for Dokusan or the teacher, you're bowing in a sense to the teacher. then the teacher is bowing to you. But really you're both bowing to the, in Zen terminology we call the host. The host is the one who's at home or always at home. So the Buddha is always here. So I think you can understand this also as another kind of pace where we're recognizing the absolute as well as the relative.

[35:10]

So I'm talking to you about something. And it enters, because I'm using language, it enters your language mind. But I'd like to We have to speak in a way that penetrates somewhere else than just the language mind. Find out how to speak about working with this phrase, like this very mind is Buddha. Last night I gave you this other story. Matsu was also asked what is Buddha, and he said, no mind, no Buddha.

[36:29]

And someone also asked Matsu why... When people ask about what is Buddha, you say, mind is Buddha. Why do you say that? He says to stop the crying of babies. And then he said, the monk says, what do you say when the... to stop the crime. What do you say when... What do you say when there's no crying or something like that?

[37:58]

And then he said, no mind, no Buddha. Yeah, now, Shibayama Roshi, who's, you know, usually I use his version of the Mumonkan. Shibayama Roshi. I usually use his version, translation. Yeah, but like he interprets this as the first is to wipe away your attachments, to say, no, this very mind is Buddhist, to wipe away your attachments. And the second is to wipe away your attachment to the phrase, this mind is Buddha. I think really this kind of interpretation is nonsense.

[38:59]

And I really think that this kind of interpretation is nonsense. And for those who are interested in it, the first access is more Yogacara and the second Majjamika. Majjamika. is one who practices it. Even though he says we shouldn't be intellectual and so forth. This is still a completely intellectual way of looking at it. and too obvious. One is to wipe away your attachments, the other is to wipe away your attachment to the phrase.

[40:20]

Good idea, but it applies to everything. What really These koans are about what happens when you say the phrase. And no one can predict what happens when you say this mind is Buddha or this mind is not Buddha. And you need to do this some kind... Well, first let's say, first step is to what we call merging with principle. Again, what Matsu meant, you have to believe that mind is Buddha. So you have to take this as one of the principles of Buddhism.

[41:20]

One of the essentials of Zen practice. You have to really make it something you believe in or try on as a belief. And really see the context. And Buddha is not in the past. Buddha is a possibility for us. Is it this afflicted personality of ours? Afflicted? Disturbed? Disturbed. Is it our physical body? What do we say it is? What target do we have? Okay, so the target chosen is mind. That you can look for. So don't take it as a fact, take it as these guys are trying to do something to help you and help themselves.

[42:53]

So it's not a fact exactly, they're just saying, try on, this mind is Buddha. And make it the way you look at the world. Yeah, I put my robe on my head. That's the custom when you put it on. So I'm supposed to, when I do that traditionally, face the Buddha. or if there is a Buddha statue in my room, I face the Buddha statue. And if I look at a tree, I can say, ah, this tree is Buddha. Well, the mind seeing the tree is Buddha. Did Buddha see the tree any differently?

[44:11]

He might have had a different pace. And you've seen trees, sometimes trees, particularly when you're a child, the powerful presences. So, you know, okay, so the tree. Okay, the tree is Buddha. This tree is Buddha. The mind observing the tree is Buddha. I don't know if it's true. Okay, so the first side of it is your As I say, merging with principle. Seeing it as one of the basics of our practice. The second you get this kind of funny pace before you put the robe on, you put it on your head.

[45:14]

This is like bowing to the host. Then you say, quickly or slowly, the robe chant. Or you feel the robe chant. So you have this pause that this mind is, whatever I'm looking at is Buddha. So first I have the merging with principle. Is it true or not? And then I have that discovery, is it true or not? So the first half of this is to make it part of your view. To see the sensible from the point of view of practice.

[46:26]

To see the sensibleness, the reasonableness. From the point of view of practice. Of calling mind Buddha. Okay. Then the second part is discovering whether this is true or not. Discovering whether this is useful or not. Discovering whether it's true or not might be the most important thing you do in life. Certainly not much, you would think. Mm-hmm. So maybe my skull is Buddha. Okay, so it's sitting on top of, I guess some of my mind is in there.

[47:30]

And when I do ceremonies, I dump water up there and splash it around. And why do you do that? Because when you practice quite a bit anyway, this whole area starts to itch and get sore and stuff. In certain states of mind, you can identify states of mind which produce this itchy, funny feeling of it. And this is expressed in statues with a bump on the head here. The Buddha mind is pushing out. So I put the robe there. Maybe this is where the mind is built. So you have to have some kind of observant mindfulness.

[48:58]

And this inclusive mindfulness too. Like I spoke that mindfulness recently is a way of thinking. You hold a teaching or phrase in the present and let the world think through the phrase. The changing world thinks through the phrase. And what I'd call inclusive mindfulness is to be aware of the dissonance. No, listen, my skull isn't the Buddha. My mind and my head isn't the Buddha. Maybe the tree's the Buddha. Yeah, but you have to feel the contrast and dissonance. You feel it's true that mind is Buddha?

[50:17]

But what mind is Buddha? So some kind of applied thought, discursive thought is going on in the initial stages of working with the phrase. Some kind of discursive thought and applied thought is going on in the first stages of working with the phrase. And then you have to have a kind of fluid mindfulness that can feel The way this, a phrase like this can change your mind and body. And the way the phrase itself can change. And the way the phrase itself can change your peace.

[51:21]

It's almost like the mind is sometimes layers of liquid. Clear liquid of different viscosities. And sometimes with a fully developed mindfulness In zazen and in daily activity, you can feel these different layers of minds surfacing or having their own surface or feeling or pace. I've reached the edge of what I can speak about. Here we have one plus two equaling M. Maybe mind.

[52:49]

Maybe... Anyway, you're moving into not simple additions. you've added a phrase like this very mind is Buddha and you take it as true but you don't know if it's true and you try to discover it's true but the phrase itself works in you And you are now fluid enough to let the phrase work in you. No, that's enough. Speaking about mindfulness and working with the phrase. It helps if you come into, maybe I could say, a world of facts.

[53:54]

There used to be an American radio program. I can't remember quite what it was called now. There was an American radio program. I can't remember exactly what it was called. The detective always said that when someone started to interpret the whole situation, he would say, So that's a little mantra for me, nothing but the facts. The kind of direct perception, one-pointed mindfulness facts.

[54:55]

Yeah, mindfulness. Yeah, that actually generates a kind of You can take the phrase, this very mind is Buddha, and take away the word Buddha. This very stick is mind. Or this very stick is Buddha. Or just this very tree. Or this. You want to come into every aspect of the phrase.

[55:57]

Whatever you notice is this. Just let this direct you to this. If I say this, I see the floor, the brown floor. Or I hear Marie-Louise's voice. Or if I shift to another this, I feel all of you. This carries this. Is it mind? Is it Buddha? To put yourself in this inquiry. As I say, merging with the particular. With this place, with this schedule, with this session.

[57:21]

And with your cushion. And you're sitting on the cushion. What is this? Is it mind? Is it Buddha? All kinds of stuff. How can all this kind of stuff How can this whole thing be Buddha at all? That is your question. The Buddha, the Buddha, the Buddha, Die Völkermann-Mädels sind zahllos.

[58:40]

Es ist ihre Lohne, sie zu retten. Die Pädagogen sind von Maas gleichgerecht. Es ist ihre Lohne, sie hineinzubehalten. Die Gabels sind grenzenlos. Es ist ihre Lohne, sie zu retten. Erregt ist, wo die Aktionen untertrefft werden. Es ist ihre Lohne, sie zu retten. I don't know.

[59:41]

Someone said to me earlier that more than any time he can remember, certainly in one session I've spoken about one phrase repeatedly. Now, I suppose you know what that phrase is? This very mind is Buddha. If you happen to remember. Yeah, I thought maybe, yeah, probably, maybe it's true. And I could have said to myself, just now is enough and stopped.

[62:31]

That's a joke. Since that's the competing phrase, I guess. But this very mindless Buddha Yeah, why have I repeated it so much? Yeah. One, it's a very... It is a basic teaching of Zen. And... It's a turning point in Buddhism, in Zen Buddhism. That's what pivots Buddhism into Zen. And it might be the equivalent, perhaps it's somewhat the equivalent of...

[63:35]

Visualization, deity visualization in Tibetan Buddhism. Because it's the way we enact a teaching. Yeah, and as I said, it's really Matsu and his contemporaries trying to bring the defining moment into our life and into our own power. Matsu and his contemporaries Are we a fulfilled being or not?

[64:57]

Or a fulfilling being or not? Fulfilling is to complete something? Fulfilled says it's in the past. Fulfilling says it's an ongoing, a fulfilling being. It would be like different things saying you're enlightened or you're enlightening. Yeah, but is it like fulfilling is like completed or completing? No, it's in the process. It's not like filling up? No. Okay. Again, sorry. Okay. Fulfilling. Are you a fulfilled being or a fulfilling being? A being which fulfills itself and fulfills others. You see language problems and I don't notice until you point them out and I say, oh yeah, I can see. Thank you. Are you a Buddha or not?

[66:00]

Can you answer your innermost request or not? Can you answer this question that arises in all human beings? What kind of human being can we be? What kind of human being do we want on the planet? Just the ones that are born? Or do we have some feeling of some kind of being we want to be on the planet? Some, you know, kind of What would define such a being?

[67:09]

What would be the defining moment of such a being? What would be the birth in our life of such a being? What would be that defining moment? That birth in our life. So that's what Matsu is emphasizing. And he says, okay, the seed or nub of this, the still point of this, is to recognize mind itself is birth. So that's one of its importance. It's a shift. It's a basic teaching. It's the point around which some of Buddhism is transformed into Zen Buddhism.

[68:28]

And it's the point at which the defining moment of our life can come into our own power. And it represents further than that an extraordinary, I think extraordinary, way to actualize a teaching. Let's say that we had in Western philosophy a way to practice a Western philosophy. First, I suppose it would help if philosophers wrote with the idea of practice.

[69:47]

And still, to take a philosophy and turn it into some crystallized distilled phrase, which would help you prove the truth of the philosophy, and become the truth of the philosophy. And that you become the truth. So maybe let's take one of the most famous phrases in philosophy. Descartes, I think, therefore I am. Do you know, why was it said in German?

[71:02]

Good, okay. Okay, so I'll say it in English, though, you know. All right, so you went around repeating, I think, therefore I am, I think, therefore I am. I am, therefore I think. I am, therefore I think a lot of things. I am, so I think a lot. Somehow it doesn't have the same effect. Yeah, or we could take some idea of Kant. Ah. what could we say, something like the soul, the mind and things, transcended by the self, somehow that would get us in trouble too, never mind.

[72:18]

Or maybe in Wittgenstein's we could take, I am not in the world, I am the boundaries of the world. I am not in the world, I am the boundaries of the world. Which is something Wittgenstein said. Das ist so, etwas hat Wittgenstein gesagt. That might be useful. Das mag hilfreich sein. But Wittgenstein never wrote with the idea that such a phrase could be used in this way. But we have in the yogic teaching of the West, of Asia, of Buddhism, the sense of distilling it in a way that it can be practiced. Da haben wir dieses Verständnis dafür, dass man etwas destillieren kann, so dass man es dann praktizieren kann.

[73:37]

I think if you repeated often enough, I think, therefore I am, you'd find out it's not true. Ich denke nämlich, wenn man diesen Satz, ich denke, also bin ich, sehr oft wiederholen würde, würde man feststellen, es ist nicht wahr. You're a lot more than thinking. Man ist nämlich viel mehr als nur denken. You're amming, it goes beyond thinking. I am. I am. I am, therefore I think now. I'm playing around, but you yourself should play around with this very mind as Buddha. This kind of using a distillation phrase diese Art von einem destillierten Satz zu verwenden, geht davon aus, dass wir das eigentlich schon bereits tun.

[74:57]

Denn wir laufen ja alle schon herum und wiederholen ständig Sätze. Because, you know, everything is permanent. Or perhaps even, I'm the center of everything. Or I want to be the center of everything. I'm not the center of anything. Yeah, we're repeating such phrases quite a lot. Yeah. So we bring into this habit another kind of grace. Again, this very mind is Buddha. And we see it, this sense of enactment in the Jiu-Ching statement I gave you last night. Und da könnt ihr dieses Verständnis für das in die Tat umsetzen von Zhu Jing gestern Abend.

[76:13]

Das war Dogen's Lehrer. Und er hat gesagt, im Herbsthimmel, hier und dort und dort, das sind Wolken, But the mind of the moon, the moon of the mind is here. Look. So this is enacting something. It's turning this into an event. So it's not just that the clouds are there. Oh, there's a lot of clouds in the sky. There, there, there. What? I didn't say here.

[77:14]

My profound knowledge of journey was just exhibited. But the moon of the mind is here. So again, he's immediately playing with there and here. Are the clouds really there? I mean, you're seeing them. Sind die Wolken wirklich dort? Ihr seht sie ja. The moon of the mind, what's he mean? Was meint er mit dem Mond des Geistes? We can say he means, ja, the moon represents the essence of mind or something. Ja, wir können sagen, der Mond repräsentiert die Essenz des Geistes oder so ähnlich. So the moon is a symbol of the mind. And the moon is Buddha mind, maybe.

[78:32]

Yeah, you can say that. But it's not really where this kind of image comes from. It's said that Nagarjuna presented himself, when you looked at his body, dissolved and there was a full moon there. And sometimes one of the nimbuses, nimbus is the aura around the Buddha, One of the nimbuses I like best is when it's not shaped to the body, but it's a round circle, sort of gray silver.

[79:34]

And that's what we actually see sometimes. We can, in a certain state of concentration, people disappear almost into a kind of shimmer. Yes, so the moon of the mind isn't a symbol. It's a description and experience of those who practice enough. Some at least who practice with a certain concentration. but also if you go out in the night on a full moon night I mean some people howl

[80:51]

I knew someone who did, actually. He was pretty crazy. But it was amazing. We'd know the full moon was coming because several days before he'd be out in his porch howling. Like that, you know. From a painter friend of mine, Bob Smithson's loft, you could look down in this back porch and this guy in New York looked out. It would last about four or five days on either side of the full moon. And full moon night, he would be out there all night. I mean, Bob used to have parties and come over and watch.

[82:10]

But this is a known phenomenon in psychology books, but it's still quite a thing to see it. But you can tell by my howls that sometimes I'm close to it myself. I resist it, though. But I can feel it coming up. Well, I think all of us on the full moon night, you feel something. It's not just it's a beautiful full moon. We feel some sense of entire being.

[83:12]

Now, Dogen speaks about the thousand grasses become a single grass. These thousand grasses become one world. Und die tausend Gräser werden eine Welt. What's he talking about? Wovon spricht er hier? He also, the same, he says something like, in the same fascicle, he says something like, entire being present. Und an gleicher Stelle, im gleichen fascicle, sagt er, entire being present. Or entire being present time. It doesn't make it any easier. Is there a good translation of Dogen in German? By the way, Kazutan Ashi-sensei would like to come here And you know the book Moon in the Dew Drop?

[84:41]

It started from my asking Kaz actually to work with individual students in translating fascicles of Dogen. And that actually came from the fact that I asked Karl to work with individual students, and in which you have different... Is that how you say it in German? And he translated Dogen into contemporary Japanese in Japan. So he agreed, and even though the partitioner students he worked with didn't know Japanese, they translated together, character by character, many fascicles which became the book Moon in a Doodle. And he's asked me if we could do that in Germany. He'd come for one or two weeks or something and then

[85:46]

work with a group of people who'd like to work on translating a fascicle. I don't know how long it takes, but a fascicle can be six or eight pages or four pages. And it's possible to do it over not too long a time. Yeah, maybe we do it in two units a year or six months apart or something. If any of you are interested, you should speak to Gerald about it or me. Maybe try to figure out how to do it because he volunteered that he'd like to see something happen in Germany. Maybe when you're out and you want a night of the full moon,

[87:07]

You might feel the 10,000 grasses become one grass. Now, what happens if you practice? These very slight feelings that if you didn't practice, you'd tend to either not notice or brush aside. There's a difference between And you wouldn't notice the difference between, how can I say, the way the full moon makes you feel for a moment and the usual way you feel.

[88:36]

But finding yourself in the dharmic moments, not generalizing your mood so much, and generalizing your mind into a single observer, and the observer you feel is always the same or something. So you notice, don't notice small changes. You know, the suttas, We read sutras, the Buddha did this and a golden ray appeared from his forehead and blah, blah, blah. I think when we read such things, our immediate reaction is, no, this isn't true.

[89:51]

But it's really, everyone knows it's not true. It's about, can you read it in such a way that it changes how you feel? It's about how it makes you feel. What mind it enters you into. Like a song. Is the song true or not? The song gives us some feeling. So here it's coming into, again, a different kind of pace or tuning. Isn't there a... pun in German between mood and tuning or to tune your mood or something?

[91:16]

Gibt es denn nicht so ein Wortspiel in Deutsch mit Stimmung und Stimmen? Also einstimmen. Something like that. So I mean one part of one passage I was reading the other day in the Flower Garland Sutra It's so nice that you know so little about Buddhism. You're coming into it with a fresh mind. Okay. I don't mean to embarrass you. No, no, that's fine, but they couldn't find the books if I would translate. And I don't use the common Buddhist terminology in English.

[92:27]

Some people get mad at me and say, your German should be the common Buddhist terminology in German. I don't use the common English terminology, Buddhist terminology. Sometimes I do, but often I don't. It is something like the abundant ocean. The benefit of humankind generates millions of clouds. There are lapis lazuli clouds that rain red pearls. Where did that come from? Some mad monk is sitting down here. Lapis lazuli clouds raining red pearls.

[93:43]

Yeah, and then there are shimmering kind of something or raining fragrant robes. Hell yeah. Can you imagine fragrant robes raining down? I want one. What goes on for pages like this? You let yourself into it, you're pretty silly. You're ready for the 10,000 grasses. And one of the teachings embedded in it is each cloud is different. And produces different effects.

[94:52]

Just look at the beginning sunset sometimes. Or dawn. Sometimes there's a streak of green and sometimes of orange and sometimes of fog coming through. Also in der Morgendämmerung, da gibt es solche kleinen Streifen von Orange und dann kommt dann noch der Nebel dazwischen und so weiter. Yeah, here is Pessoa. Nature is not a whole, it's parts. Und hier ist noch einmal Pessoa. Natur ist nicht ein Ganzes, sondern es sind Teile. Each cloud is different and has different effects. Jede Wolke ist anders und hat auch andere Auswirkungen. Yeah.

[95:38]

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