So I'm trying to find out how, as usual, as often, how to speak with you about something. How even to identify the subject. Yeah, and I can't just talk to you in Buddhist terminology. And give you a dictionary or something. And anyway, what I'm trying to talk about isn't in a Buddhist dictionary. It's not in any Buddhist dictionary. And it's especially for us not so because of our different culture.

[01:05]

As I tried to say that just describing, just speaking about the polar rather than dualistic body-mind difference, is difficult because there isn't the terminology for the distinction in Buddhism the way there is in the West. So what I've been trying to do is to take away your body image. As Dogen says, to drop body and mind. Take away your Your human body.

[02:21]

And I would say, too, your humanity body. Humanity body, like we say, we have to be concerned with humanity or something like that. Yeah, I mean, it's an important idea, but it's also spurious. It means something wrong with it, false or something. Yeah, it's an institutional idea. So our humanity body, our societal body, Yeah, but I also need your permission to do this. And we have to feel out how much we can do this, or can we do this.

[03:26]

And can we feel relatively secure in doing this. Mm-hmm. And yesterday you gave me some permission to speak about this. And you showed me some of the territory of your own experience. Now can we put that territory together in the way of Buddhism? Und können wir dieses Gebiet, diese Bereiche zusammensetzen in der Art, wie das der Buddhismus tut? Can it become part of the path? Kann das Teil des Weges werden? Now I've wanted, I haven't wanted, I've been, let's put it this way, I've been avoiding talking about Dharma the way I usually do.

[04:34]

And as usual, I don't want to bore you. I put you even more to sleep than usual. But also because I assume you know all that. So I'd like to find some new way appropriate to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha to speak about Dharma. So here I'm not speaking about Dharma as the whole of Buddhism. or the whole of our experience I'm speaking about Dharma in the sequence of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha the sequence that we take refuge in find ourselves immersed in somehow somewhat separate from the usual way of taking in and on the world.

[06:09]

So again, one expression of contemporary, what I'm calling contemporary renunciation. Also noch einmal ein Ausdruck von dem, was ich zeitgenössische Selbstaufgabe nenne. A subtle renunciation. Eine Art subtiler Selbstaufgabe. It doesn't necessarily have some dramatic form in your daily life. It's a reorientation within you. And a recognition of what's more deeply satisfying. And the courage to not define yourself from outside. Und den Mut, euch nicht von außen zu definieren. Und den Mut, euch selbst das tiefer Befriedigende zu erlauben. Okay, so let's start with the first story of the beginning of Zen Buddhism.

[07:47]

The Buddha supposedly holds up a flower. And Mahakashipa sees it and smiles. Or feels it and smiles. And the Buddha says something like, I have this truth or true body or something like that. Und der Buddha sagt so etwas wie, ich habe diese Wahrheit oder diesen wahren Körper. Dieses formlose Dharma. And I now impart it to Mahakashapa. Und ich übertrage das nun an Mahakashapa. I acknowledge Mahakashapa. Oder ich bestätige Mahakashapa. Some idea like that. I can't imagine him doing it, but anyway, yeah, that's the story.

[08:52]

I just held up this stick and Tanya smiled. So in front of everyone, I'm not going to say, now Tanya has my dharma and blah, blah, blah. I'll tell her later. Okay, anyway. So what's that about? What is it to hold up a flower? Was ist das, eine Blume hochhalten? We like flowers, though. Es ist so, wir mögen Blumen. I carried Sophia the other day along while Marie-Louise was eating with her friends. I carried Marie-Louise around and around the building. I carried Sophia round and round the building. Well, they're still biologically connected, so... Anyway, yeah.

[09:55]

So I experimented. I'd walk along and let her look at wooden shingles. Ich habe damit experimentiert. Ich habe sie herumgetragen und habe sie... Wooden shingles? Yeah, the wooden things that are on roofs and the sides of buildings. Ja, diese Schindeln. Ich habe sie diese Holzschindeln anschauen lassen, die an der Seite der Häuser sind. And then they have all these flower boxes, you know. Und dann haben sie auch diese Blumenkästen. So I'd bring her past the red flower boxes with the red flowers. Also habe ich sie dort hingebracht zu diesen Blumenkästen mit den roten Blumen. And she immediately perked up. Boy, the flowers, there she, her whole body went, oh, awful. She doesn't know the flowers, but there it was. It's later I'll tell her the flower is not red, nor is the willow green.

[10:59]

That's it. kind of famous little Zen phrase. Yeah, but so now, having seen the red flowers of the oxen, have I imparted my Dharma to Sophia? So what happens when you raise up a flower? When someone, in this case the Buddha, raises up a flower? What raises up in you? These simple stories, you have to ask yourself these kind of questions. It's really the same question as Suzuki Roshi asking, when is a tree a tree and when is a tree a poem?

[12:11]

And then we have this other story of the sixth patriarch wandering around somewhere. And he sees the two monks arguing. And there's a banner or a flag blowing in the wind. And one of them is saying the flag is moving and The other is saying, the wind is moving. Fairly stupid discussion. And then the sixth patriarch, who's just a bystander, He says, oh, come on, it's the mind that's moving.

[13:33]

Yeah, only a child can understand that. Yeah, I can, in a little while, a year or so, I can tell Sophia her tricycle is moving and it's her intention to move it that's moving it and so forth. So it's not difficult to understand such a thing. So why is it a Zen story? It's one of the most famous koans. And it also happens to be the discovery of the sixth Patriarch. Or at least it's presented as he's in hiding. And when he says this, they realize this guy's unusual. I like the story. I can't remember the physicist.

[14:41]

What's his name? He's written a lot of books. I can't think of his name. Frank might know. Who said to his father when he was a little boy, When I pull my wagon forward, why does the ball in it go backwards? And his father said, no one knows. So he didn't give him an answer, oh, it's gravity or something. He said, actually, no one knows. Gravity or... I forget what it's called.

[15:52]

It doesn't explain anything. Yeah. So what about the unmoving mind that's neither the flag nor the wind nor the mind? Yeah, and this story about the Sixth Patriarch is a lot like the story of Daito Kokushi. He also was in hiding. You know, abbots get burned out or they get tired of being institutional abbots. institutional habits. I want this place to continue, but, you know, I don't know, how do we keep it from being an institution? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[17:03]

Anyway, so he hid out for quite a long number of years. But they wanted to find him. This is the story, anyway. So he supposedly liked melon, and in Japan everyone likes melon because it's rare. And it also tastes good. So they went around under, you know... I don't know why they thought he might be hiding as a bum, but they went around all the bums here and there. And under the Third Street Bridge, supposedly, in Kyoto, they saw a rather bright-eyed bum with some others. Mm-hmm. And so they held this melon out to him.

[18:24]

And when he reached for it, they said, take it with no hands. He could have said to hell with you. And instead he supposedly said, give it to me with no hands. And why do we like such simple stories? Yeah, it's another somewhat longer one that was An important one for me was Suzuki Roshi. The Chinese emperor and his son had taken a famous Zen master as an advisor. Someone who'd lived alone for decades. never coming off a mountain for about 40 years.

[19:36]

Yeah, and so if you do that, people start talking about you, and so the emperor said, come and I'd like to meet you. So, When this national teacher, Chu, he was called, the emperor supposedly asked him, what should I do after you die? He said, Chu said, build me a seamless monument And Zhu said, build me a monument without seams.

[20:37]

And the emperor said, please, can you explain to me, what is a seamless monument? How do I do that? And he was silent for quite a while. And finally, Chu said, do you understand? And the emperor said, no, I don't understand. And he said, well, you know, I have a disciple named Tang Gen who's adept in this. So please ask him. So after Chu died, the emperor summoned Tang Gen to meet with him. And asked him to explain what National Teacher Chu had meant.

[21:53]

And he said, south of Chu and north of Tan. There's enough gold to supply the nation. And under the shadowless tree the communal ferry rests. The communal ferry boat rests. Under the shadowless tree, the communal ferry boat. In the crystal palace, no one understands. So there's that story. So what's a seamless tomb?

[22:54]

Seamless monument. It's one of the reasons, this story is one of the reasons why Zen teachers are usually buried just under a big plain rock. They're ashes. And not with some pagoda or stupa or something like that. And so what is a seamless monument? Because normally it's divided into these categories, earth, fire, etc., This is a seamless monument.

[23:57]

Yeah. But when we have an experience like something catches us, like pass it to me with no hands, I think maybe we feel something that we've always known. But something that we've overlooked. It's a funny experience to notice something that you've always known, that you've always overlooked. So there's some feeling of truth being revealed. something true here.

[25:05]

But it's not just that what's said is true or that we pass something with no hands. It's the truth that we overlook the obvious. So the story can be very simple. Holding up a flower or looking at a flag. Because, you know, pulling a wagon forward and the ball goes backwards. We see it every day. But we don't stop and say, no one understands this. We supply explanations. But when you have this experience, of noticing what you've overlooked, but noticing what you've already known, always known.

[26:14]

Then you have the question, why have I overlooked it? And the question of why I've overlooked what is obvious, What is apparent is often an entering into the stream of practice, into the truth body. As if it's been there, we're living it all the time, but somehow, because it's not hidden at all, it's hidden. Mm-hmm. So we have a sense of what I'm calling a truth body. In this case I mean also a Dharma body. But not the same sense of the Dharmakaya as the Dharma body. Or not at least in the first instance do I mean the same.

[27:15]

So let's just call it in English the Dharma body. Or truth body. Yeah, now, can I say more than that? Because unless, you know, you have this experience of being dipped in this stream, or noticing what's Not noticing that what's not hidden at all has been hidden. If you don't have this experience, it's very hard to say much about it. If you have this experience, maybe I don't need to say anything. Except I think we all, to various degrees, have this experience.

[28:41]

Most of us, because we don't, most people, because they don't practice, you know, it's like a little splash in the pond and they don't enter the water. But if you do enter the water of this truth body, you... you... yeah, you want to... you want to... You want to find ways to touch it or awaken it again. So I've been speaking about the physical continuity. Really, you kind of catch this physical continuity in the world.

[29:59]

No, it doesn't sound quite right, but everything is always rubbing against you. Und das klingt irgendwie nicht ganz korrekt, aber es reibt sich alles immer an dir. The floor rubs against your feet. Der Boden, der reibt gegen deine Fußsohlen. Maybe that's your whole body it's rubbing against. Yeah, and you feel it more strongly going through a doorway maybe, but the world's rubbing against us. Yeah, now if you rub against the wall, it doesn't hurt. If you rub against it real hard or you fall against it, as kids do... shin their knee, you use such an expression. Yeah, the wall or the sidewalk isn't bad. But it's, you know, maybe bad to fall down on it.

[31:04]

So any culture has Any society has to have ideas of good and bad. But these words are inhabited differently in what we're talking about. Chocolate's not good or bad. Sometimes it's good, sometimes... You know, all afternoon it's bad. There's nothing good or bad about chocolate. As I said to someone the other day, if you put sand in your gas tank, it's not bad.

[32:15]

Und wie ich neulich zu jemandem sagte, wenn du Sand in deinen Tank füllst, das ist nicht schlecht. It's just stupid. Es ist einfach blöd. Or rather odd. Oder zumindest seltsam. But if you did it to try to cause an accident or something like that, then it's bad. Aber wenn du es tun würdest, um einen Unfall hervorzubringen, dann wäre das irgendwie... So what I'm trying to do is here suggest that one of the gates to this truth body is really to suspend good and bad distinctions. and suspend like and dislike distinctions. Yeah, and I said the other day in the first week, working with this pleasurable, pleasant, unpleasant, neither, like and dislike and neutral and greed hate and delusion and really just feel your own movement in that in that spectrum

[33:49]

And move in the direction of not only pleasant and unpleasant, but neither. It becomes a window. Yeah, it's like also Vasubandhu speaks about Subjectivity and objectivity. And subjectivity is seeing the world as subject to you. Like subject to your will, subject to your intentions. Subject to your desires. And by contrast, to see the world as an object of the world, but not subject to you.

[35:08]

An object in the world, an object of the world, but not subject to you. Okay. The alternative is to see something not as subject to you. But an object in the world, an object of the world. So there's some more detachment from it. All of this stuff that I'm talking about now, It's like cleaning the window. When you move in this direction, you're more likely to feel this truth body. It also helps, again, to just be at ease. Open and at ease. And this is an accomplishment of practice.

[36:12]

To just be at ease. And another is this trust and acceptance. To find that mind where you can both trust and accept what appears. This is dharmic practice, dharma as moment by moment dharma. And here we're speaking about the dharma body that covers everything. the discovery of the Dharma body or truth body, what continues, we can say forever, under the shadowless tree. Yeah, we have Linji planting the tree, the story I told you earlier.

[37:28]

The tree, in this case, is his Dharma body, his truth body. To give some shadow, some coolness for future generations. But also to in a way, hide himself a little. Because if you're going to mature, you need to hide yourself. You act in this truth body for others, but you hide the fact that you're doing it. Because the truth body is obvious, but still it should be hidden through not being too openly acknowledged.

[38:31]

Yeah, and we have this story that we passed out, a version of it, about the Upsaka, the lay person who, go ahead, says that he has a stone at home that stands up or lies down. By itself? No, he doesn't say by itself. Anyway, so already he's, you know, and someone the other day said they had the experience in Zazen of feeling in the discussion, a feeling like a stone. I think it probably, the person meant probably going beyond what you'd think a stone felt like to actually feeling what a stone would feel like, or something different than the usual mental expectations.

[39:36]

So here's the stone. He says, can I carve it into a... A Buddha. He said, can it be carved into a Buddha? Yeah, and he's told yes. And then he says, can I carve it into a Buddha? And then he's told, no, you can't. Because he wanted some acknowledgement. His intention needed acknowledgement. So it wasn't the kind of intention that opens you to the truth body of the Buddha in a stone. Or the truth body that's everywhere present.

[40:37]

Yeah, that we get the taste of in these little stories. Sometimes just holding up a flower. And this... The truth body is not separate from others. Not separate from the gold of the whole society. Chu calls it a seamless monument. That reaches from Mahakashipa's time to our own. From Buddha's time until our own. So this is not the moment-by-moment Dharma.

[41:38]

This is the unmoving mind It's not flag, nor wind, nor mind. This is what our practice with each other is all about. Okay, that's enough for today. Thank you very much. May our intentions be the same, every being and every place, with the true service of the path of the Buddha. Shujamohensegandho

[42:44]

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave Die fühlenden Wesen sind zahllos. Ich gelobe, sie zu retten. Die Begehrten sind unauslöschlich. Ich gelobe, sie in Rette zu bereiten. Die Dhammas sind grenzenlos. Ich gelobe, sie zu beherrschen. Der Weg des Buddha ist unübertrefflich. Ich gelobe, ihn zu erreichen. Thank you.

[44:30]

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