Yeah, good morning. Since I gave you that koan to read, I think I should say something about koans. Yeah, koans are sort of fragments of an oral tradition washed up on the shore of literature. Also, koans sind Fragmente von Literatur, die an den Strand der Literatur herangespült wurden. Oh, they're still expressions of an oral tradition, which also has a literary form. Und sie sind immer noch Ausdruck einer mündlichen Überlieferung. Now, the first... Those of you who know the shoyoku at all, the first koan, let's say, it's meta, M-E-T-A, not M-E-T-T-A.

[01:01]

It's meta expression. Those who know the shoyoku know that it is expressed on a meta level. is that the whole of the Shoyuroku, the whole book, is basically a form of leaking. In other words, the Bodhisattva is leaking, is in the weeds, is, you know, etc. The Bodhisattva is leaking. Leaking, yeah, leaking energy, yeah. In the weeds, the Buddha doesn't say anything. Bodhisattva Manjushri speaks. So the whole koan collection is a kind of compromise in order to help us. And the second koan emphasizes emptiness.

[02:10]

And the third koan, the one you have, emphasizes breathing. Yeah. And it says in the beginning of it, you know, it says a turtle heads for the fire, a timeless time, something like that. And the lip of a mortar bursts into bloom. And is there any accepting and upholding here? Any accepting and upholding, any reciting and reading?

[03:13]

Something like that. Okay. Now, The breath is the path or the entry into the teachings. The breath is the path through the teachings. And the breath is the path by which we mature and unfold the teachings. Yeah, so there is upholding, accepting and upholding the teachings here.

[04:16]

Okay. Now, Punyamitra, who is in there, is the 26th Buddha ancestor. And Punya means someone who gains merit through reciting the teachings. And Mitra is one of the two gods, the god of the sun or the day, and Varuna is the god of night. So here's a guy who says, I don't read the scriptures, and yet his own teacher, his name means one who reads the scriptures and gains merit.

[05:28]

And it says in there that, well, I don't know. I'm going to try to be short with all these little things. It says, Mahasama Putra, who is one of the two bodhisattvas along with Avalokiteshvara, who attend often Amitabha. companions of, the Jisha of.

[06:34]

And Amitabha is the Buddha of boundless light or something like that. And historically and iconographically, Amitabha represents light. A shift in Buddhism to... It doesn't take endless lives to realize liberation. It can be done in one lifetime. And so the Prajnatara is known as Mahastama Putra. And Bodhidharma is known as Avalokiteshvara. And they are both attending or could attend Amitabha Buddha. Okay. Now, yeah, do you need to know these things?

[08:04]

Well, no, but it's maybe a little bit helpful. Now, why I said this is an oral tradition, I want to say something about it. We discussed yesterday afternoon that the power, something like the power shifting from who is breathing to what is breathing has. Now, why do those two words, independent of what they mean, can have such a shift in our... experience of ourself, of our body, of our mind.

[09:06]

I would say it's because these two words have the power in us of how words function in an oral tradition. Well, your body has to know the words. Now, strangely, a complex language system like Chinese and Japanese is a bodily tradition. Again, I'm not just explaining something just so you know something more. But I'm trying to create a feeling or perspective on what's expected of a practitioner.

[10:09]

Since we're practicing this, I should say something like this. Now as I pointed out before, that if you ask a Japanese or Chinese person for a particular character, they'll often have to make it with their hand in order to tell you what it is. I remember years ago when I worked for the university, I knew some hundreds of persons that I had to call all the time for various reasons because of what I did, my job.

[11:29]

And I knew all their phone numbers. I probably knew at least a thousand phone numbers. But I knew them in my hand. My hand could dial them, but I couldn't think them off it. I had to kind of focus on it. And my practice was never look a number up and just dial it until my hand got it. Sometimes one or two times, it's long distance. In those days, long distance was expensive, but the university paid for it. But at home I did the same thing, and I paid for it. Okay.

[12:40]

So when you have to know, like a Japanese scholar does, 20,000 or 30,000 characters, you cannot know them with your head. So you just know a language differently. It makes a language different. Also, du kennst eine Sprache anders und es macht diese Sprache auch anders. You feel the kanji and the way this looks out there. You can feel the shapes in the bamboo and the rocks and so forth. Ja, du fühlst den kanji und den bambus und die Formen da draußen. And I have a wonderful... book called Inscribed Landscapes, a book about Chinese landscape.

[13:41]

Where the landscape itself was considered a kind of writing, and a writer who visited a particular site wrote a poem and often inscribed it at the site. So, as I pointed out, MacArthur, General MacArthur, when he tried to get the Japanese to switch to an alphabet, was trying to simplify their brains, their bodies. But he did succeed in simplifying it quite a bit. So you only need 2,000 characters plus a few to read the newspaper. 2,000 is still quite a lot.

[14:57]

But it still takes, and it used to take longer, you had to be a high school kid before you could read the newspaper because it takes a long time to learn all those things. So the Chinese, Japanese have at least about 99% literacy. It's really in their body. Okay. Now, in... You know, there's... there's some lore about scientists who embody the body of the science. Let me say that.

[15:59]

There's scientists, a lore about scientists, who in their own body embody the science. They don't have to look things up. You ask them, they just know what their science is in their body. And it's not just that they're not necessarily the smartest, but they've been bought, they... They, in their body, know their science. It's there in you before you have to think about it. Now, practice is most fruitful when you yourself have the teachings in you like that.

[17:05]

It's part of the reason for chanting in the morning. You want to keep immersing yourself in the teachings. So whenever you get a chance, you read a little bit of the teachings. Not read them to understand them or find them interesting. Read them just to get them into your body. And you get them into your body, reading through your breath. So it says that Prajñātara just brought up the head and tail. He brought up the inhale and he brought up the exhale.

[18:27]

But in between are the five skandhas, the vijnanas, the eighteen dhatus and so forth. So the sense of it is you're breathing in, but what's breathing in? The skandhas, the vishyanas, the sense fields and so forth. Mm-hmm. Okay, so the teachings now are also just observing, being engaged in how you actually exist, how you function. And Prajnatara himself is this miracle worker.

[19:28]

So on the one hand you're Amitabha who's freeing you from past lives, but Prajñatara in past lives was an adept of the Mahaprajñaparamita literature, sutras. So this koan, if you feel all the nuances, immerses you in the middle of the teaching. And in the middle of your own breath. Now... Now, for us, it's kind of an intellectual exercise. What does punyamitra mean and... hang the sun and moon up, et cetera, in a shadowless forest and all that.

[20:44]

And how do you get that? I mean, unless you know Punyamitra and Mitra and Varuna are gods of sun, you know, et cetera. But for them it's not so much... Yeah. Of heaven and earth. It's not so much that they're being intellectual. For them... Even at that time, although there were written texts, there weren't many. There were a few books around, and you knew those books with your body because it's the only book you had. You're lucky you had three. And one reason to go to a monastery, actually, is because they had the books. You didn't have any at home.

[21:46]

So for them, these words are like who and what are for us. A kind of inner music. So just one word has the kind of effect on them that who and what have on us when we chant or ask ourselves through who and what. Okay, now. Okay. So, the Eightfold Path. Now let's go back to the eightfold path.

[23:16]

Because if we're going to speak about the path of the breath, I should speak about these things. Yeah, the eightfold path, the beginning of the Buddhist teaching. Yeah, and what a teaching it is. And I think to kind of enter it, you ought to say to yourself, like, I am my views. Now, instead of just reading the Eightfold Path, you want to get it into you. So maybe you want to really say to yourself, I am my views, I am my views. This is the eightfold path. Let's assume that everything you are is somehow in this eightfold path.

[24:21]

Then you have to argue with yourself. Am I my views? No, one thing I've done here, I've told you what punyamitra means, etc., etc., but basically we're talking about such a simple thing as I am my views. All this various stuff in the koan points to embodying the teachings through the breath. So I'm saying, start, please start, do it. If you really want to practice, this is how you do it. So you try to not think these things, you try to embody them. Also, du versuchst, diese Sache nicht zu denken, sondern sie zu verkörpern.

[25:43]

Also, das bedeutet das Wort mantra. Es ist ein verkörpertes Wort. Also, sag sowas wie ich bin, meine Ansichten. Aber, ja, stell das auch in Frage und argumentier mit dir. Am I my views? Well, I guess I have to be. I mean, must be. What the heck are my views, anyway? I don't know what my views are. Do I know what my views are? I like ice cream. Yeah, you have to start with something, something you, yeah, that's one of my views. I like chocolate ice cream.

[26:44]

I like winter weather. I don't like so-and-so. Whatever it is, you get to start in a very simple way. What are my views? And then you say, I am also my intentions, my resolve. That's the second of the Eightfold Path. I am my intentions. What are my intentions? What resolve do I have, actually? Am I capable of resolve? And I'm also my speech. Speech includes the throat chakra, the center of ideas, and so forth. Various feelings and things get translated into thoughts, ideas, speech.

[28:01]

So I am also my speech. I am my speech. I am also my conduct. I'm also my conduct, my behavior. My virtue. My lack of virtue. I am my conduct. So you really have to... Yeah. What am I doing? This is me. This conduct is me. What is me? Is there some me separate from the conduct? It's really pretty down to earth or down to breath. Yeah, I'm my conduct.

[29:01]

I'm also my livelihood. My job, my work. I'm also my effort. And I'm also my mindfulness. My attention. And finally, I am also my concentration. Here, concentration means all kinds of things, but it means at the center, samadhi and the jhanas and meditation.

[30:11]

Maybe we agree where our livelihood and our conduct But the Buddha's Eightfold Path of, you know, two and a half millennia ago, asks us also to say, I am Samadhi. Now, we don't grow up being told we're Samadhi. Hi, Samadhi, how are you? Sam. You should name your kid Sam and the middle name Mahdi.

[31:22]

And if you have a Dali after name, we're Sarah, Sam Sarah. Can I say to Sophia, you are also Samadhi? How do I say that to her? Can she have some taste of Samadhi to know she's her conduct, but she's also Samadhi? Now, if you want to practice the Eightfold Path, you really have to get yourself into this teaching. I'm Samadhi. When do I experience samadhi?

[32:25]

If I'm views, where are my views when I'm in samadhi? What are my views? I hardly know what my views are. How do I get underneath my views? Mm-hmm. Because my views govern my intentions, my speech, my conduct. The example I always give, because it's the simplest, is you're sitting in front of me and we're separated by space. That's a view. And if I take that as a view, my perceptions will confirm that we're separated by space.

[33:28]

But if I can see, that's a view, that's a cultural view. That's not just only the truth. That's a view of consciousness. But we're also connected in ways consciousness can't notice. Because what consciousness does is notice difference. It notices separation. Consciousness has no non-dualistic skills. So what about that we're already connected, that we're not... that we're connected by space.

[34:36]

Now, if you do notice that and you change your view to space connects or already connected, not already separated, but already connected, Your senses, which before confirmed separation, become more subtle. And they begin to allow the experience of connectedness. And you can use a mantra like, I call them gate phrases, like already connected. To change a view so that it's at the beginning of the Eightfold Path.

[35:49]

And then ripples through the Eightfold Path in our speech, behavior, conduct, livelihood. And into mindfulness and Concentration, samadhi. Okay, so it begins with views, intentions, and so forth. Because that's the dynamic... through which the path works in us.

[37:00]

But the entry to the path, if you're a practitioner, is usually zazen, mindfulness, and so forth. But if you are a practitioner, then it usually starts with zazen and mindfulness, mindfulness. Yes, each of you is mindfulness. What is it? Mindfulness. You are all mindfulness. You are all... Alan thinks, oh my God, I'm embarrassed to be an American with this guy. Sorry. Anyway, we start to practice and we practice mindfulness and it does it, right? And then we look at the Eightfold Path and say, oh, speech, conduct, livelihood, that's what I grew up with.

[38:04]

What am I going to do about that stuff? I'm just going to practice mindfulness and samadhi. But, of course, you begin to bring mindfulness and samadhi back to the rest of the Eightfold Path. And what's the main entry? Surprisingly, in the third of the Eightfold Path. And it's why it's third and not fourth. It's third and not fourth. Eightfold path. It's the third of the eightfold path. Because you'd think conduct might come first.

[39:07]

That's our behavior. It comes before speech. Speech, interactive connectedness with the mother and all that comes before conduct. So you're bringing, you have all heard this formula, but I'll tell you again. You've all heard this formula, but I'll tell you again. Basically, you're bringing, mindfulness is mindfulness of the breath. This is reading your breath itself as a kind of scripture. Breath scripture. You're bringing the breath scripture to your speech. So the first task in the Eightfold Path, after you have some skills in mindfulness and meditation, is to bring your breath into your speech.

[40:16]

Feel your breath in your thinking, walking, speaking, and so forth. And here we have also the teaching, right at this point, the four foundations or four awakenings of mindfulness. Which the Buddha said, this is all you need. If you really practice thoroughly the four foundations or four awakenings of mindfulness, this is it. You don't need anything else. Aren't you glad you know that now? That's the only thing you have to do.

[41:17]

The thoroughness, though, with which you have to do it. Even the dumb ones. Sometimes the dumb ones are better at it than the smart ones. Thoroughness. As Sukershi says, it's the slow horse the Buddha loves. When you bring breath to your speech, you can feel your thinking and your breathing in the pace of your... Feel your thinking and speaking in the pace of your breath. And in your body. Then you have something close to an oral tradition. Because what you have to remember, if you have to remember a lot, comes up through the breath and body and not through thinking.

[42:42]

So if you want access to the deep memories that we have, the huge quantity of memories we have, you need to think through the breath. because it's the breath that pulls them up. And this is also called generating a truth body. And I always give you a little too obvious an example that lie detectives often work because it's difficult for the body to lie. So when you start thinking through the breath, speaking through the breath, you'll find out you actually tend to lie.

[43:51]

Rationalize to yourself, lie to yourself less. Not at all. So now it's the breath body or truth body that practices the Eightfold Path. Und jetzt ist es der Atemkörper und der Wahrheitskörper, der den achtfachen Pfad praktiziert. This is the kind of teaching that's implied by Prajnatara when he says, this is the scripture I read hundreds of thousands of billions of scrolls. Also das impliziert Prajnatara, wenn er sagt, ich wiederhole dies beim Ein- und Ausatmen tausende Male. Thank you very much.

[45:03]

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