Good morning and thank you for joining our Winter Branches Week. Yeah, I think it's actually quite extraordinary for us to take so much time to do such a strange thing as to look at particularly maybe this koan. A turtle heads for the fire. That's sort of the first line of the koan. So... So let's start there.

[01:03]

Anyway, I've just come into this room, that's obvious. And you each have come into this room. And I brought my life experience with me. I can't get rid of it. And you each have brought your life experience. And yeah, so now we have this koan. And it's not much related to our life experience. Yeah, and if you're unfamiliar with Buddhism, it's a rather strange story.

[02:16]

And if you're familiar with Buddhism, you have to know quite a bit to at least make sense of the context. So the question I have in meeting with you for these six or seven days, is can this koan be a way for us to meet? Can somehow this koan maybe take away our different life experiences? And give us some place to meet.

[03:33]

Or perhaps the koan can gather our experience into some kind of shared similarities. At least I would like to see us able to do both of these. A turtle heads for the fire. That's a stupid turtle. At least it's not behaving like one would think turtles behave. At least it doesn't behave the way one would expect it from a turtle.

[04:46]

It also says a state before it existed. Now, is this just some kind of words, you know, at the beginning of the koan? Or some kind of image? Yeah. You know, you may have heard the rather common image, at least in English, for an image you can't forget. A common image in English... as an example of an image you can't forget. There's a white bear peeing in the snow. Now, once you hear that, it's pretty hard to get that image out of your mind. So images, you know, they kind of stick in the mind.

[05:59]

Now would we try to analyze this image? Do we? Would we try to analyze a white bear? Maybe that's Prajnatara. And peeing? Well, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's just an image. A turtle heads for the fire. And maybe if we keep such an image, I care, you can use the white bear or a turtle. Maybe if we keep an image like that present as we study the koan, we'll study it differently. Maybe Prajnatara means something like that when he says he doesn't read the scriptures.

[07:15]

Maybe he only walks around with the image of a white bear peeing in the snow. My point, anyway, is that this koan starts with an image. And the first reaction is not to analyze it symbolically or something, but just, hey, there's an image. And now let's look more closely at this image. And this statement, a state before the beginning of time. Und diese Aussage ein Zustand vor Zeitbeginn.

[08:31]

Now, were the compilers of this koan in the 12th century? Yeah, were they trying to get us to... create such a state? Maybe we should somehow have some state before the beginning of time. Yuan Wu, the famous compiler of the Blue Cliff Record, says, take away before and after. No. Yeah. That's pretty similar. So, is it possible to take away before and after? Sometimes it happens to us. Sometimes we feel, I mean, I think sometimes we feel time is different or slower or because it stops time.

[10:05]

And so maybe this koan is saying with this mind, without before and after, you should proceed to study this koan. Now, how are you going to go about studying the koan without before and after, etc. ? And particularly when we're following a schedule. Lots of before and afters. And certainly you can't exactly do it in the study period in the morning. Yeah, and Prajñātara says he doesn't read the sutras or scriptures, but he just breathes in and out.

[11:22]

And Prajñātāra says he doesn't read the scriptures, he just breathes in and out. We like that in Zen. Buddhism is nothing more than breathing in and out. This is my kind of Zen. We don't need the scriptures. I mean, I think simplistically people sometimes read this koan with this feeling. But this koan is more saying how is breathing in and out a kind of scripture? Then we have to sort of actually be studying or understand what is scripture. Then we should actually first understand what writing actually means.

[12:49]

It's not about perhaps rejecting scripture, but it's about how do we transform breathing into a kind of, well, you know, sutra means to sew, like suture. How do we sew our experience together or unsew, you know, with our breathing? So maybe it's not primarily about reading writings, but understanding Because surely breath, breathing articulates consciousness. And is articulate hard to translate?

[13:57]

I think you can understand it well. Okay. And consciousness articulates breathing. So that's one thing we can do is kind of like in the beginning here is let feel breathing articulating consciousness and consciousness in turn articulating breathing. Now I think we want to look at this koan, of course, in a number of ways. And it's important to look at it in, let's say, an outer context as well as an inner context.

[15:05]

And what do I mean by outer context? You might say the meta-context, the bigger context. Uber-context. Because we ourselves are in an uber-context. We're studying Buddhism in the West. What's going on here? It's not just your individual genius you decided you'd really like to do this, or your individual weakness you had nothing else to grab hold of. Das ist jetzt nicht deine individuelle Genialität, dass du da jetzt Buddhismus studierst. We are part of something happening in the West. Sondern wir sind Teil von etwas, das im Westen stattfindet, passiert.

[16:12]

We are making our individual choices, of course, but they're individual choices in a context which you wouldn't have had 50 years ago. I had it 50 years... Yeah, maybe you wouldn't have had it 70 years ago. You know, America is, you know, these days a particularly stupid country, isn't it? Also, die USA sind in dieser Zeit ein ziemlich bescheuertes Land. And worse than that, a dangerous country. Schlimmer als das, ein gefährliches Land. Yeah, and it sort of thinks Europe is over there on the edges somewhere. Und es glaubt, dass Europa da irgendwo ganz außen am Rand hängt.

[17:13]

Our current president, who we hope will be driven out, and impeached, had never visited Europe before he became president. He thought America was East, and he still does, thinks America is the center of the world. China and Europe, they're over there on the edges somewhere. Well, China really thinks that way. And China's been around at the time of this colon collection around 3,000 years. America around 250 years, and we're already thinking we're the center. China really thought it was the center.

[18:14]

So one of the earliest, maybe the earliest dynasty we know much about, the Shah dynasty, was 2,000 years before the Common Era. And the Han dynasty was, you know, 400 years, 200 years on either side of the, what we call, you know, the birth of Christ. And Bodhidharma came somewhat after the end of the Han Dynasty. Three centuries later. Okay.

[19:15]

So my point is that China, Buddhism has always been a foreign religion. Mein Punkt ist, dass der Buddhismus immer eine ausländische Religion war. Because China was such a cultivated and civilized place compared to most of the rest of the world, Buddhism came into an already literate highly refined culture. So it had to find some way to get the already educated literati to be interested in Buddhism.

[20:28]

So the first koan In the Shoyuroku. You know, the Buddha is called the World Honored One. Yeah, he comes into the room and he gets up on the podium or gets up on his seat and he gets back down. And this action is all the twelve epithets of the Buddha. Epithets? Anybody know? The names the Buddha is characterized by. The wondrous one, the all-pervading one, etc. So each of these is a kind of dimension of what a Buddha is.

[21:29]

And all of these are somehow, and he just gets up and gets back down. I wish I could do that. And then Marie-Louise would say, that was the Dharma king. I thought, I'm gone. And the Dharma of the Dharma king is us. But I couldn't get away with that. But in any case, all he does is gets up and gets down, and they say there's nothing but silence and thusness.

[22:34]

So what happens in the second koan? Well, Bodhidharma meets the emperor. Yeah. Hi, emperor. Yeah. And the emperor says, who are you? And Bodhidharma says, I don't know. And is there any merit in all this stuff I've done to support Buddhism? And Bodhidharma says, emptiness, no holiness. Yeah, like throwing a dishwater in the emperor's face. So... emptiness, no holiness, I don't know, etc.

[23:43]

And yet, the emperor wants to know, wants to call him back. The emperor wants to know who this guy is. So all these questions, why did Bodhidharma come from the West, etc., are all partly about, is Buddhism culture-free? And the silence of the Buddha and Bodhidharma not knowing and its emptiness, can somehow this be a way that Buddhism can be in an already developed culture? So this silence of the non-knowing and the non-holy, can all be ways in which Buddhism can exist in an already existing culture? Yes.

[24:43]

And I think we have to ask that somehow. Is Buddhism culture-free? Is there some original mind? Yeah, some mind, body you realize in Zazen. That frees you from German, Swiss, Austrian, European culture? Yeah, maybe to some extent. But the extent is something you have to decide, find out for yourself. And now the third koan, what is?

[25:55]

Oh, I don't read the scriptures, man. I just breathe. And I don't dwell in the realms of mind and body, breathing in. I don't dwell in the realms of mind and body breathing in. It's not original with me. And I don't get involved in myriad circumstances breathing out. Now, certainly this doesn't have much to do with European or Chinese or Indian culture. We're breathing in and not getting dwelling in mind and body. Why? We can sort of imagine that. Not getting caught in myriad circumstances, yeah.

[27:01]

It's a good idea at least. But if you actually intend to do it, you'll find it takes a lot of skill. Yeah, so the scriptures, they were all originally mostly orally transmitted and then finally written down, and then there was these huge Max Planck institutes for centuries to translate them into Chinese, etc., Also ursprünglich wurden diese Schriften, keine Schriften, wurde das mündlich weitergegeben. Später wurde es aufgeschrieben und dann noch später gab es jahrhundertealte Max-Planck-Institute in China, die diese Texte ins Chinesische übersetzt haben.

[28:14]

So, yeah, we don't have to read these foreign sutras either. Okay, and yet, Prajñātāra is the teacher of Bodhidharma. So first koan is about the Buddha who doesn't say a thing. The second koan is about Bodhidharma who doesn't know who he is. And the third koan is about Bodhidharma's teacher who taught him that he didn't know who he is. But what have we snuck in here? We've snuck the lineage in. Suddenly we have somehow a culture-free lineage of the 26th patriarch is mentioned, the 27th, Dharma ancestors mentioned and the 28th Dharma ancestors mentioned.

[29:36]

So clearly the uber-message of this koan is you too can be part of this lineage. Auch du kannst Teil dieser Linie sein. And it's true. Und das ist wahr. And I think all of you know that. Okay, now how can we, how does this koan show us how to be part of this lineage? I came into this room with my life experience. And you came into this room with your life experience.

[30:38]

And now with Koan you're saying somehow we can meet in the lineage. Well, that's pretty good if it's true. I mean, I think it's good because I'd like to meet you. And continue meeting you. In a state out before the beginning of time. Maybe a state, some partially outside of culture. Outside of China, Asian culture, European culture. Yeah. What kind of possibility is this? For a moment, let me go back to the phrase.

[32:03]

So the second line of the koan is the phrase especially transmitted outside of doctrine, outside of the sutras. Besonders übertragen außerhalb oder jenseits der Schriften. What the heck would be a phrase especially transmitted outside of the scriptures? Was ist das für ein Satz? Besonders übertragen außerhalb der Schriften. Outside of culture or something like that. Of course, the idea of using a phrase itself is a kind of craft of Dharmic culture.

[33:04]

Yogic culture. Yogic culture. So let's imagine you take before the beginning. Let's see if we can find a phrase here. So on each perception you bring a feeling of before the beginning to it. Before the beginning. Or before the beginning of time. I mean, we can't think before the beginning of time. But we can say the phrase. And strangely enough, sometimes... breath starts to take charge.

[34:22]

It's almost like the senses, the five or six senses, are horses. And they're all ready to go somewhere, get involved in myriad circumstances. But you are kind of, the phrase is kind of like the wrangler, the horse master. That's what a wrangler is, a horse master. We have a little American culture here. The cowboy takes care of the cows, the wrangler takes care of horses. I learned that from my wife who goes riding with a wrangler. So the wrangler, the breath, the wrangler of the breath, holds back the horses of the senses, says come back into the stable.

[35:33]

And the phrase, before the beginning, which we can't think our way into and through, before the beginning, the breath kind of understands. dieses vor dem Anfang, der Atem kann das verstehen. So, wenn du diesen Satz understands a state before the beginning of time where anything can happen. Turtles head for the fire.

[37:14]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[37:16]

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