The title it was chosen for this evening is Dharma Friend. And this has many meanings in Buddhist practice. And of course it means the Buddha, him or herself. The large sense of Buddha. And it also means the friendship of us as practitioners. and the friendship I feel for Genro Sensei, and the friendship I feel for my friend here, Florian, Allen Ginsberg, who isn't a poet, an American poet, who's also a Buddhist.

[01:23]

He was crowned King of the May in Czechoslovakia, I believe. King of May Day. May Day they had a big celebration and he was crowned king. The communist authorities didn't like it, but the people elected him anyway. And he wrote somewhere, what can poetry do? And how do flowers survive? Who can hear the right multitude mind or the mind of many people? And who can hear the heart's music?

[02:40]

And it is, I think, quite strange. Can I come in? Come in. It's quite strange, I think, that we live here and it's so difficult to hear the heart's music. Suzuki Roshi, my teacher, said that sometimes you hear the wind in a tree and it makes a poem, or you make a poem.

[03:47]

And that feeling that, so if sometimes the wind in a tree can make a poem, then any moment can make a poem. And that feeling to me is friendship. What? Some moment that can make a poem or make a friend. And I think that in most people's lives, they don't value friendship enough. I think when man... what we know of the historical Buddha, that when he was a young man, he went out with his friend and companion and charioteer.

[05:09]

And somehow with this friend he saw a sick person and a dying dead person and an old person. And I think it's not incidental that he was with this friend. Because sometimes it's with a friend that allows you to feel something or hear something. So a Dharma friend is sometimes the person who for some reason allows you to start practicing. I know I was once saying goodbye to a friend of mine in San Francisco who was returning to the east coast of America.

[06:27]

who also went back to the east coast of America. And suddenly we were just having a meal in a restaurant. And suddenly he said to me, you know Dick, if we were really serious, we'd do nothing but practice Zen the rest of our life. And I couldn't have said that to myself, quite the same way at least. In any case, when he said it, sitting in this funny booth in a Mexican restaurant, And a booth is like where you have a table in the middle.

[07:47]

We have to get the site exactly correct in German. Anyway, sitting there in that booth as he said it, I felt that's completely true. And I decided It precipitated in me at that moment that I would practice Zen the rest of my life. And the next day, as he was leaving, I called him and thanked him for what he said. And of course he didn't remember. But he was my Dharma friend. He allowed me to hear that. And I think the

[08:47]

probably mythological story of the Buddha holding up a flower, and Mahakashapa smiling, which supposedly started the Zen lineage. This is just friendship. A kind of profound friendship that continues to today in Sasaki Roshi and Genro. And with you. Ivan Ilyich has a statement, Ivan Illich, which goes something like, when we can release our solutions, we need to free ourselves from the illusions that supported our solutions.

[10:36]

Does that translate? And I think particularly in our culture here in the West, And from what I hear from your teacher, maybe especially in Vienna, there are many solutions or illusions that European culture has come to that don't support practice very well. So it's even more important to have a friend or friends who support your practice. I think it's almost impossible actually to do it alone.

[11:45]

And you know that practice, well, that language of course is for communicating between, among people. But you also need language when you're doing zazen and meditating you also use language to communicate to yourself or with yourself. And you find to you find that language only, to a limited extent, allows you to communicate with yourself.

[12:50]

As I said in the seminar I did this weekend, There is a topography of your experience which is much more subtle and varied than language can describe. There is a topography of your experience. You begin to recognize feelings and a subtlety of being that Sie werden Gefühle entdecken und eine feine Form, eine verfeinerte Form zu sein, die über die Sprache hinausgeht.

[14:05]

So you begin to develop, in a sense, a private language to practice with yourself. And then you find the sutras and the koans are speaking this private language. And then you may find that the sutras and the koans speak this private language to you. philosopher named Whitehead who says something like only don't obscure the vast darkness. And there's another saying of Dung Shan's, although you do not hear it,

[15:23]

Do not hinder that which hears it. Although you do not hear it, do not hinder that which hears it. Do not obscure that which hears it. And this is also what a friend can do who practices. They begin to have a sense of this language of practice which isn't verbal. And you can feel the support of that in the way they are with you. But this kind of friendship requires quite a lot of courage from you. For in our society we violate the boundaries of separateness with apparel.

[16:43]

We violate the boundaries of separateness with peril. It's dangerous to violate the boundaries of separateness. I'm sorry the individuality we have we protect and if someone violates or challenges that individuality usually we won't see them anymore or we'll punish them So friendship requires some courage of letting your boundaries go.

[18:00]

I think if you look at the development of life on our planet, sort of biologically, The development of life itself on the planet is a big... biological jump or quantum jump. And then the development of intelligence and consciousness is another big jump. And then the development of intelligence and consciousness is another big jump. And the development of a spiritual life is another jump.

[19:17]

And I think your ability to make a jump in a sense into another person and your ability or a jump into the kind of trust that's required for a teaching lineage to occur. oder ein Vertrauen in eine gelehrte Lehre kann sich daraus entwickeln. Das ist etwas, für das die meisten Leute nicht bereit sind oder was sie oft nicht schaffen. It's possible, but it takes some courage. Es ist möglich, aber es erfordert einen gewissen Mut.

[20:21]

And also, I assume most of you are practicing Buddhism. And the idea of self is replaced in Buddhism by the five skandhas. The five skandhas are form, feelings, perception, impulses or something that gathers things together, and consciousness. So you can analyze everything into one of these five. Anything you feel, see, experience can be analyzed into these five and there's no idea of self there.

[21:32]

And so it also becomes a kind of substitute for self. Because instead of energizing each, energizing the sense of self and its separateness, You energize each perception. And this is part of a practice called one-act samadhi. But when you begin to experience these things in this way, the boundaries of self, of inside and outside, begin to be not...

[22:57]

There's no clear boundary between inside and outside. So the idea of person can be larger than just one person. So the three of us could make one person maybe. Or Genro and Sasaki Roshi make one person maybe. This is also a sense that Genro is not real. And Sasaki Roshi is not real. Between them is real. Kind of in-betweenness. So as I often say, I think I should remind people in the West often,

[24:12]

That in Buddhism, space is not seen as separating things. Space is seen as connecting things. There's a word, ma, in Japanese. Space. But it's something you have when you think about that the universe has no boundaries. You have a certain and that feeling is ma. And that feeling and openness to our Lord in which we don't know the boundaries that I think if you can get the feeling for

[25:31]

you'll have more sense of what is meant by a Dharma friend. Someone who shares a larger sense of person with you who may not be somebody you can, oh, he or she understands me, but rather someone who is a catalyst in some way in your life, or with someone that you share a sense of the vast darkness or a mystery. And a maha bodhisattva can be understood as a larger sense of several people

[26:50]

or a feeling of a nation or a feeling here in this Zen center that allows a Buddha to be recognized or that allows the possibility of enlightenment. And I say a person because in some ways this larger sense of identity functions as a person or functions as a friend that supports you.

[28:05]

In other words, I might feel something from you that's not very different from feeling something from 10 of you or all of you. So a Dharma friend may also be something that several people share and support in practice. So one definition of Sangha or Buddhist community can be anyone that shares this Dharma language. It's said that if you lack the power of samadhi, you will cower at death's door.

[29:25]

If you lack samadhi power, anything that overwhelms you, anything that... Well, if you lack samadhi power, you will be fearful at death's door. So this Dharma language is also the language of samadhi. Or self-joyous samadhi is another expression. Or the dharma gate of ease and joy. So I think when Allen Ginsberg speaks about the heart's music, he means something like, why can't we all know this Dharma gate of ease and joy?

[30:53]

Why do we make it so difficult for ourselves? Also, a Dharma friend can be a painter or a writer, somebody you read about or look at their paintings. I think Cezanne, the way he painted movement, or Matisse painted movement, Space in a way that is very similar to Buddhist space, I think. Anyway, you can get some support from some poet or writer or painter. And I think the practice of Dharma Friend is to recognize and acknowledge this gift.

[32:23]

Gary Schneider, who's a poet and friend of Allen Ginsberg, maybe as a little aside, I can say that Gary Schneider, Allen Ginsberg, And Jack Kerouac and Philip Whelan, who is a disciple of mine, were the first four sort of beatniks. And in American Buddhism they are definitely our Dharma friends. They prepared the way for many people to practice and they gave a kind of permission to practice. And this permission is very important. It's again what the Dharma friend does for you is to give you permission.

[34:01]

It may not be somebody you spend a lot of time with but somehow they give you permission. And you may give them permission or you may give someone else permission who gives them permission. The sense of this kind of shared consciousness is very important. Again, Gary Schneider, this poet, who in Jack Kerouac's book, The Dharma Bums, is called Jaffe Ryder, Jack Kerouac wrote a book called The Dharma Bums, and Jack Kerouac wrote a book called The Dharma Bums.

[35:13]

Bums. The Dharma Bums. Bums. Dharma Landstreicher. Okay, Dharma Landstreicher. Hi, here to come to Dharma Landstreicher. Just at the right moment. So anyway, in that book he's called Jaffee Rider. And he studied Zen in Japan with one of the famous Rinzai Roshis. Rinzai Roshi. And just before this Roshi died his last words to Gary were there's only two things to Zen practice.

[36:18]

Zazen and sweeping the temple. And it doesn't matter how big the temple is. So Gary's been sweeping everywhere. You start at the door and you go out into the street and so forth. And people see your practice that way. And this sense of knowing your temple is everywhere and you are sweeping it is also the activity of the Dharma friend. Now, in emphasizing this kind of friendship so much, I don't want... Hi!

[37:46]

I don't want to forget... There's a chair, you can sit right there. I don't want to forget aloneness. Suzuki Roshi, my teacher, says you should experience things through your body by yourself. And if you're going to practice zazen, as your practice becomes more settled and deeper, you find you have to go alone. you begin to have again experiences or a topography which you can't compare to others' experience.

[38:56]

So if your practice becomes deeper, you become quite... used to being alone, to not comparing your experience to others, and to developing a deep... They've just made friends. And... Sorry to interrupt. I interrupted the translation. Well, you're always interrupting me. No, I'm sorry. So this... So this faculty... You know, one of the main...

[40:03]

chants or teachings that my lineage uses. It's called the Sandokai. And it has a line in it which is and it has a sentence in it something like the secret teaching like baby talk and then it says Baba Wawa Uku Muku Baba Waka Uku Baba Waka Uku Muku Baba Waka Uku Muku It's untranslatable. Yeah. So this is Baddowawa Utamuku here.

[41:43]

So one of the powers or faculties of practice is this power or faculty of being alone without being lonely. So as I say, being your own author, you have your own authority by authoring yourself. But still, there's a But still it's an aloneness. And sometimes you may feel a deep sadness at the illusions you were going away. But this alone being, knowing this aloneness becomes again something that speaks to your Dharma friend.

[42:50]

your aloneness speaks to their aloneness. Rumi has a poem or a statement when the ocean is seeking you don't run to the language river. And I think that when that ocean is seeking us and we don't

[44:13]

run to the language river we can feel that ocean and our friend who also doesn't always seek the language river. Rumi also has a little statement which is something like, would you tell me that secret again? If you won't tell me, I'll cry. And you'll say, Now I'll tell you. Now I'll tell you. So that's enough for now.

[45:27]

Is it okay? Just stop and take a break? Sure. And then maybe take a break for a few minutes.

[45:33]

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