Sometimes I feel, yeah, I'm on an altar with you and not just in the zendo. And I see Beate's sister's name is on the altar. Yeah, not that we're dying, but yeah, maybe... A process is, yeah, ought to be, can be going on in Sashin. Yeah, it's not unrelated to living, of course, and dying. Last night I said, suddenly old, suddenly young.

[01:08]

Yes, we find ourselves old or young. I think there's a new song, a fairly recent song of Mick Jagger, he says something like, you look away and when you look back you're old. How did it happen? What happened? No, I wouldn't, of course, be speaking about this because of my age. Or not entirely. It's just the case. And I'm, you know, I'm, we're here together in a, let's say, I call it a territory of experience.

[02:10]

And I'm in this teisho, in a territory of experience. But I'm, yeah, and I'm not quite in a territory of expression. Yeah, I kind of like that, but it's also a little uncomfortable. What I mean is that, you know, as you've heard me say before, it takes me a while. Sometimes, yeah, some months. or even a year or two, before I really settle on how to say something. But since experience isn't contained in expression, Experience is always going where it wants to go.

[03:31]

It doesn't stick to expression. Oh, you look different than the translator yesterday. But you sound good. Thank you. But I'm always trying to find out how to extend expression to experience. Yeah, so that's what I'm doing today. Yeah. Sometimes Sashin can be like a judgment day.

[04:32]

Day of judgment. Is that like the thing that God does? Yeah, the last day. God does. What are you doing, God? Oh, I'm judging. I've got nothing better to do. Create and judge, you know. Mm-hmm. Except it's not a judgment day, it's usually two or three days, maybe the fourth, fifth and sixth days or something. I can't say what days it is, but one of the reasons the sashin is seven days is that it does coincide with a kind of process, with a process, which in extreme form let's call karmic vomit. You laugh, it's true. You laugh, it's true. And you can usually kind of, by the sixth and seventh day, sort of rinse your mouth out and start feeling okay again.

[05:58]

Anyway, not always, but certainly in our earlier sashins, there's a lot of stuff that often comes up. It still happens, but I do remember, especially in the early days, I remember it vividly. It's really a process, not necessarily, and I have no interest in previous lives, but it's a process of going through your previous lives in this life. In English, the word you can use is recapitulation. Is it the same in German? We have the same word, but I'm not sure that it means the same.

[07:00]

It means to put a new head on it. Or the head in a new direction. Actually not, it doesn't. Anyway. Okay. Now, When we put on our okesa or our raksu, we put it on top of our head. That's the custom. And then we chant now. You can say it. Now we open Buddha's robe.

[08:01]

Yeah, I think we chant here mine, but I changed it. Originally it's robe, and I've changed it in Crestown back to robe. Now we open Buddha's robe, a field far beyond form and emptiness. The Tathagata's teaching, in this case the Buddha as one with everything in its coming and going. Almost a scientific term. Everything in its all at onceness. the Tathagata's teaching for all being.

[09:21]

Now, why do we suppose you put it on your head? Now, sometimes it's, I mean, I've had people ask me, particularly people who practice Tibetan Buddhism or Indian, Sri Aurobindo, stuff like that. Yeah, why doesn't Zen talk about the chakras? And I've even seen scholars say it's not part of the teaching in Zen. I've read scholars who say it's not part of the teaching. But then why do we put the raksu or the kukesa on top of our head? Oh, it's probably so our hands are free to gassho. No, it's because this is the crown chakra.

[10:31]

But it is interesting why Zen doesn't make these things specific. I mean explicit, rather. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's not something we'd even talk about much until you actually began to feel this area tickle and itch and etc. Another sign of developing practice, maturing practice. And you begin to tell when you're in a conversation with somebody, say for example lecturing or whatever, when this is very active and when it's not so active, this area.

[11:33]

So in my love for lay practice and for each of you, and perhaps my mistaken practice, love for you and late practice. Yeah, maybe my mistaken love. I mean, you know, undue, I mean, stupid compassion. But I'm... Sorry. It's all right. You're great. But I'm, you know, on this altar with you, so I'm, you know, sacred. Okay. Okay. Anyway, I'm devoting my life to trying to make practice work for not just male monks.

[13:02]

Because normally you do not speak about these things I'm speaking about, as you can see in the koan we've been studying. Unless the person you're practicing with already knows about this and you can feel they know about it, then you talk about it. Es sei denn, die Person, mit der du darüber sprichst, die hat schon ein bestimmtes Wissen darüber, und du spürst auch, dass sie ein Wissen darüber hat. Know about it isn't right, because know about it is stupid. Knowing about it is a problem. That's the problem. Aber das darüber Wissen, das ist falsch. Das kann man so nicht sagen. Wenn man darüber weiß, oder wenn man das Gefühl hat, man hat Wissen darüber, dann ist das selbst das Problem. Because then you compare yourself to the practice or to others, and you know, it's just so... So it's not about knowing, it's about, yeah, this becomes your territory of experience.

[14:16]

Yeah. But we're also not used to the grammar, the language. What if one of you were standing there and I came by you and I said, Dumb cough, you idiot. You'd feel it. You'd say... What's wrong? Or I whispered in your ear. You'd feel something. I hope.

[15:18]

But if you put your robe on your head every day, but you don't feel much. It's just my robe on my head and it's getting dirty. Because you... I thought what you said. I know. Actually, if you look at it, it's all oily. I mean, my head. But we somehow don't... I mean, the idea is, if you go through the background of it, is if you go through certain ritual acts, the ritual acts open you up. You know the maze in the middle of the central aisle of Chartres is the rose window. Your body knows it. Okay. So you read this koan.

[16:20]

Number 40. In the book of records. Thank you. Heaven and earth and I share the same root. Myriad things and I, literally 10,000 things and I, share the same body. And I showed you this step. What's this stuff? The chakras. There's the base of the spine chakra.

[17:23]

This chakra. More this one and this chakra. And there's the backbone. Isn't it obvious? What do you think I'm doing with this thing? Waving it around in front of you. I dub thee, sir. I don't know. Heaven and earth and I share the same root. Then it says in the commentary at the beginning of the poem, Und dann heißt es im Kommentar, im Beginn des Gedichtes, Sehen und Hören, Gewahrsein und Wissen, are not the same thing.

[18:40]

Okay. Now, there's been articles recently in the newspapers about the fact that they discovered in Guatemala a new Mayan temple. Yeah, and it's a, you know, I don't know much about Mayan culture, but it's quite interesting. One of the images they have is that a tree holding the world. And the roots of the tree going into a kind of underground. It's an image much like the Alaya Vijnana in Buddhism. And if you've read any of Murakami's novels, he's really working with the Alaya Vijnana, though I think Western people think he's working with the unconscious, but he's much more working with the view of a human being as rooted in the Alaya Vijnana.

[19:57]

Murakami. Well, you know, here's a culture which lasted from prior to 900 B.C. to about 900 A.D., the Mayan culture. 900 AD. After. It ended very suddenly. They don't know why it ended, but it seems to have been suddenly cities were abandoned. And the Spanish came. Anyway, they had a writing system that goes back a thousand years before Christ or farther. Or they write and they wrote in hieroglyphs or glyphs.

[21:05]

Yeah, which is somewhat related to, somewhat similar to Chinese and Japanese writing. I mean in the concept. And what's interesting to me about the hieroglyphs is that they're a form of art. So the writer, the scribe, whatever he is, makes them sort of the way he wants to. He works within a particular, he or she works within a particular lexicon, but yeah, there's quite a lot of variety.

[22:07]

And that, you know, makes me think of Japanese grass writing, for instance. Grass writing. I don't know what that is. Well, instead of doing regular calligraphy, it's like just... It's little quick lines like blades of grass. So it's called grass writing. Even to me. Do you use the English word grass or is there a German word grass? Oh, the same word, Kress? Yes. She's, I'm learning German right and left here. Which many Japanese people, very cultivated Japanese people can't read.

[23:13]

They can't figure what is, what's he trying to say? You know, I've had many scrolls translated. And I say, well, this is probably this and that might be this. This is different than our way of thinking. We think our aim is language is meant to communicate. But the Mayan script is meant often, I think, to make you ponder, to wonder, what could it be? Yes, so the Japanese often write in a way that makes you wonder.

[24:20]

The meaning is not clear. And the feeling of the calligrapher is in what he's writing. I remember when I got one of my first lessons on how to write Ichi, just the character, kanji, one, which is just a horizontal line. This woman said to me, when you put the brush down, imagine you're entering a secret place. And then pull the brush across with a feeling of relief that you're finally there.

[25:33]

And then when you lift the brush off, feel like a big sky has appeared. Oh, that's just one line. But your emotions are in it. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, this is not a pipe. You know that the painter Magritte, René Magritte, and he did a painting of a pipe which says this is not a pipe. There's even a company which makes shirts which

[26:35]

I have a shirt which says in it, this is not a shirt. I still put it on. So why I'm talking about this is because I'm trying to give you a feeling of the territory of experience in which koans are operating. Five to five. I haven't got there yet. Yeah, and now if I say, this is not a microphone, we think somebody's lying. But, you know, in this way of thinking that's common to Asian yogic cultures, everyone can see it's a microphone, so they assume I'm saying something real.

[28:05]

They don't assume I'm making a mistake. So it's a kind of riff, it's a kind of contrapuntal statement. Riff? Riff is like the guitar, right? No, riff is like in music, what would you say when you just do a... Oh, this solo? Yeah, well, sort of, yeah. Yeah. Just use riff. It's a kind of riff, but the other word I didn't get. Contrapuntal in music. Okay. This is like that. Koans often will say something's good, bad, or is something else, and it's up to you to figure it out.

[29:17]

It's not attempting to simply communicate. It's making you engage. Koans often say something like, this is good or this is bad, or something completely different, and it's up to you to figure it out. The koans are not made to communicate, but to think about it. A friend of mine is a real well-informed, brilliant philosopher. And if I talk about koans or something like that, and I use a metaphor, he assumes as a Westerner, even though he studied practice in Indian philosophy, The metaphor is a completely coherent communication process in which all aspects communicate something. So the metaphor is like another version of saying this is a microphone.

[30:34]

But koans are often not like that. You know... You know, maybe Otmar doesn't want us to walk in some part of the garden for some reason. So he drops a stone in our path. Yeah, or he ties the cat up there across the path. It's not a metaphor. He just doesn't want us to walk there. Yeah, so he took whatever was handy, a stone or a cat, and put it in our path.

[31:42]

So Cohen's just put something down sometime. You deal with it. I'm tired of talking. But they get so used to this way of thinking that they just say things which are not exactly metaphors, but sometimes represent a teaching, an experience. that represent a teaching or a practice or an experience. Okay, so we have seeing, hearing, Awareness, knowledge are not the same thing.

[32:51]

Now, when you read that sentence in a koan, you're supposed to wonder, what the heck does this mean? Seeing and hearing, yeah, they're not the same. Awareness, knowledge, yeah, they're not the same. Seeing and knowledge, what's that relationship? And so, you know, you kind of like look at things, you hear things. And you notice that you actually really are putting things together.

[33:54]

Yeah, it's sort of you see a bird and you hear a bird and you think bird. But the statement says they're not the same thing. Well, maybe you... hear the bird in a different realm than the seeing of the bird. Consciousness tends to conflate everything. But let's just hear the bird in one realm and maybe... There's a big gap because we put it together as if the six, five senses, five physical senses made a complete picture.

[34:58]

But there's big gaps between. For example, I often say, there's the 17th episode of Dallas. If you had a television set, you could tune it in. And how many, if you each had a cell phone, you could all tune in a whole bunch of cell phones that are around in this room. They're in between seeing and hearing, smelling. They're in between seeing, hearing and smelling. So maybe there's something in between the seeing of the bird and the hearing of the bird.

[36:04]

So it takes some time just to open up a sentence like that. Yeah. Maybe we can sit in this space and I hope, I'd like to continue tomorrow, we'll see. Thank you for translating.

[36:43]

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