Since Myoken Roshi asked me to speak about hearing, hearing. Yeah, since we have these lovely birds. Songbirds. It's a good example. And I think it often happens in Zazen in the morning with first light you hear the birds announcing. And maybe you feel something good. A kind of, sometimes a kind of bliss. And when we hear the birds if there is a kind of bliss it's not really because you're hearing the birds it's because in zazen

[01:18]

you're hearing your own hearing. And for some reason, when you hear your own hearing, it's often accompanied by a feeling of bliss. A physical bliss. And I think it took me years to accept the development of bliss in Zazen. Because I kind of put it as, what's that feeling, you know? But when I started noticing, yes, in Zazen I have a kind of bliss. As soon as I allowed it or gave it a certain kind of attention, A non-interfering attention.

[02:30]

This bliss began to be the quality of zazen all the time. Now, one of the initiations into this feeling is what happens during zazen when you hear something. It can be anything. I mean, a bell or noises or coughing. But the birds... Somehow in there, just it appears. We feel something. Okay.

[03:30]

Now what do I mean by you're hearing your own hearing? Well, you're not hearing what the birds... what other birds are hearing. You're hearing only what your ears can hear. Birds have a much more complex hearing and vocal range of sound than we human beings can hear. And some birds can sing two or three notes at once, which we can't really hear. We hear what we're hearing then is not what the birds are singing. We're hearing that part that our ears can hear. So really you're hearing your own hearing, hearing.

[04:32]

Now, with the sense, with the oral sense, A-U-R-A-L sense, we can feel more clearly this hearing of our own hearing. And hearing is rather special because it doesn't have comparison. It's just the sound is in your ears. And listening is quite special, because there is no similarity, only listening. So from your experience, kind of everywhere at once. But when you really feel your own, hearing your own hearing, and you know that you're only hearing your own hearing, sometimes somehow there's a particular satisfaction knowing you're hearing only your own hearing. Knowing that, you know that

[05:52]

There's a mystery. Because of the great deal you're not hearing. You're not hearing what the birds are hearing. So to fully hear your own hearing is a deeply satisfying experience. And it's simultaneous with a feeling of the mystery that your hearing doesn't reach. And the feeling of a mystery in the midst of knowing, it's also deeply satisfying. Now this applies to all your senses. When I'm seeing you, Right now. I'm only seeing what my eyes allow me to see. Yeah. I just had a cataract operation a week ago or so.

[07:09]

And it's very interesting. It's so clear that the brain is creating my scene. If you give people glasses that turn everything upside down or screwy, very quickly they adjust and it looks normal. So the problem with having a cataract was that the world looked normal. As long as it was fairly static. It turns out that I had only about 50% vision, 40% vision in this eye. But my brain was able to create a very convincing picture with only 40% of the information. Until I was driving at night. And then there's a lot of information coming in half-light. Cars, you know. And my eye was simply not supplying enough information that my brain couldn't make the picture.

[08:27]

So it was interesting, because I had the experience of seeing exactly as I always see. And yet, if it got complex... My brain couldn't deal with a limited amount of information, particularly with bright lights. So now it's quite interesting to have. I'm becoming bionic. Bionic is, you know, like a robot. Plastic lenses, you know. But it's like... Everything is different. It's kind of great. So the more I am aware that what I'm seeing is my own seeing of you and not you, then there's a mystery. It's not just that my eye isn't supplying enough information for my brain.

[09:37]

My eye is only supplying the information my eye can see. And there's a lot going on in this room. I mean, in most rooms nowadays there's cell phone calls and television programs and things like that. Here in the mountains, I don't know. But the senses, we're looking at Koan, I think, 2021. in the shoyuroku with one who's not busy. But koan 20 in the same shoyuroku is very important for our lineage to study. And it talks about the senses as five pieces of a pie. But not the whole pie. Our five or six senses, if you count mine, only give us six versions of the world.

[10:38]

And there's many more things going on that don't fall into those six categories. And so if you begin to know and feel the categories in which you're seeing, you actually open yourself up to feel the mystery of what is just outside or at the edge of the senses. So you have this strange satisfaction of knowing what, like right now when I'm seeing you, I'm fully, my senses are fully engaged in seeing you. Knowing, seeing, hearing. And that's particularly true if I have what I call no other location mind. Say that you're driving a car.

[12:05]

And you're listening to the radio or something. Thinking about something. And your body's driving quite well. And suddenly... A car ahead of you on the ice starts going around. Immediately, the radio's gone, the person next to you's gone, and you have no other location in mind, or you're going to not survive, maybe. In such situations it's essential to have a no other location mind. But it's from the point of view of the bodhisattva it's essential to always have a no other location mind. The world is always in the midst of an accident. Everything is interdependent and moving. So with a no other location mind, you can use that as a phrase, at least in English.

[13:15]

Because you can feel when suddenly there's another location or something. So when there's no other location mind, and you And then your senses are most fully present. And then the mystery is also most fully present. The mystery of just what's around, in between, and outside, and above the senses. So that's a little riff on hearing, hearing. Now usually when I do a seminar, You know, Buddhism is of course zazen and mindfulness. And the dynamic of mindfulness is attention to attention itself.

[14:21]

But, as we see from these koans, Zen Buddhism is also meeting and speaking. All these stories are about meeting and speaking. And all these stories are in the context of what I call an autodidactic apprenticeship. Apprenticeship, like you two violin makers work together, or a... Apprenticeship is a face-to-face relationship. Yeah. You know. Anyway. So these koans assume... that these people are living together for five or ten years.

[15:26]

And And they're meeting and speaking. And the meeting is not just saying hello or something. The meeting is also just being in the same space together. Now, that's considered the ideal and fundamental way to communicate. eventually embody the practice. It may not be actually. But it was the way it was. I mean just imagine if you had to walk here from Budapest. You'd probably stay a few days. You wouldn't go back tonight. And that was the way the world was. You walked places. I have a donkey, I don't know, or a horse, but generally you walked.

[16:38]

And when you got somewhere, you stayed. And it was considered the sort of minimum serious stay was 10 years. I'm sorry to disappoint you. But we have a different kind of situation now. We can acquaint ourselves with many different teachings and teachers. And we can come and go and move around. Yeah. How do we develop a practice? Because essentially, even if you're ordained, you're really leading a lay life. So the great challenge of Western Buddhism, in my opinion, is adept lay practice. How do we create a way to practice that functions for people who are fundamentally lay people.

[17:46]

Me too. And Suzuki Roshi recognized that even as growing up in a temple from the time he was a teenager, from the time he was born, because his father was a priest, he still basically had a lay person's life. So, meeting and speaking. All these koans are about meeting and speaking. And what we're doing here is meeting and speaking. In a particular kind of context. Now, what I try to do if we in just today, or in a somewhat different way if we had three days, say? Since we're not living together the next ten years or months, I am actually going rather against the tradition.

[18:51]

The tradition is to say as little as possible, and let people discover everything for themselves. And if they are close to discovering it for themselves, send them off in the wrong direction. And if they spend a year or two in the wrong direction, they'll learn more than being in the right direction sometimes. And if they're good enough, they'll find their way back and they'll come to you and say, you sent me in the wrong direction. Okay. Well, you can only have sent somebody in the wrong direction for three or four years if you're going to live together for ten years. So I promise not to send you in the wrong direction. Just in one day. Maybe for a few minutes I'll send you in the wrong direction. All right. Okay. So I'm trying to condense a lot of meeting and speaking into one morning and one afternoon.

[20:08]

And now I'd like to say something about the text of the koan. And I think in this light I want to have Like glasses. Oh! You've done this before, it seems. Okay. Having shed illusion and enlightenment, were you given the text in English or in Hungarian? English.

[21:11]

We have most of these translated into German, but that doesn't help. Okay. So, Having shed illusion and enlightenment. Now you want to, if you're... Studying this. Practicing it. You want to just kind of read it through and get a general picture. And you want to see what sticks with you. Do any particular words or phrases stick with you? And you trust what sticks to you. And sometimes it's a phrase that doesn't make any sense, but somehow it sticks to you. And the practice is to, you know,

[22:16]

Allow it to stick. Yeah. And sometimes it's a fish hook. For an unknown fish. And you don't know what fish this fish hook is for, but it's a fish hook. It's a kind of hook. Why does it stick? It's stuck in you. But you don't know what it means. And then maybe sometime you're with some people and particularly a kind of good conversation two or three of the people are really almost in the same mental bodily space and one or two people are not quite in the feeling yeah but maybe they're on the edge of it and suddenly right In the middle of the conversation, this strange fish swims through the air.

[23:26]

And you suddenly realize that that hook just cut. And there's some understanding of... feeling for what happened that you wouldn't have had unless you'd stayed with that phrase that stuck with you. So the first thing to do is to just go through the koan and sort of lightly look at it. And see what sticks. Or what feels interesting or peculiar. Then the next thing is to read it As if it were true. Well, not exactly true.

[24:27]

But it is what it is. These exist because some extraordinary people put these together a thousand years ago. And they were in the depth of their mind, body and heart trying to do something for us. So you have to ask yourself, what the heck are they doing? So you just take this first phrase. Having shed Illusion and enlightenment. Well, illusion, delusion, enlightenment, shed. Like a snake sheds its skin. Well, maybe it's like shedding the body sheaths.

[25:32]

What is shedding illusion enlightenment? That state of mind is Neither in illusion nor enlightenment? Or does it mean not being interested in illusion or enlightenment? Or not caring? I mean, does the Buddha care whether he's enlightened or not? I'm enlightened, not a Buddha doesn't care. What does it mean? So you have to really kind of ponder it. Would you shed illusion enlightenment? No, I want to be enlightened. Are you kidding? I'm not going to shed enlightenment. At least now I'm not going to shed it until I've got it. So you have to kind of just stay with a phrase like that for a while. And then? Then you go to the next one. Maybe you spend... Really a day or two with that first phrase only.

[26:42]

And just keep it in mind. Incubate it. Having shed. Okay, I'll wash the dishes. Having shed. Okay, like that. Then you go to having cut off body and holy and ordinary. Okay, having cut off holy and ordinary. Well, that refers to the Bodhidharma and the earlier koan about Bodhidharma and the emperor. But do you have some idea in yourself, in the background of your mind, of holiness or... And then you notice that these are doubles or parallels or dyads. Or opposites. There's illusion and enlightenment.

[27:51]

There's holy and ordinary. So now you immediately have the feeling this koan is going to be about two things, the relationship of two things. And then you wonder what's the connection between holy and illusion and enlightenment and ordinary. Then you go to the third phrase. Although there are not so many things. Well, there are many things, lots of things. What do you mean there's not so many things? Who are you trying to fool? So you have to have a sort of debate with the text, a kind of argument. There's lots of things. But you want to take it seriously at the same time. Why does he say there's not so many things? Okay. And really, I think it's worthwhile spending a few days on, there's not so many things.

[29:05]

You look at the, I'm looking at the leaves outside that triangle and diamond, diamonds of the window. And those two rectangles in the middle. Behind that there's the leaves. Yeah. But say I bring the concept to that scene, which I'm seeing with all of you, too. There's not so many things. What does it mean, things I find important? It means I can only notice things in the category of the five or six senses. Okay, there's not so many things.

[30:07]

So you really want to spend some time with this phrase. And then you go to the next. Setting up host and guest. Létrehozni a vendéget és a házigazdát. Setting up hosting guests. Létrehozni a házigazdát és a vendéget. If you're Hungarian, the world has been set up for you a certain way. Ha magyar vagy, akkor ez a világ egy bizonyos módon van létrehozva számodra. genetically and culturally and so forth. There's a certain feel you can probably recognize at the airport, another Hungarian maybe.

[31:11]

I certainly can get off an airplane from America and hardly know where I am and I'm on one of those moving walkways And all the people coming in the other direction. Absolutely not Americans. Europeans. The feel is different. The atmosphere. The way the clothes hang on the body. The way the cheeks are shaped by the language you speak. Okay. So that's, you're being set up as a European. I'm set up as an American.

[32:11]

Oh, sorry. And I have nothing to do with Bush. I've become half black though now that my president is Obama. My high school was half black so why can't I be half black? So to set up to set up now what are we setting up? We're setting up host and guest. Host and guest. Host and guest. The idea of host and guest is throughout these koans. Now, we discussed this morning not inviting your thoughts to tea. Aha. So discursive thoughts are the guest.

[33:17]

A mind resting in intent or intention is the host. And the host might invite the guest to tea. But the host might not invite the thoughts to tea. But if you're a nice host, you know, you're polite. You invite the thoughts to tea, but don't stay too long. All right, so what this is saying is this lineage of ours, the Dung Shan lineage, Sets up as a teaching device and so does Rinzai, Linji too. Sets up a way to look at the world that is called this pulse of host and guest. Which is also Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara.

[34:22]

The inward pulse of wisdom. There's no place to go and nothing to do. And the outward pulse of welcome. Yes. Whatever you want. Whatever you need, I will give you. So that's compassion. So compassion and wisdom is a pulse. It's an activity. We're not talking about something static. We're talking about an activity. So there's a pulse of wisdom and compassion. An inward impulse. An in-folded mind and an out-folded mind. Okay. So now we know this koan is saying in Yunyan's lineage we set up as a practice inward turning and outward turning mind.

[35:39]

So already now this introduction is suggesting discover this inward turning and outward turning mind. Discover that wisdom and compassion are two forms of a pulse. Okay, so we set up host and guest and we distinguish noble and mean. Now, With the terrible trouble you've had in Europe with nobles. Trying to get free of a political system so based. You don't want to be noble or mean. So what does it mean noble or mean? and me.

[36:57]

And is a special house. Okay, a special house means in this case our lineage. Okay, so now we're talking about not being set up as a European or a Hungarian or a German or a half Indian, half American, you know, half Irish. What's wrong with you? Just the way it is. No. Now we're talking about setting up the world as seen through a particular lineage. So the teaching here is If you're going to know the world, you've got to know it through certain forms.

[37:58]

Even to know it through a freedom from form is setting up freedom from form. Freedom from form is also a concept. So even if you're working with some kind of freedom from form, that's also a concept. So now this koan is saying if you want to know Buddhism, Buddhism is a particular way to look at the world. Buddhism tries to be a way to look at the world. that is as close to the way the world is actually exists as possible.

[38:59]

Now Wittgenstein at the beginning of his Tractatus says the world is all that is the case. Milág az, ami a There's no additional, nothing added. Just the world is all that is the case. Okay, how do you know that? But even to say, I want to know things just as they are, is setting up a particular way of viewing the world. Is that make sense? Do you understand? You can't be... I mean, you might not want all these ideas.

[39:59]

But it's part of Buddhism. And it's part of Buddhism because you're already filled with ideas. My... The brain was able to make a complete picture, seemingly complete picture of the world because it's full of ideas. All I need is a little corner of a milk bottle and I can reproduce the whole milk bottle in my brain even though my eye only sees a part of the milk bottle. Even though my eye only sees a part of something, a 56 Ford Fender, Opel Fender, I can reproduce the whole car in my brain. So I'm already full of ideas. My eye is going to see things the way it usually sees things. So stairs tend to, not these stairs, but stairs tend to be the same size because, you know, you can just walk on them, your body walks on them.

[41:18]

If you built a house and you made all the doorknobs at two and a half feet Everyone would be reaching for doorknobs at three feet or something. What the hell is a doorknob doing down there? So consciousness' job is to see the world as predictable? And so the brain supplies us mostly with a predictable world. But the world is not predictable in any fundamental sense, only in a conventional sense. So how do you see the non-predictable world? Okay. So our special house, our lineage is to try to see the world as non-predictable.

[42:38]

No. Now he says, it's not that there is no giving of jobs on assessment of ability. It means of course there is some distinction with what people do. But then it says, but how do you understand siblings? Brothers and sisters, brothers and brothers, sisters and sisters. And maybe Yunyan and Daowu are brothers. With the same breath. Okay, so now it's saying that you and I are somehow siblings. And we're siblings not because we're born from the same parents, but we're siblings more deeply related even than genetic brothers and sisters.

[43:43]

Because we are Actualize our mind through our breath. So if you set up a separate house, a particular lineage, this lineage is that we somehow breathe together. I know you should stop pretty soon. But I'll continue a little bit. Again, when I was in the first months of practicing or first year of practicing yourself I worked for the University of California and I saw a big crowd and I went to see what the heck's going on and

[44:46]

I knew the building well and it was so many people I couldn't get in the door so I climbed in the window because I used the building a lot to organize things. And there was this funny little Indian guy with long hair and he had lots of Hawaiian leis around him. Flowers all over the place. And he was talking. Everybody thought it was great. And then he went outside. And I just went along with the crowd. I had to go home. I lived in San Francisco. Suddenly I found myself standing beside this guy. And he was about to get in the car. And they were discussing, they were driving to Canada or something like that. This was back in the 60s. And suddenly the thought appeared to my mind, he's pretty good.

[46:10]

And I thought, why do I think he's pretty good? It wasn't because he had all these flowers around his neck. I realized I'd coordinated my breathing with his breathing. And once my breathing was in tune with his breathing, I could feel his mind, and I could see that his mind was pretty good. And this was the Maharishi. Before the Beatles discovered him. But this is another of those recognitions that practice was changing me. So the first thing I did with a person, which I didn't really realize until that moment that I was doing, is that I wasn't thinking about a person when I first met them. My initial mind was a mind rooted in my breath that was exploring other people through their breath.

[47:11]

That's a special lineage. So how do you understand siblings with the same breath? So siblings somehow do we have the same breath? So with this phrase you begin to do what I'm suggesting. You notice you know I can't And being with him as a translator, I'm feeling his body breathing.

[48:17]

And if we're somehow breathing together, you know, in America and in English, We're a little afraid of breathing together. The word conspire or conspiracy means to breathe together. But if you're involved in a conspiracy in the United States, they can put you in jail for breathing together. Siblings with the same breasts. And adjoining branches. Adjoining branches. So now if you go through this carefully like this, you'll probably discover that this koan is about the lineage, but is also about the horizontal lineage as well as the vertical lineage.

[49:26]

So, Deshimaru Roshi represents the vertical lineage, but Myoken and I are adjoining branches. And we're the horizontal lineage. And we're all right now the horizontal lineage. And there's how many people here? Fifty? Something like that. How many people connect me to Buddha? And each lineage is a somewhat different. Okay. And it's inaccurate, the lineage, as it's counted. It's inaccurate. It's mythological. But it's fairly accurate back to, I don't know, 1500 years.

[50:28]

That's pretty long. Certainly accurate for a thousand years. But however it's counted... on my lineage papers, there's 90 persons between myself and Buddha. Well, there's 50 people here. Add 40 more and we're connected with the Buddha. And do you I have that game where you whisper something, and then you whisper something, and you... And by the time it's over there, it's really quite different. Okay, but this game of whispering the secret teaching is we whisper for 10 years. So I whisper for 10 years to you. And I hope you get it straight after 10 years. And then you whisper to him for 10 years. And then you whisper to him for 10 years. That's the lineage.

[51:45]

But it's the vertical lineage through time. And the teaching is fairly intact through this process. So we have the same breath and the joining branches. So this koan is about, we can know by this point, it's about the two truths. And if it's about the two truths, it's also about the five ranks. And it's about the vertical and horizontal lineage. So that's the kind of big concept. It's like, can you see the forest for the trees? Do you have that expression? Yeah, well... It's hard when you just see the trees to see the forest. You need to kind of step back to get a feel for the forest when you can only see the trees.

[52:50]

So the feel for the forest is the concept. Don't invite your thoughts to tea. This is a special house. That's to see the forest when you only see the trees. But sometimes we see the trees and we don't see the path. But if you maybe have a mind that doesn't think so much, that just feels the world, you suddenly feel the path through the forest. So, I'll just read the case. As Yunyan was sweeping... Sweeping the air.

[53:54]

Oh, no, no, it's the ground. Sweeping something, anyway. Da Wu said, too hurried, too busy. Yunyan pulled himself up to the full size of his broom. Yunyan... And said, there are not so many things. Oh no, he didn't say that. He said, you should know, there is one who isn't busy. Ah, Daud said, I've got you there, there's a second moon. And there's a full moon, and there's a half moon, and there's the moon we don't see behind the full moon. So Yunyan holds up the broom and says, Which moon is this? So they're playing. Now you know in Tibetan Buddhism, there's a man who's the... I don't know, I don't have to explain. Too many anecdotes. But in Tibetan Buddhism, one of the schools of Buddhism, just, I know somebody who did this for 12, at least 12 years.

[55:11]

Every day your practice is debate. All day long, you're out there. They're not really fighting. They're seeing if you can, the mind is like a muscle. It's not easy to see the world as unique and unrepeatable. So you say, blah, blah, blah. The guy says, you just said blah, blah, blah twice. So you think the world is repeatable. No, you didn't hear the blah was different than that blah. So with that kind of thing you begin to feel your way into the nuances of how the mind works. This is meeting and speaking. So they are meeting and speaking. And they are playing with each other.

[56:12]

Dawu is sort of the older brother and sort of the teacher. And they share the teaching with other teachers. But this dialogue expresses this play, maybe the pulse too of wisdom and compassion. So then I think that's enough what I just said. To give you a feeling for how to look at the rest of the koan. And you can see if you go through it with the kind of attention. I think that if I happen to come back next year. I don't know why I said that. Myoken Roshi's been hinting that I might come back.

[57:23]

I actually had my arm and it was going... No, he said... He's a very persuasive guy, though. I wasn't planning to come here. Somehow he talked to me. He said there will be these wonderful people. I said, oh, yeah. But he was right. But you'll have to see after I'm gone if anybody wants to. But if I did come back, Probably you will be halfway through the koan by the time I get there. This one koan can be a lifetime. And if you really enter this koan, other koans will be much more apparent. Okay. So you use this koan to explore yourself.

[58:45]

To explore your own mind and body. So let's sit for a moment. Bringing attention to the breath. Bringing attention to the sound of your own hearing. no other location in mind black rain on the roof

[60:04]

There are not so many things. What is your intention? What is your intention? Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

[63:29]

I felt something being with you. Thank you. And thank you so much for translating. It really felt good.

[63:45]

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