Cognition grasps hold of something. It can't be an object of cognition or it's not emptiness. Erkennung versucht etwas zu begreifen, also kann es nicht so ein Objekt sein. So one thing that emptiness does is it points to the fact that there are aspects of the world that cannot be cognized. Die Lehre deutet darauf hin, dass es Aspekte auf der Welt gibt, die nicht begriffen werden können. Okay, so the Avalokiteshvara is coursing in the reality that can't be cognized. And in that reality, Avalokiteshvara hears the cries and sufferings of the world.

[01:03]

Does that create a picture for you? Okay, so first of all, Avlokiteshvara is the description of Avalokiteshvara demonstrates a bodhisattva practice. Which is to observe the sounds of the world. And there's two sides to this observing the sounds of the world. One side is that the way you hear is a practice leading to knowing the world that can't be cognized.

[02:22]

In other words, if you use sound as a practice, it's one of the entries or gates, It's an entry or gate to the world that can't be cognized. We can also call that the undivided world. Okay, the undivided world would also be a word for emptiness. Okay, the divided world is an object of cognition. If I see you and I see you separated from me by space, I'm seeing the divided world. and I can say you're there and I'm here.

[03:31]

But if I see, feel the world in which space connects, I can sort of say you're there and I'm here. But it's also true that you're here and I'm there. Or If space is connecting us, I can't say where do I draw the line between us. It's a little bit like this is separated from this because the molecular structure is different. But at the level of electrons, they go straight through. There's no definition. Except big electrons briefly come into existence and go out of existence. It's very hard to grasp electrons because they're disappearing all the time.

[04:36]

But it's very easy for me to grasp this. we know that this also exists in a way it can't be grasped. Now, it takes modern physics and cyclotrons to tell us that this exists in a way that can't be grasped. And in Buddhism, it requires changing the way you perceive a little bit to begin to sense the world that can't be grasped. That was a mouthful. And a lot of very similar words. In German. One or two letters, they're different. Yeah. Well, I may have... I mean, what I've just said to you is not difficult to get the picture of, but it may be mindful.

[06:00]

But you understand that this, at a molecular level, has a form. At the level of electrons and particles, it doesn't have a form, barely. And at the level that space separates, this is a separate item. And at the level that space connects, This is, we're all merged. So if you just accept that idea, and then begin to open yourself up to the possibility that the non-graspable world is actually within your experience. If you stop grasping.

[07:14]

Okay. Now I should burst into song or sing. I should sing some zippity doo da zippity yay. Something to change the mood. Yeah. Want to say that in German? Yeah. One of the ways is to perceive sound as a field of consciousness and not the object of consciousness.

[08:18]

Okay, now this is what we talked about in Zurich quite a bit, the Vigianas. And I'm not going to go into detail on those things. But the basic idea of feeling I will say something about. We have eyeballs. Hier haben wir das Augapfel. An object of perception. Und ein Objekt der Wahrnehmung. So in Buddhist way of looking at these things, there are three things. One, two, three. Auf buddhistische Art haben wir drei Dinge. And we tend to only emphasize this or this. We tend to emphasize, oh, I've seen this. And when I don't see it, there's no seeing. That's not true. Your field of seeing is there, whether it's an object of seeing or not.

[09:32]

Just as, you know, in the simple way we were doing Zazen, And your eyes were closed or nearly closed. There was a field of sight in which you could feel your body. Isn't that correct? You could sort of sense I'm up here and I can look down. So there's a field of sight. So the more you begin to see yourself seeing or hear yourself hearing, and you practice something like that, you're moving more toward the ungraspable.

[10:41]

Or as I said last night, when I hold up this glass, one of it will come out. Okay. The last one was wired, and this one is wired. It's a clever florist. If I hold up this flower. If you, as we did last night, if you just look at it as a name. And you say flower. Flower. Blumen. Blumen. Blumen or blumen? Blumen. And then if you peel the name off it, and you can just sense this flower without any

[11:56]

sense of grammar, syntax, language. If you just look at it without any kind of language involved, maybe your breath will change. And maybe you feel yourself settle down into your body more. Now, the Zen lineage began when the Buddha supposedly held up a flower and said nothing. And Mahakashipa smiled. Mahakashipa actually saw the flower, but not the language. And seeing the flower and not the language, he saw the Buddha without the name Buddha.

[13:25]

And seeing the Buddha without the name Buddha, he saw Mahakashapa without the name Mahakashapa. And seeing Mahakashaba and Buddha without names, he saw that he was the same Buddha. So he had a direct experience of the undivided world. So you actually just practice sometimes, which is this dharmic sense of seeing a train in a timeless dimension. If you begin this practice in what I call last night homeopathic doses, or as Dogen says, in bits and pieces, little moments you stop. Or inside you stop. And you take the names off them. Or just feel the appearance of things.

[14:46]

And feeling is a way of being which is less graspable than thinking and emotion. Spüren ist eine Art vom Sein, welche weniger greifbar ist als Empfinden oder Emotionen. So the more time you spend in the less graspable, subtle territory of our existence, die mehr Zeit ihr verweilt in diesem nicht mehr so greifbaren, subtilen Territorium, the closer you'll come to beginning to sense the non-graspable dimension of our existence. Does that make sense? Does anyone want to say something about it? I'm going to stay behind here too.

[15:52]

I'm going to stay behind here too. I'm going to stay behind here too. He's trying to think just how we should embed this in his Zen practice. When I'm sitting and I'm concentrating on my breathing and I'm listening to my listening, then I already have two things. And then a third thing, and then, well, how do I get these things open? Yeah. Trust. You know, it would be great to do a seminar.

[17:05]

I've never had the courage to do it yet. where we introduce a word like Bodhisattva. And I say, Bodhi, it means awake clarity. And then we just meditate for 40 minutes. And I say sattva. We talk about aliveness stuff and things like that for five or ten minutes and we meditate for forty minutes. By the end of the weekend we would have probably gotten through three words or four words. But it might be quite good actually. And using language in that way is what really koan practice is about.

[18:12]

Or turning word practice. Or you take a word, like just the sense, it doesn't have to be a word, it can be a feeling. Say that when I said, the eye that went to the movies, is and isn't the I of who am I. Now, that's a lot of words, but you cut a feeling, there's a kind of feeling. Now if you stayed with that feeling in your body, that's turning word practice. It's like you take a seed and you put it in your body or in your attention, in your mind. And you let the soil of your day soil and water of your day, fertilize it.

[19:21]

Now, Zen, to come back to your question. Zen practice basically is uncorrected, unfabricated mind. And unfabricated mind is another word for original face. For original face. Or original mind. Or your face before your parents were born. Okay, so your zazen practice should mirror undivided mind. Or undivided being. Okay, does that make sense?

[20:21]

But even saying uncorrected is a correction. All I'm saying is you can't get away from correction. Dogen says arrival hinders arrival. The act of arriving interferes with arriving. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I got that wrong. Also, ankommen verhindert ankommen. Die Handlung von ankommen verhindert, dass man überhaupt ankommt. The act of sitting interferes with sitting. Das sitzen verhindert das sitzen. The act of uncorrected mind interferes with uncorrected mind. You're saying interferes. Interferes with. Like interacts with. Interferes with. Interferes with. Hinders or interferes with. So, the big picture again, the initiatory state of mind in zazen is uncorrected mind.

[21:41]

But you still sit down and make your posture. That's a kind of correction. But there has to be some frame for this practice. So we give you a frame and we take it away. So we say, Sit like the Buddha. Then we say, accept your posture just as it is. Or, so you sit down. And you sit in a certain posture. And then you have to do something, so you might do nothing, but you might concentrate on your breath.

[22:43]

But you do as little as possible. You're not aggressively or forcefully counting your breath. You're kind of gently counting your breath. You're not doing it so much with will as with willingness. You're allowing a kind of intent. Is this fun for you, Ulrike, to see? She's been trying all the time, goes through it. But she's used to the words I use, so you have to kind of figure it out. So you're tending to move toward the intangible, more intangible things.

[23:48]

Like I said last night, the feeling in this room can't be grasped. As soon as you try to grasp it, you lose it. It's like if you experience samadhi or emptiness of mind, if you try to grasp it, you lose it. But when you get more skillful at practice, you can actually allow samadhi to occur and bring thoughts up into it without interfering with it okay so starting again you're sitting you've corrected your posture maybe you bring your mind to your breath In his gentle, somewhat persuasive, but not aggressive way.

[24:52]

Then you allow whatever happens to happen. And generally what happens in the first 10 minutes or so is you shift to sound consciousness out of eye consciousness. That just happens as part of sitting. And you suddenly start hearing things with a clarity you didn't before. So that happens just from the posture. Okay, then if you want to listen to or pay attention as a practice to the field of sound, and I'm going to give you some practices along that line.

[25:55]

If it comes up, you do it. If a thought and stuff appears, you don't interfere with the thoughts. You don't try to get rid of them. If suddenly you felt like following a thought to its source, you do that. So if you said to yourself, I feel like you found yourself starting to follow a thought to its source, and you said, no, I'm not going to do that, That's a correction. If you said, I'm going to do that, that's a correction. So what do you do?

[26:58]

You have to become quite subtle and let what happens happen as much as possible outside of trying. But if you feel like trying something, then don't correct. Try. Okay, it takes some time to get a feel for it. But you basically, these practices, you forget about them. If they come up, you do them. So if you practice with me, I'll give you many teachings. And those teachings are a little bit like cloud angels. or cloud bodhisattvas.

[28:02]

They sometimes take a shape and you see them and you do them and then they melt away. Like snowflakes. Okay. Some other, something else? I won't respond so long to the next one. That was Zaza's instruction. Yeah. He's not sitting that long yet. It's only been two months and he has quite a bit of pains in his legs. What's the best thing you could do with them? How long are you sitting? Sit through it. If you think you're damaging your legs, for example, the main damage you can do is to the sciatic nerve, which

[29:09]

reaches from the back of your thighs down toward your knees. You started getting a numbness in your legs, it didn't go away. But if it goes away, then there's no problem. But if it stays, for a day or so, or it feels like it's always there, you better find a little different way to sit. Because Because I damaged my sciatic nerve but from sitting in a car going across the United States. Just the way my foot was on the gas pedal and the angle of my leg over days and days actually damaged my sciatic nerve. It took several years before it mended. And still, it's a little bit sensitive.

[30:39]

I have to be careful. But other than that, most of the pain of zazen comes from stiffness, psychological stuff that's in your muscles, mental restlessness and ego, which wants you to stop sitting. I mean, you should have the freedom to move. But it's also good to have the freedom to sit still. So 30 or 40 minutes, almost any human being can do. And after you get used to it, it's very helpful in whatever happens to you the rest of your life. It's a little difficult. but it makes you a thousand times stronger than the difficulty.

[31:46]

Or maybe 10,000. Okay. Something else? Yes. I have a very similar question. He has a similar problem since he's learned to sit in a lotus or semi-lotus position, then he feels a lot of tension in his back and he has trouble letting go of his breathing. How long have you been sitting? That's normal. It takes, we have a tremendous amount of stuff in our back. Mm-hmm. And at some point I was so happy that I said to myself, well, then I'll give you the book.

[33:13]

And I tried to get into a conversation like that. And what came out of it was ultimately a psychological story where I was somehow pushed into a situation. It was the Nicholas that I didn't want to go into. She's talking about this point, but it's so disturbing that she decided to analyze it and she realized that it was a very important point. So the basic sense, you spoke to me over a couple of years about this point, didn't you? Well, as you sit, various levels of stuff are discovered in your body because your body is very conscious, but we don't pay attention to it.

[34:32]

And for some reason, when we start making our body conscious, It starts hurting. I don't know. I could try to think about why, but it does. And I can see when I straighten your backs. Quite a few of you, I can't move your backs. I mean, I can take your arm, I can move your arm. But if I put my hands on your shoulders, I might as well be putting my hands on those pillars. There's no movement. So, what you try to do in practice is to find out how to relax yourself from inside. I don't mean that you can completely just ignore the pain and sit through it.

[35:50]

Even if you do that, if you sit through it, you should enter into the pain and become it. And if that isn't your approach, which is the more basic approach, Das ist der grundlegende Zugang, wenn das aber nicht euren Zugang ist, dann ist der bessere Zugang, einfach von innen heraus zu sehen und euch selber anzusprechen und zu sagen, entspanne. Or see if you can bring your mind into the spot that's hurting and do something subtle from inside yourself. Zazen is an acupuncture-like practice.

[36:51]

If you become more precise in your sitting, it's like slight movements or suddenly you put a needle in a certain point and things change. And often one of the keys are the itches. You're hurting down here. But you have an itch in your cheek. We don't know the language of our body, so we don't know how to pay attention. But your body's talking. So you bring your attention to the itch without scratching it. And you bring your attention to where you're hurt. You may begin to find something begins to move.

[37:55]

One more and then we'll take a break. I'm still sort of curious what you, when you talk about, say we have a lot of stuff in our lives, when you refer to this stuff, is this personal stuff? Is this more than personal stuff? Is this, you know, how far back does this stuff go? I mean, can it go into like past lives and stuff like that? Do you want to say that in German? Well, I think that the shape of your back is first of all cultural. as the shape of your cheeks is cultural.

[39:01]

You can usually tell Americans from Germans for instance because their cheeks are different. And you can really tell, for example, Japanese born in the United States or Canada and Japanese born in Japan by their cheeks. Because if you speak Japanese, the muscles you use and the expressions that go with Japanese language sculpt the face. And you can see Italian women have different bottoms in Italy than they do in the United States. Italian men have different bodies in the United States. Anyway, So I think, first of all, our culture shapes our body in the subtle way, in the subtle points.

[40:16]

And then there are many experiences that happen to us that we can't deal with consciously. or that don't occur within conscious dimensions, but are stored in us. Everything that happens to you, or a very, very large percentage of what happens to you, is stored in you somewhere. Well, it's not just stored in little rooms in your brain. It's stored throughout the physicalness of you. Throughout the territory of feelings, emotions and so forth.

[41:24]

And it's stored primarily in the interaction between things. Like the sound of that train brings up associations. So that train is part of your memory. And the train, if you listen, if you practice later, if we do zazen, when a train comes up, try to hear it without naming it. And bring your attention to your back. And see if some images or feelings or something arises from bringing your attention to your bringing the tension of the train sound and your back together. Or doing that, it may lead you somewhere. And follow where it goes.

[42:24]

So in any case, there's lots of cultural and personal stuff stored in the muscles of your body. I think anybody who does acupuncture or massage or shatsu finds that certain things are released or rolfing. Some of us like massage not because our muscles are needing it, but because our mind needs the associations that occur when our muscles are massaged. So you could think of zazen as being massaged by the bodhisattva continuum. I've got Avalokiteshvara's giving me a massage.

[43:48]

So I think we've created enough words here. And we've created some language about who and how we are. And how we exist. So I would like us to take a break. And then after the break, I would like you to gather into smaller groups. There's 42 people here, I think, or something like that. Forty-something, so maybe groups of six or seven. And just now, just take the six or seven people around you. Talk about anything you want. But maybe talk about how you find you exist and if it relates to what we've been talking about, how we exist.

[44:55]

This more subtle territory or intangible territory that's hard to grasp. like the little story I told you last night about over the years my working and doing something often late at night and how the sound of a train or car or boat And would pierce through me bringing the past and into the present. And pierce through me so powerfully I'd be willing to die on that moment. Yet nothing in my culture or education told me to pay attention to that. And so I brushed it off as something distracting.

[46:01]

Or just nostalgic or sentimental. Actually it was Avalokiteshvara speaking to me. I didn't know how to listen. I didn't know what language Avalokiteshvara used. I was hearing the cries. So maybe you know this territory too. So again, I don't like seminars to be all me, you. It should be more us together. When you start perceiving the field, you begin to deconstruct the image. So instead of seeing this, you tend to see this.

[47:15]

As I've said before, in Buddhism, instead of we say in the beginning, if we're going to say it, in the beginning there was the word. And you might say in the beginning there was the mark. But when you proceed at the level of the mark, you can feel the paper or the space or whatever. As soon as you start having this, you get caught inside. You start getting reification. That's hard to get out. And you start thinking something exists and you forget that this and this are the same.

[48:16]

So when you start perceiving in the field, you're also deconstructing it. You can begin to feel the parts. A little bit like the story of the... Guy is walking along and he sees a snake. And he jumps back. And then he comes a little more cautiously and sees it's only a rope. So what he recognizes is that first was just a construct of his mind. He thought it was a snake and it wasn't. I got ahead of my story. So he said, oh, that was just a construction in my mind.

[49:27]

It's really a snake. A really rope. You can correct it in the translation. So, but when you look at the rope carefully itself, it is just fibers. The rope itself is a construct. And your perception of the rope is a construct. And your perception of the rope as a snake is a construct. They're all constructs. Just because one is really a snake doesn't make it any less of a construct. A snake is much bigger than your perception of a snake. We don't know what a snake is. So in this practice you're beginning to reside in your perceptions as constructs.

[50:38]

When you start residing in your perceptions as constructs, even when they're really a rope or really a snake. It's different than when you reside in the object of perception. Here we have now the shifts. We haven't changed reality at all. It's still a rope or it's still not a snake or whatever. But you recognize that a rope, your perception of the rope and your perception of the snake are all constructs. Then if it's a construct, what is it made of? We say empty. But we don't know what to say.

[51:51]

It's a mystery. So we call the mystery emptiness. So what we're trying to do in this practice is get back so when you perceive things, you feel the mystery and the emptiness simultaneously with the perception. Now, Buddhism is generally said to fall into three categories. Precepts, concentration, wisdom. Now, what this is in a sense is form, emptiness, and the ability to move between the two.

[52:53]

So precepts is you have to have some form. Sit straight. Sit still. Don't kill. Don't take what is not given. This is concentration or non-duality. And this is, again, the ability to decide where you'll locate yourself. This is the ability to know what to do with the combination of form and emptiness. Dualities that recognize non-duality. Non-duality that's always turning into duality. So these teachings of why concentrating the field of sound is a precept. It falls into the category of precepts.

[54:06]

And to fully practice Buddhism, you need to work with all three of these. Along emptiness and where you locate yourself. And how you understand and exist in this relationship. And of course the Bodhisattva vow exists here. But it's a precept that arises from these two things. You can't really understand the Bodhisattva vow You can't really understand the Bodhisattva vow until you can practice concentration and realize wisdom.

[55:09]

But the bodhisattva vow is the way to fully realize these things. So when you're practicing zazen, you're practicing concentration. But that's only the preparatory, beginning stage. Beginning to find out how you exist, how this aliveness of your stuff exists, The suchness of it is the precepts. And the thusness of it is the wisdom. I'll get some later.

[56:37]

Beata, could you maybe close the window in the back? And there's tapes being made. Yeah, latch that one, because it hits the wires. Good, thank you. Oh, good morning. Good morning. Did you all have a sweet dream?

[57:49]

Since I'm having, and you're having the experience of two translators instead of one, Let me say something about the importance in practice of language and translation. There's been an effort in English language over now some 50 years or so to develop an English language of Buddhism. In many ways, it was developing in Germany and Russia in the latter part of the previous century and the early part of the century.

[59:07]

But the war stopped all that. And scholars like Dr. Konse, who is German, and many others went to the United States or England and began doing their work in English. And Konse's great contribution, and I could tell you anecdotes about him, but I won't some of you feel and I think rightly feel that what I'm presenting is a little too much or kind of dense so maybe I should tell anecdotes but anyway I probably won't I'm gonna batter you some more with Buddhism.

[60:16]

Anyway, Dr. Konsei's great contribution to modern Buddhist scholarship was that he identified Buddhist Sanskrit. Die große Hilfe von Herrn Dr. Konzai ist, dass er den buddhistischen Sanskrit beschrieben hat. In other words, he identified, which wasn't understood before, that within Sanskrit there's a special language just for Buddhism that's different than regular Sanskrit. Er identifizierte innerhalb vom Sanskrit, dass es eine ganz spezielle Sprache gab für den Sanskrit, der speziell für den Buddhismus war. And a special language is developing in English for Buddhism. And the roots of that language, that experimentation, is partly psychology, partly philosophy, and partly science.

[61:21]

But a large part of it is actually the literary tradition and especially the beat writers after the Second World War. And Arthur Whaley, who's the kind of great previous generation translator of Chinese and Japanese into English, wrote to Gary Snyder, who, along with Allen Ginsberg, is the central kind of beat poet, is the two most famous beat poets, and Gary Snyder. If any of you have read the Dharma Bums, the main, the protagonist in it, the main character is Jaffee Rider, who's Gary Snyder. Jaffee Rider. The name of the book is?

[62:49]

The Dharma Bums. Dharma Bums. Bums are so kosher and so on. That's the idea. When someone has read this from you, then the main character is this Kerry Schneider. The sense of the Dharma Bums actually is this sense of dropping out of society, living on the road, practicing Zen, you know, stuff like that. The sense of these Dharma Bums is to get out of society, to live on the streets, And I'm definitely part of that generation. I left college and got on a ship and sailed off. Gave up all my Ph.D. and my job at the university to found a monastery. Of course, everyone thought I was a bit crazy, and they might have been right. Anyway, Arthur Whaley wrote to Gary and said your translations of Hanshan, the a famous Zen poet, can't ever be surpassed.

[64:07]

They're as good as it gets. And that partly is the result of the releasing of language through the Second World War, actually, so that America was attempting to find a language common to all the regions of America. So you've got something happening which was with radio and television creating a national language and the war separating America from Europe and creating a separation between British English and American English. So when language is loosened up, it's a point where you can start doing things with language that that's not possible when everybody agrees how it should be spoken.

[65:30]

So I would say that, for instance, the development of German Buddhist terminology actually isn't just something that you do reading books. It's going to take various elements within the culture to put together the possibilities of creating a language within German for Buddhism. And often the inspirations are poets. Marshall McLuhan, who is the sort of... main English language philosopher of media. And to change the way people look at how television affects people's thinking and so forth.

[66:31]

In comparison to reading. And Hick says his main inspiration was Rimbaud, the French poet. So anyway, what did he say? He said he's a French poet. Yeah, and not that guy in the movie, Rimbaud. That's another Rimbaud. So, you know, that's enough on all that. Just that I hope that you, as you study Buddhism, you study your language too, your German language too.

[67:34]

For instance, I could give a discussion on practice that distinguishes practice as a route, R-O-U-T-E, practice as a path, and practice as a way. Yeah, and see, you might not be able to do that in German because you don't have those distinctions. But you may have them. I'm not saying you do or don't. I'm just saying English allows me to make certain distinctions. So... Now, I don't know if it's helpful for me to keep putting just words on the board here to give you some focus, but I'll continue.

[68:36]

Those are the four categories in which it's thought that you develop your practice. And those distinctions are actually fairly important. It's obvious, but it's helpful to notice them. And hearing means reading or hearing about more than hearing directly from a teacher. Now, the usual, the traditional way to practice with what we were doing this weekend, is I give you a teaching of some sort.

[70:27]

And then you meditate on it, practice with it in these categories for the next two or three weeks. Then you bring me your questions about it. And I confirm whether you got on the right track or I make some suggestions. And of course I can't do that here. Now one of the things that's very seldom done, which I did last night, was a kind of guided meditation. And I had at least two or three reports that it was a little too much or too dense or too long or something.

[71:30]

And part of the problem is that we can only retain three or four distinctions and then after that all the distinctions begin to blur together. So I made, over that period, maybe 10 or 15 distinctions that were very little different but quite important in the difference. And I guess probably most of you lost it after a little while. So, you know, anyway, it's part of my trying to experiment with how to teach in this context. See, normally, you know, if we were together over a long period of time, I'd make one of those suggestions, and then a week or two later or a month later, I might make another suggestion or a couple more. I mean, the difference between hearing a sound and hearing yourself hearing the sound is already a distinction that takes a while to get.

[72:36]

And then the change that goes with interior visual space from hearing a sound to hearing hearing is another distinction. Interior, inner space. Interior space. Interior visual space, I said. So, but maybe if you listen to the tapes, you know, a month from now, or you listen to that section, you might be able to hear it more. with more discrimination.

[73:38]

So the hearing is you hear about something or you hear about a teaching here? And then you spend some time sort of contemplating that teaching. Does it make any sense? How do I understand it? A kind of gentle thinking about it. You get familiar with it. Then you begin to have a sense of it in your meditation.

[74:41]

And only through the third thing, meditation, can you actually begin to make it your own when you actually feel hearing, hearing. Or you have the physical experience of emptiness. Oder ihr habt die physische Erfahrung von Lehre. It's not just a cognition that you've begun to see how it makes sense in your thinking and your perception. Nicht so sehr eine Erkennung, sondern er sieht wirklich, wie es für euch einen Sinn hat. And then you may have a direct realization of emptiness. Danach könnt ihr auch eine tatsächliche Realisation der Lehre haben. Mm-hmm. So this is where zen is really at, but we have to start up there. Now, another thing that comes up that I'd just like to mention again, because it's such a pervasive idea.

[75:57]

Which is the various versions of Zen is just sitting. And so you tell people just sit. Standard advice. But it's monastic advice. It's only advice that makes sense in a monastery. Outside of a monastery, if you just sit, you're just sitting whoever you are. And maybe it's a therapy. Meditation is very therapeutic. But you're not practicing sitting Buddha. aber ihr praktizieren nicht der sitzende Buddha. In a monastery, the advice is good.

[77:01]

Somebody comes with a question, you can see exactly who you sit. In a monastery, the advice is good. Somebody comes with a question, you can see exactly who you sit. In a monastery, the advice is good. Somebody comes with a question, you can see exactly who you sit. You're teaching a powerful kind of meditation, but you're not teaching Zen Buddhist meditation. And I think that it's pretty hard though for most teachers, most practitioners to do much else than tell you to just sit.

[78:06]

Because to say just sit with real subtlety of what's just sit means, means you have to be practicing quite a long time. And there's just very few Westerners who've sat even 10 years, let alone 20, 30, 40 years. And in general, the Asian teachers, unless they've made a tremendous effort to study Western culture, don't really know what we don't know. And they just don't have the engagement with Western culture and language to see how to get it out into the language.

[79:11]

Just to give you a kind of example from a book, not just me talking. This is one of the two major collections of koans within Buddhism. And I happen to have it with me, so I brought it. For instance, a monk asked, I'm picking some simple koans. A monk asked young men, A young man said, Mount Sumeru. You could say anything. You could say Mount McKinley if you want. Except Mount Sumeru represents the whole world as a Yeah, any mountain.

[80:30]

Pick one. The whole world as a mountain or the universe as a mountain. Now, it's from columns like that that people say, just sit. I have all these questions about Buddhism. Somebody says, Mount Sumeru. Well, that's good. Except one of these things this means is one taste. Mount Smyrna means the practice of one taste. And you could see last night I had to go through all of that sound practice till we got to how sound, yeah, go ahead. Until we get to the point where sound merges with the field of sound, And the individual hearer, the perceiver, and the object of perception sort of fold in, disappear into the field of sound.

[81:53]

The object of perception of hearing and the perceiver. And then you can taste on the field of sound the not yet sounded sound. And then you know that experience and you can apply it to each perception. And that's what's behind the answer, Mount Sumeru. That's only one of the things that's behind the comment, Mount Sumeru. And also, how the heck do you not produce a single thought? And Mount Sumeru is a single thought.

[83:00]

So even a simple koan like this, there's just tremendous Buddhist teaching underneath it. And my experience has been my practice didn't work without Suzuki Roshi's teaching me these things I'm teaching you and his own study of Western culture and philosophy. Mein Erfahrung war, dass meine eigene Praxis sich nicht wirklich wirksam gezeigt hatte, bis ich jetzt das realisiert hatte durch die Lehre von Suzuki Roshi und aus den Studien, die er trieb, um den Lesson zu verstehen. And I've seen thousands of people practice Buddhism for 10, 20, more years, 20 or even 30 years, And they don't get anywhere. I mean, meditation affects what they do. If you meditate an hour a day for 20 years, it's going to affect you.

[84:12]

But if you also set aside an hour a day every morning to eat watermelon very slowly, At the end of 20 years, it would affect you. You'd be quite a different person. But I don't know if eating watermelon slowly is Buddhism. So the fact that it affects you doesn't make it Buddhism. If any of you want to begin this practice of watermelon eating, I'll give you the secret instructions later. First you have to have watermelon shipped in from the United States.

[85:14]

Or from Turkey. Okay. Now... Another... I could read you lots of things here, but I won't. But here's another koan based on a quotation from a sutra. When I don't see, why don't you see my not seeing? If you see my not seeing, that is naturally not the characteristic of not seeing. If you don't see my not seeing, it's naturally not a thing.

[86:14]

How could it not be you? I mean, That's just Zen practice. And that's what I've been teaching you. I've been trying to figure out a way to do it. Here's another one. The void of the way is never filled. The letters on the seal of emptiness are unformed. Carrying subtly, carrying the globe of heaven and the axis of earth.

[87:18]

Finally weaving the warp and cultural woof. What? No, warp. Warp and weaving. Warp and whoop? Yeah, the mind activates the mysterious pivot. Now that's not the same as just sit. Okay. This morning I'm going to try to teach you something about the three bodies of Buddha. . I have two bodies left, so we only have one body.

[88:53]

You know, he's making tapes, so you don't need to make a tape. Particularly if you have to walk around. Okay. Those are the three bodies of Buddha.

[90:40]

The Dharmakaya, the Sambhogakaya, and the Nirmanakaya. And they're called the three bodies of Buddha, but they're essential to understand, in order to understand Bodhisattva practice. Okay, now the Dharma, of course, means the main name for Buddhist teaching is Dharma. And this is the body, the Dharma body. And this is the, well, let's put it that way, this is the Dharma body. And this is the Blitz, Reward, Fruit.

[92:00]

And this is the Manifestation Body. Now, Suzuki really taught this on blackboard, actually, in 62, quite a few times, putting it up. And I wrote it down. I still have diagrams. And it took quite a bit of, so I've got a picture, you know, right away and I thought it was, you know, peculiar and curious and interesting, but I didn't know what it meant to me. But the distinctions stayed in my awareness. And again, you have to remember that Sukhiroshi was this really great guy. He seemed like a tough version of sweetness and light.

[93:25]

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