From one interesting thing to the other. The mind in your mudra. And the mind that's observing both. So now you shift your identification to the mind that observes both. then you can start noticing very interesting things. You actually may be observing your body from the outside. You may find you're more on the right side than the left side. And you can be systematic if you want. You can imagine a kind of maybe water receding. And you can feel all the way through, feel your awareness all the way, see if you can move it all the way down your body.

[01:09]

Now you can notice, is it mostly outside or does it go right through the inside too? You want to emphasize the inside, you can maybe have a feeling of water rising in you. You can feel each organ, stomach, this area, etc., So you've begun to develop a mind which now can observe the body. Now, this is a kind of being familiar with yourself. Like, I'm familiar with Johannes Hart. I've gotten to know most of the rooms, not all of them. Some of you are sleeping in some places that I don't know exist. But I'm pretty familiar with Johannes.

[02:14]

Now, so I said I'm intimate with this area, the black forest, that's a different meaning. That means I feel this is me. I feel very connected and intimate with the black forest, with the Hudson Wald. Mm-hmm. So you can notice that, well, maybe I'm familiar with all this, but I don't feel intimate with it. Basically, this mind, which I've generated here, This is not very different than the visualization processes in Tibetan Buddhism.

[03:23]

It's just Zen's way of doing it. This mind now, you notice, has an observer which is treating you like an outside. That's very interesting to notice. It means you'll never feel really intimate with yourself. That that outside observer, even in such a mind as this, feels like it's outside of you. Now, if we have that, that's probably because we're stuck in an idea of outside and inside. We're looking for a parallel experience to the outside feeling.

[04:29]

We're looking for a parallel inside kind of feeling. Sorry, I'm getting so complicated. I'm adding things one at a time. You're The problem with the feeling of being an outside observer why it's very difficult to change that is because you're probably looking for a corresponding inside feeling. You're looking for something that doesn't exist. you have to shift from an outside observer to a feeling of presence if you shift to a feeling of presence then that presence there's no more outside or inside Buddhism is this kind of study So when you make those observations, you're studying yourself.

[05:44]

You're studying the difference between the mudra when an image comes up and the mudra when you feel sleepy. And you're studying the difference between an observer which feels familiar versus a presence which feels intimate. This is called knowing yourself. Yeah. You can't. You can. But the relationship to the observer... Do you want to say it in German?

[06:46]

Okay. My answer is, what you've done is you've increased the language available to you, the categories available to you. The observer doesn't disappear. You now have presence and an observer. But you now have the capacity for the observer to be absorbed into the presence. But you can also create an observer of the presence. I'll just end with something fairly simple. And believe me, I think what I just said is simple. It's only two or three things put together in several ways.

[07:59]

It sounds complicated maybe or complex because it's not the way we're used to thinking. It's not as complicated as what she's doing translating my sentences. When I look outside this window, I see all this green stuff. Now, when I'm in Freiburg and I look outside the window, I see buildings and water in the streets and stuff. Is there any difference? Of course there's some difference. Yeah, but is the difference that I see nature versus a city? And I think this is natural or more natural at least than the city? If I have that kind of seeing, I'm seeing an idea.

[09:11]

I mean, a city is natural, it's just a big anthill. It's our anthill. Okay. So we could say, let's not look out the window and see an idea. Also könnten wir sagen, lasst uns nicht aus dem Fenster hinausschauen und eine Idee sehen. Let's look out the window and see. Let's choose the word sight. Lasst uns aus dem Fenster hinausschauen und lasst uns das Wort wählen. An sich. Something in your sight. In deiner Sicht. Yeah. So if I have a sight, I just see the green tree. Wenn etwas in meiner Sicht ist, dann sehe ich einfach den grünen Baum. When I'm in Freiburg, I see a brown surfaced building. There's no idea there. There's just sight.

[10:12]

And you'll feel differently if you see sights rather than ideas. Now, if I look outside and I see an image would be the sound of the water and the green tree. And the image I might, you know, to each and every one of you, I might think of being in the Sashina, the image of the sound of the water and the greenness of the bamboo might come up. And if I'm seeing an image, it's a different texture of mind than if I'm seeing a sight. And if I see an idea, it's another texture. And it's a different This kind of difference in texture is important to notice.

[11:41]

Are you seeing an image or a sight or an idea? Now, when I look out there, what do I see? Do I see something outside myself? If I'm a practicing Buddhist, what I see out there is me. If I'm a Westerner, I look outside and I see a hierarchy. This is a human being and that's stuff. And there's insects down there, and then there's a monkey maybe up there, which is closer to us. And around Kyoto there really could be a monkey. They have a lot of monkeys around Kyoto in their gardens. At least gardens near the mountain. But if I'm just seeing sights, and I also look out there, and what I see, I say, that's me.

[13:11]

The monkey, the insect. That's a very different way to look outside than to think, that's different than me. Not only is that me, because we're all somehow interdependently the same stuff. The cat just walked by. That cat is me in a cat form. If I feel that way, I don't stick to things as having some kind of permanence. Dann hänge ich nicht an Dingen als etwas Ewigem.

[14:12]

But I'm so used to seeing things changing in a flow. Aber ich bin so daran gewöhnt, dass sich die Dinge wie in einem Fluss verändern. Distinctions don't hold a great deal of separateness for me anymore. So dass die Unterscheidungen nicht große Getrenntheit mehr haben. The cat flows into the garden, the garden into the sound of the water, the sound of the water into me. There is that state of mind and also all that's appearing is appearing in my mind. So that's me and that's also my mind. That as a basic way of looking at things is implicit in the teaching of Buddhism and in the koans. Now, I was going to say some other interesting things that I thought were interesting anyway. Since I don't know what time it is, I should probably stop. Thank you very much for your patience and your painful legs.

[15:27]

Your gifts are indestructible. I pray to you to give them an end. Your gifts are limitless. I pray to you to give them an end. Your gift of the Buddha is infinite. I pray to you to give them an end. Thank you for tricking me. So much presence of mind, it feels like. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[17:47]

Amen. Oh [...] Thank you. Thank you for all showing up once again.

[19:08]

Yeah. You know, when you get a good night's sleep, I don't know if in Sashin you have a good night's sleep, but when you get a good night's sleep, You can't say that it was a big effort. The nature of a good night's sleep is it's no effort. Even if it doesn't happen very often, it's no effort. Well, mature practice is like that. It's no effort. At some point, you just fold your legs and it's just fun to sit here.

[20:10]

And you practice mindfulness. I mean, there's no alternative. It's quite nice, you know. And, you know, I love when I start doing a doxan with you. Yeah, I feel like a good teacher. Because you all understand things so well. You may not know you understand things well, but you understand things quite well. T.S. Eliot in the Four Quartets has some line of East Coker, actually. East Coker is the name of a poem within the four quartets.

[21:19]

East Coker, I don't know what that means. That's not important. I don't either. East Coker. C-O-K-E-R is probably the name of a place in England. I forget if it means anything. Anyway, the line is something like, we arrive at, in order to arrive at what we do not know, we must proceed through what we do not know. So that's the problem. Mm-hmm. You know, we know what we don't know. I'm sounding very zen.

[22:21]

We know what we don't know. But when we look for it, we can't find it. The problem is not that we don't know, the problem is in the looking. So we know what we don't know, but when we try to notice it, it's not so easy. We could say that the ordinary mind is the mind that notices objects. I think you'd all agree with that. Zazen mind is the mind that notices mind. Mind is harder to notice.

[23:29]

So when you're practicing Zazen, you're beginning to notice mind itself. The secret of mindfulness is It is not that you are bringing attention to various objects, but that you are bringing attention to attention itself. And you exercise the muscle of intention. And then attention evolves. If you just notice objects, attention doesn't evolve. It's just something kind of passive, like a piece of glass you look through.

[24:32]

Now, do you see these small differences? When you develop zazen mind, which can notice mind itself, You open yourself up to the kind of noticing we discussed yesterday. Noticing the mind that observes your mudra, for instance. Instead of noticing your mudra, you notice the mind that notices the mudra. So someone says to me in Dzogchen that they often find their chanting in their mind. This is quite good. It means that the capacity of the mind for language is now still in language, but it's in chanting instead of ordinary language.

[25:57]

And mind chanting attempts to be language which integrates the mind rather than separates the mind. So as is singing and poetry and so forth. So our mind becomes more poetic or maybe something like chanting or singing through practice. And when this happens, this is quite good in practice, quite advanced, actually. Someone else says to me, these teachings I'm giving are quite high, meaning, I think, inaccessible. And they may seem inaccessible to you.

[26:59]

But I know how... I know really... I know how... What can I say? I know the ways that they're... they're actually accessible to you or not so inaccessible as you think. I know everything I'm speaking about now I knew in the first two or three years of practice. What's the difference? I know how to notice it now. I was experiencing it, but it was so mixed up with other experiences, I couldn't purify it or I couldn't really function clearly through it.

[28:00]

So again, the problem was what I was looking for instead of noticing that I already knew. So there's a great truth to this idea that your initial decision to practice is original enlightenment. All the ingredients are there. What we don't have is the ability to notice the ingredients that are there. So we could say that the whole inner science of practice is to develop the ability to notice original enlightenment. Now I would say, what are we doing here?

[29:15]

I would say that we're doing something I would call inner science. The study of how we exist. And how everything exists. And you yourself are the means of study. And the second thing we're doing is a realisational practice. An enlightenment practice. And the third thing we're doing is a multi-generational practice. Mm-hmm. Now, enlightenment or realization can be separated.

[30:17]

It's not dependent on inner science. But they're also very hard to separate. Truly, inner science is the study of noticing what we don't know. So, there's no direct progression if you practice inner science. The end result is enlightenment. Es gibt nicht so einen direkten Fortschritt. Wenn du innere Wissenschaft immer weiter übst, dann endet das mit Erleuchtung.

[31:21]

Es gibt eine zunehmende Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass du den Unfall oder den Zufall der Erleuchtung erlebst. Aber es gibt keine direkte kausale Beziehung. But it's the inner science which allows you to generate a mind of enlightenment, not just receive some kind of big experience. A simplistic view of sudden enlightenment is just a kind of belief in God. There's no such simple enlightenment that suddenly... There is an experience of sudden enlightenment, but what Buddhism is talking about is opening up and maturing that experience in all the aspects of your life.

[32:23]

That just doesn't happen suddenly. So the inner science is the ability to notice how we actually exist. And how we actually exist is through enlightenment. Now it's multi-generational, just as German language is. There's no way some wild boy raised by wolves is going to be enlightened. He might be quite interesting, you know. Hard to go to a restaurant with, but probably quite interesting.

[33:24]

This mature practice is given to us through the genius of our human life. Over many generations. Now, I'll try to respond to Gural's question coming from what I said. a while ago in the first lecture. What do we want from a religion? Or what do we need in our life that produces religion? One thing is some sense of something bigger than ourselves. A sense of mystery. And we want a feeling of caring.

[34:42]

But big caring. We want some place we can bring our broken heart. We can't bring it to our parents. We can't bring it to our former lover. There's not many places we can bring it, but maybe to some big caring feeling. Or any suffering, you know. And we want to bring ourselves to something that seems to explain or be related to everything.

[35:54]

A vision of all. Of everything. A vision of how all is and how all be, being. You know, when I look at most churches, cathedrals, Catholic churches, Romanesque and Gothic, They seem to me to be kinds of versions of caves. Where one might go into a cave, like in primordial times, early times, for some kind of sacred place. Baroque churches, which I find quite beautiful sometimes, are more like palaces.

[37:05]

I think they must be an extension of court life, not the cave. And many Protestant churches, especially in New England, for example, really look like meeting houses. They're more for the sangha or the community. And again, in New England, they definitely are meeting houses. The meeting house and the church right in the center of town, and they're almost identical architecture. And nowadays we don't build many churches. Every city wants to have a new museum. I think Basel has... Coco, you're not in the front row. Coco, you're not in the front row. You got here late again.

[38:18]

I think near Basel there's a new museum, Baylor. Yeah, I'd like to go see it. Maybe you take me. But you know, a museum is a kind of cathedral, I guess. And art represents to us something bigger than our ordinary life. But art is also full of egomaniacs. And the whole art business is pretty bad. And I don't think you'd go into the lobby of a museum and offer a candle to somebody who's sick. Museums just don't work, you know, for that. There's got to be some place where we bring the depth of ourselves and our damaged, vulnerable self.

[39:33]

So I think that a religion needs these three things, this sort of something big or mystery, a vision and a sense of caring and emotional vision too. But it also needs an active participation. So it needs from this vision there needs to be some way to interact with it. So there needs to be a teaching. And there need to be teachers. And there needs to be the presence of, I think, contemporaneous presence of the teachers or teaching.

[40:54]

Now all those things, these three and three, six things, I think are needed for what we're doing too. We're trying to come to a vision of how things exist. And an experience of how things actually exist. And the basic insight of Mariana is you can't do this on your own. You need the help of others and you need the vision of all of sentience. I would say that the salvational definition of the translation of the Bodhisattva vow To save all sentient beings.

[42:07]

Would be much better stated to say our vow is to be in accord with all of sentience. To be in accord with all being. And in English, the word accord is related to the root of his heart. So it would be an accord with the heart of all being. And to relate to the fullest potential of being. And that's enlightenment. It means I have to have the mind to be in accord with you in the most practical sense. And to be in accord with everything I see and feel. And to relate to the potential of you as a Buddha or you of your enlightenment.

[43:34]

And even to see your enlightenment when you don't see it yourself. If I don't have that feeling, I don't have the power to really look at how we exist. I'm just doing it for myself or for a PhD or to look smart or something, you know. That's okay, but somehow it has to be deeper than that. So we need even our little Johanneshof to have a vision of how we exist. And it's also got to have some feeling of where we can bring our caring or our broken heart. And it can't be like any other place you go. It's got to relate more to a bigger sense or non-ordinary sense of reality.

[44:53]

It has to hold this vision of what we don't notice. So we can do it in various ways. We could do it with some brocade bowing mat. It could be something else. But I think as we change things in Europe and America, we have to keep in mind really what we're doing. We can't make this look like a hotel lobby. Or a museum lobby. How to do this? This is our... Because we are creating this place. So for me, you know, this is... I like this staff, you know. And basically it's Avalokiteshvara, her Kannon staff.

[46:12]

Kannon has a staff that she holds in a very similar way. And I've shown it to you before. This is the lotus embryo. Yeah, which you get in soups in Japan. Very tasty. And this is the lotus bud. And this is the lotus pod. Seed pod. And dare I point out the iconography means that you are the bloom. Because the bloom isn't here. Where is it? Everything else is here. And the embryo, the seed pod, the embryo is in my hand.

[47:15]

So this kind of thing helps me actually in teaching and trying to express Kannon's spirit. It takes away some of the inner scientist. I would still want to wear my teacher's robe. I'd still want to feel the power of Avalokiteshvara somehow in what we're doing. And I still need the help of you. And I need your help when you're here in the most basic way, not like in a hotel lobby. I know that this has to be done together, this study. So it takes the form of some kind of religion.

[48:30]

Anyway, this is my understanding and why I'm doing it. It's not because I believe in Buddhism, but because I want to study this with you. Every now and then somebody asks me how Buddhism is a religion. I give a different answer almost every time. This is today's answer. Oh, Louis, today's answer is not separate from the way I felt for 40 years. I get very attached to my translator. I have my watch today, so I have no excuse. Suzuki Roshi said, all food has salt in it.

[50:02]

Now, I want to examine this kind of statement. In what world does a statement like this come from? Mm-hmm. He'd said that a number of times. He said something like, not quite this, but meaning, when you're eating, chew toward the salt. It was one of the ways our food was quite plain and he didn't want us to season it because he wanted us to find the salt that's already there. Now when you hear something like that, if you really look at it, it comes from a different world than we usually inhabit. So it's rather nice sometimes.

[51:21]

Sometimes I use gamascio. I don't know what the ratio is. There isn't much salt in it these days. But often I don't use gamascio because it's just nice to find what's there. You know, if you go to a restaurant with exquisite food, sometimes then I, this isn't quite so good as it should be. But if I'm eating here, I think if I went to a restaurant, sometimes some of the food we're served, I would, in a restaurant, I'd say, why am I getting this? Because in the restaurant I don't have the mind to appreciate it. Even if I eat in my room, it's sometimes a little boring. But if I'm eating in the zendo with the orioke, oh, it's so delicious.

[52:37]

Because I have this mind which chews toward the salt. And when I really know this kind of feeling, this kind of eating, Even if I'm at a good restaurant or a diner, an ordinary restaurant. This mind of our eating in a Yogi way is present. it makes me enjoy the food in the good restaurant in another way, an additional way. Another word Suzuki Roshi used was, we don't acquire some power, we appreciate it.

[54:05]

I'm trying to get a feeling of this. The difference between saying we don't acquire but we appreciate. I think actually I should come because I think your legs are hurting and it's not so long but still I could stop. So let me just say a tiny bit about this word appreciate. In our practice in which... I think I'll just say you can begin in practice, this practice where we notice what we don't notice,

[55:53]

Or notice what's hard to notice. It's difficult to what is going to then lead our practice. And what Sukhya is pointing out is what leads our practice then is we just appreciate things. Now, why I brought that up in relation to salt and all that stuff, I think it will require really a whole lecture, so I better stop. Because if I start talking about appreciation and your legs are hurting, you're not going to appreciate it. I'm at least that smart. Oh, I'm And I want to tell you one of my favorite koans.

[57:11]

To be continued. To be continued. That's the koan? No, that's... We just, you and I are on horses, and we just went off a cliff, and it says, to be continued. Fortsetzung folgt. Yeah, once upon a time. Es war einmal. Mögen unsere Absichten gleichermaßen die Wesen an jedem Ort durchbringen. Mithil varek fadins tels pudarides, Joujou mouhe, selye gran dobo, Bojoum selye gran ban. Oh, my, [...] my.

[58:12]

How do you feel when you read these psalms? I pray to God to keep them. [...] Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji

[59:41]

Thank you. Thank you. I would also like to thank the Archbishop and the Archbishop's Association for allowing me to live in the United Arab Emirates for a long time. I praise the truth of what happened that day. Ah, guten Tag.

[61:09]

Good afternoon. And it's the sixth day, is that right? Peter doesn't know or care. That's the spirit. And this isn't a fashion show. Excuse me for wearing a different colored okay-sa today. The two of us are on the runway. On the runway, that's what models come down. It's just that, you know, I have all these different kinds of robes because when I was head of a temple that had a lot of Japanese relationships, I had to do special ceremonies, so I'd have different colored robes. And now in the purity of Johanneshof without all this formalism, the robes sit and gather dust. Yeah, so every now and then I think I should shake them out, weirdly.

[62:12]

Yeah. You know, I'm really still talking about this door of Avalokiteshvara's, I mean of Manjushri's. I wanted to get to the door of Avalokiteshvara and the sound of clams But I haven't even got open the door of Manjushri yet. Trying to present this image as a teaching to you. is proving to be much more difficult than it was to present recently the images that start the first case of the Blue Cliff Records about Bodhidharma.

[63:38]

So let's have a little maybe historical context. Now, as you know, I'm not too interested in the distinctions within Buddhism between Rinzai and Soto or Zen and Buddhism or Mahayana and Theravada. At the same time, we should understand this shift from Mahayana to from Hinayana or Theravada to Mahayana. Now the historical Buddha seems to have been a pretty fabulous guy. You know, kind of super Suzuki Roshi. And such people seem to appear every now and then. I don't have any doubt that he was a historical character of some extraordinary personality and capacity.

[65:10]

Thank goodness. I almost said thank God. Thank goodness it's possible for such people to appear sometimes. But those people who were more historically close to the Buddha seem to have been awed, perhaps overawed, by this extraordinary person. It does seem though that the ability to be inspired by another person is necessary in order to yourself be inspired. Every now and then I read the biographies of scientists.

[66:11]

And it's amazing how many of the really great scientists of a century were completely inspired by some other scientist in the present or the past, their present or the past. So the ability to imagine or create a perfect relationship with someone in the present or in one's imagination, that person's other relationships may not be so perfect. But the ability to perfect a relationship with one person seems to be closely related to the ability to perfect your relationship to yourself.

[67:18]

In any case, the early Buddhists made the Buddha maybe so perfect or unusual that he was inaccessible to us. I mean, for example, they define the Buddha as having 32 marks. One of them is a tuft of white hair between the eyebrows. Now, I have one or two white hairs, but... Not a tuft. I don't know how many constitute a tuft, but, you know... Sometimes I cultivate them. I have a little dye, you know... But I'm missing the other 31.

[68:34]

I mean, the others are like Dharma wheels on the soles of the feet. Yeah, I keep them covered. Another is a lower part of the body like an antelope. An upper body like a lion. Well, maybe Joe and Coco, but not me. Yeah, and 40 teeth. Now, I've never counted my teeth.

[69:35]

But I'm sure my dentist messed up the possibility. He certainly pulled out my wisdom teeth. Are they called wisdom teeth in German, too? Yeah, and a hairy body. And I'm just telling you some of the 32 marks. One is a hairy body. Another is arms that reach to the knees. Sounds like somebody Jane Goodall would study now. And a cone-shaped mound on top of the head. A cone-shaped mound, yeah.

[70:37]

You see it in the statues. They put it in the statues. Anyway, most of us wouldn't want these 32 marks. Particularly some of you young ladies. In any case, the 32 marks made the Buddha quite inaccessible. So the Mahayana tried to make the Buddha more accessible. Now, you can see the roots of this sense of the body of Buddha not being 32 marks, but a truth body.

[71:38]

In the stupa. Because the stupa started out as reliquaries, in other words, where you put the relics of the Buddha. And the top of the stupa sometimes represents the bump on the top of the Buddha's head. But mostly the stupa represents the way things is, the way things are. It represents the four elements plus space. Or it represents body, speech and mind. So in other words, you weren't worshipping the relics of the Buddha as part of a historical body, but the relics of the Buddha as representing the truth which he taught.

[73:03]

So you have a shift from the 32 marks of the inaccessible Buddha to the Buddha's truth body. Now the truth body can be something we also possess. So this also was part of the shift of Mahayana to a religion. And it was a shift by making the teaching accessible to everyone And also to say that you needed the power of everyone in return to realize Buddha nature. Don't you think that's interesting?

[74:11]

I think it's interesting. To spread the teaching, but say we are spreading the teaching because we need all of our power together for one person to be born into the truth. So in the last seminar here I did speak about this as the Diamond Sutra presents it as sentient space. Okay, so what is the truth? The truth is that everything is interdependent. That there is dependent co-arising. That everything that appears, appears through something else. And another idea that comes from India and yogic culture is this idea that we are also macrocosm and microcosm.

[75:33]

That not only are we interdependent, but we interpenetrate. In one drop of the ocean is the whole ocean. Or in us are all the conditions that are also everywhere in the omniverse or universe. So the idea of not only interdependence, but interpenetration was there. Now I'm hoping that if I can show you how these views develop and operate, you'll be able to understand them better in yourself.

[76:36]

And I'm coming back again to what you see when you look out the window. What you see when you look at me. As I said last night, pecking out and pecking in. Have they ever met? That's the first time. Hello! But... Anyway, in other words, do we see, when you look at me, when I look at you, when we look at that, do we see ourselves or do we see something different? It's not true that we see something different. It's not true that we see something the same. But the way we work we're going to have to see one way or the other.

[77:52]

In other words our habits of mind are pretty simple. In other words, our habits of the mind are very simple. It's like you'll tend to say yes to things, you'll tend to say no to things. If someone asks you to go to the movies, you don't usually say, well, it's a gray area, let me see here. I usually say yes or no. You might say no first and then yes or vice versa. I think as a practice it's better to say yes first. And then say, well, when I think it over, there's a lot of gray areas here. No, I can't even look. It's like this word appreciation. It's such a fantastic word.

[78:59]

The root is per, but it's a double root. And it's combined. One root of per means in between. And the other root of per means to praise. Or to be grateful. So in English, appreciate means to be in between and equally value and appreciate both sides. So it also means, like in finance, if your capital appreciates, it gets bigger. So, there's a wisdom in a word like this, which is that When you value both sides of something, they grow together and develop.

[80:09]

So you can take Suzuki Roshi with his astuteness, even though English wasn't his native language, Even though English wasn't Sukhirishi's native language? His astuteness? No. Astuteness means... Stubborn? Oh, no. Sometimes he was a little, but astuteness means accurate judgment. It means intelligence, but accurately assessing. He picked this word appreciation as the dynamic of zazen mind. Okay.

[81:09]

So if everything is interdependent and in some way at a certain molecular or atomic level interpenetrating and in this mutual space that everything creates And again, let me give you this example, which I think is helpful. The universe, the so-called Big Bang, doesn't happen in space. It's not expanding in space. It's creating space as it expands. So it's this sense of everything interpenetrates and is creating each other simultaneously.

[82:33]

Now, although my words are rather clumsy about it, And philosophically or scientifically you can argue various aspects. But as a vision of how we exist, it's very powerful. And it's more accurate than seeing separateness. It's a kind of power. Usually I tell this story, this koan, only when Ulrike is translating. But Ulrike won't let me tell it anymore. So, since she's not here, I'll take a chance.

[83:39]

Anyway, this is the story of Matsu and Baichang. Matsu is probably, you know, number one Zen master. And... And Baizhang, or Hyakujo, is the person credited with, at least somewhat mythologically, the creation of the Zen monastic life and rules. Anyway, he represents the separation of the Zen life from the Theravadan Vinaya life. So in this story, Matsu and Bai Zhang, these two fellows are... You know, that was a long time ago, the late 8th century.

[84:52]

But their present felt exactly like this. They knew they had grandparents who were dead, or they knew that they didn't know what was going to happen next. And there were green plants and air, and the air may have been a little thicker than now, but pretty much it was the same. So they're taking a walk. And some wild geese fly over. And Matsu says, what is it? What is it? Yeah. Not quite that fast. He said a little slower than that.

[85:56]

And Pai Chang said, oh, it's wild geese. And Pai Chang said, wild geese? And Matsu said, where have they gone? And Bajang said, they've flown away. This is why Riki doesn't... And then he grabs... And then he grabs... Matsu grabs Bajang's nose and really twists it. And I mean, so hard that this hairy-bodied lion, antelope guy actually screamed out in pain. He cried. Antelope tears. And Matsu said, when have they ever flown away?

[87:10]

Anyway, it's a wonderful story. And this kind of story can be appreciated every year or twice a year or three times a year. Yeah, you can come back to it with a new sense. But we have to understand, you know, Matsu is a person of some power. And this is a big question. What is it? What is it? Yeah. So what is he asking? What is here? I mean, well, there's wild geese.

[88:12]

There's also everything interdependent. There's also everything appearing in the wild geese appearing in their mind. there's also the identification of the samadhi emptiness of mind with the emptiness of space there's the sense of all this stopped and everywhere present at once they've flown away somehow doesn't cut it Und sie sind weggeflogen, das trifft es einfach nicht. Doesn't cut it in English means, isn't such a good answer. Das bedeutet eben, es ist keine gute Antwort. So Sukershi, when he told this story, said, perhaps Bai Zhang should have just stuck out his tongue.

[89:13]

Suzuki Roshi hat gesagt, also diese Geschichte erzählte, vielleicht hätte Bai Zhang einfach nur die Zunge rausstrecken sollen. What is it? Was ist es? But of course, maybe he wouldn't have, because Matsu was famous for having a tongue that could touch the tip of his nose. He had such a big nose and a long tongue to reach it that he was called Horse Master. So maybe Bai Zhang said, I'm not going to stick out my little tongue. Anyway, the question is how do you answer some fundamental question like this? How do you answer Matsu's power? The introduction says before the case says nothing in the world can hide it his entire capacity stands revealed any situation arises he knows how to encounter it

[90:43]

In whatever way he moves, he fully manifests himself. His speech, his words are always pivotal. Which means his words always reveal both sides, emptiness and form. Now, Suzuki Roshi spoke about this. He used to tell this story quite often. It was one of his favorite koans. That this kind of understanding of the everything all at once, And as the power that arises in us, we discover, when our mind is based on everything all at once, we cannot express in words. We can hardly express.

[91:58]

express it in any way except through being and knowing. So this is also this sense of there's nothing in the world that is unknown. Do you understand? there's nothing in the world that can hide it. If that is us, I mean, this goes back before Buddhism and the Upanishads, that thou art. If that, this is us, we already know it. There is nothing here but knowing.

[93:18]

And interference with knowing. But even within interference from knowing, there's knowing underneath the interference. Mm-hmm. I don't. I shouldn't ask, do you understand? So, Chris, she always used to end his lectures, do you understand? And I finally went up to him and said, I wish you wouldn't say that. It always makes me doubt. And before you said that, I had the feeling of knowing. So he said, okay. So for two or three lectures, he didn't say it. But his habit was to end with, do you understand?

[94:24]

So I'm not asking, do you understand, but do you? Oh, shucks, I didn't forget my watch one. Leider habe ich meine Uhr nicht vergessen.

[94:51]

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