So we're studying this koan. And we're studying... At the same time, we're studying how to study koans. And we're studying ourselves. Much like maybe if you go to... visit where you grew up or visit your family. You find yourself soaking in your family, in the familiar place where you grew up, etc., And in... Practicing with a koan in a way you're soaking yourself in your Buddhist family.

[01:17]

Yeah, and I think if... If we're going to practice this practice seriously, and I think you are, we have to take the forms of this practice as seriously as we do Take our family, our personal family seriously. Yeah, and the main texts, the main household, the main family business of Zen is found in these koans.

[02:20]

Each of you, of course, is motivated or finds yourself individually in your personal life, led into practice. But from my point of view it's, and I think from your point of view too, but from my point of view We're part of an experiment to see if this autodidactic apprenticeship can be realized here in the West and in the midst of what are primarily lay people

[03:26]

lay lives. And just the way we just chanted together makes me feel that we're having some success in this experiment. Because, you know, our practice is going to be ripened, be most enriched through a Sangha body as well as our own individual practice. One of the secrets of Zen practice is this development of

[04:51]

or incubation of a sangha body. Incubation within a sangha body. Now, this morning I'd like to particularly look at the shoyoroku version of this koan of bodhidharma, Buddhism coming into China. The emphasis in this koan is, maybe we could say dormancy. like when a field lies dormant.

[06:06]

And that's really the idea of winter branches. Yeah, they're dormant in the winter. And you know, we came up with this name, but I know some of you call yourself dead sticks. But for me, you're not dead sticks. Yeah. So, You know, I try to imagine what it was like to live in China in the time when these koan collections were being compiled and the stories put together and so forth.

[07:16]

And in much of China, I know they had long Winters like they did here with deep snow. Where did the snow go? Two years now, no snow. But they had here in the Black Forest months and months of winter and snow covering the first story at least. Yeah, and I remember I talked with a Chinese man who worked at a print shop. Yeah, where I used to get things printed. And he'd grown up in China. And he talked about these wonderful long winters.

[08:26]

When they go between houses in snow tunnels. As they still do when I was there in northern Japan. And I think that You know, one of the first words I've ever learned in Germany, believe it or not, except Gesundheit, was Winterschlaf. Ja. Winterschlaf. Hibernation means the same thing in Old English. Ja, um... And people, I think there's even been studies done, that people hibernate more than we realize. Where there's long winters, people sleep a lot.

[09:30]

And there's no light. There's no electric light or heat or anything. You have to conserve your firewood that you saved. And conserve your wood. Conserve your food. So my impression is people slept long hours and ate little and burned as little firewood as possible. And I think that kind of feeling is in the clear moon of autumn turns its wintry disc. And there's an equivalency made in this poem in this koan between Bodhidharma's nine years of sitting and a kind of hibernation.

[10:55]

Yeah, and the Fayenz poem is also referred to. Everywhere I go, the frosty moon I can't remember, of autumn. It falls as it may into the valleys ahead. And then the colon adds the commentary, lighting the incomparable way. So here, dormancy or winter branches or hibernation, is a kind of activity.

[12:02]

The clear moon of autumn turns its frosty disk. Der klare Herbstmond dreht ja seine frostige Scheibe. Everywhere I go, the frosty moon. Und wo immer ich hingehe, da ist der frostige Mond. The light of the frosty moon falls as it may. As it on its own does. As it may. Da fällt das Licht des Mondes sozusagen wie es will. into the valleys ahead. So you can imagine, you know, this must have been an experience of walking in the, yeah, maybe the full moon. And finding as you come over a ridge, the moon is there.

[13:02]

lighting the valley ahead. And Creston is very much like that. It's so dark when there's no moon. Yeah, and then when it's full moon as it's been... Recently. Yeah, I can dance my way down to the sendo, down through the snow. I have a desktop image on my computer. What do they call it? What do they call it? Anyway, a desktop image. It's called Earthdisk. And I don't know, I got it once. It's great. Every few minutes it updates itself. As long as Frank has me connected, which he got me connected. And I noticed a while ago, you know, a couple weeks ago, that there was this black line down the middle, because you know it updates the clouds and everything, and I see the sun go across the whole earth, so I've got it centered on Berlin, and now I usually have it centered on Denver, so I can watch the lights of Paris appear in the dark, and so forth.

[14:50]

And the other day I said, this is funny, there's a black strip down the middle and it's very light in Europe and it's almost as light on the rest of the United States. And it's a black stripe in the middle and it's bright in Europe and almost as bright in the United States. I was working around 2 or 3 in the morning in Kirsten. And I looked at the... and then I looked, oh, it's full moon out. And really... There was only a real dark strip where the moon had set already, and much, half the world was really lit by the moon, almost as much as the sun.

[15:51]

Yeah, so somehow I, you know, these things like the full moon and being out at night or Making a trip in the full moon would be much more common than now, where we have headlights and stuff. So this And this frosty disc of autumn anticipates winter. Anticipates what for the average person, I'm sure, was a kind of hibernation that occurred in the winter.

[16:55]

And less activity. but another kind of activity. Tian Deng is quoted as saying, in the spherical dot, in the spherical point, a special, I don't remember exactly, a special subtlety is present or appears. Where wisdom is effortless, yet knowledge remains. And when clinging thought is present, let go of nothing remains now what is why does the koan put this in here and when you soak yourself in

[18:11]

This family business, this Koran, this family business. It's like maybe when you do visit your place where you grew up, You may hear various voices from different times in your past. And in a... And in a koan like this, there's a kind of melody, even cacophony of different voices. And you kind of have to listen to these voices and realize they're coming from different places. And it says here, you know, sometimes the ancients came forth, appeared.

[19:36]

Sometimes they said something like, we're in hiding, Earth. Not in sight. Sometimes they spoke. Sometimes they remained silent. Yeah, like a tree, as if you could see a tree simultaneously in all its seasons. Its branches laden with fruit and memories and at the same time bare. So Bodhidharma met the emperor. Now the big theme of this koan is Buddhism, as we talked about yesterday, Buddhism coming from India to China.

[20:58]

And the transposing of that from the West to the East. The koan also is about Buddhism coming into you. You're China and you're the emperor and you're Bodhidharma. Conceptually, It's the same. You don't have to think, I'm an emperor, I'm Bodhidharma or something. But conceptually, Buddhism is coming into China and coming into the individuals in China.

[21:59]

And Renshan, after he modestly receives the robe and says, I'm not a person who should receive... But he accepts because his teacher asked him to. And his teacher says, giving transmission advice. Now you are thus. But what is important? Don't appear in the world too readily. Don't even need to appear in the world too readily.

[23:02]

If you're thinking about being known or recognized or taken seriously, you shouldn't have the robe. That's what he's saying. Sometimes we appear in the world, sometimes we don't. And if you're, um... fully in the satisfaction of, how can I put it, aliveness itself. Outside recognition or something like that appearing in the world, you don't even think about it. Because you're defined through activity, through actions, through interdependent causation.

[24:12]

So when you're hibernating, your action is hibernating. Perhaps turning the frosty disc. And maybe your fruit never gets pipped. Or perhaps your branches never blossom. If we have this feeling, somehow Buddhism will come into China. If you define yourself through the outer world, Buddhism will not come into China. Doesn't mean we don't have some definition in the outer world. When winter's over, we have to plant our crops and so forth.

[25:15]

But the default position, the definitive position, some of us are winter branches, some of us are... spring blossoms. And we let the moonlight or the sunlight fall as it may in the valleys ahead. Anyway, the koan is trying to give us this kind of feeling that while in the big theme of the koan is Buddhism going from one culture to another.

[26:22]

But the practice theme is The power and activity of dormancy. So one thing, anybody who would read this koan in the past would be familiar with a famous statement, a statement attributed famously to Bodhidharma, to inwardly, he said to Huike, supposedly, inwardly transmit

[27:29]

the seal of mind for enlightened realization inwardly transmit the seal of mind for realization for enlightenment outwardly transmit the robe to certify religion. Okay. Now, I think, again, I'll have to try to say... I should stop in a minute. We'll see if I do. Maybe you hope I do. Maybe I hope I don't. I have to see if I can create what I imagine, fairly sure of, is the feeling in those times.

[28:49]

The world didn't change. It went on century after century as far as anybody could tell. It's almost exactly the same. And the general metaphor was it was always better in the past. Our metaphor is it's always going to be better in the future. In the future or then the future? Our metaphor is it's always going to be better in the future. I've lost that idea in the last 20 or 30 years. Okay. They had no way to compare one century to the other because, you know, they had no... media world like we live in. So the feeling was you were born into a world that you were sort of stuck with.

[29:51]

But particularly for Buddhists and with this idea of Buddha nature there was an idea of one had a something close to a perfected inner life. A life that, as the koan consistently implies, that went on in this dormancy. Like you have Bodhidharma's nine years in many little pieces every morning.

[30:53]

And this is the seal of mind which takes time independent of things going on outside. So it didn't matter whether you appeared in the world because you're The real world appeared in you. Now, don't take my words too literally, but that's the feeling, the metaphor people have. Yeah, and if it took a thousand years from the first translation projects to these koan compilations, it was clear it took a long time to incubate this true person in oneself and in your culture.

[32:15]

And culture here, like the dragon and elephant, are adept practitioners who are free of culture. That's what it means. And here also among these dragons and elephants, the advanced practitioners who were also free from culture. Culture in this context means what binds you, what limits you. It doesn't mean opera music, poetry, etc. In fact, this Chinese fellow I mentioned said the best time of his life were these winters because everyone would go from house to house and they would sing and have the songs of their area would be passed and they'd know them all and so forth.

[33:26]

You know, I had a pretty long-lasting cold for three or four weeks in January. It was mild compared to what was going on in Crestone. I mean, half the town couldn't go to work and there were no kids in school. It was quite a cold flu epidemic. And a couple times I got up, you know, I have to get up around 3 to get down to the Zendo in time and put the fire in the stove while me, Louise and Sophia are asleep and so forth. So I got up and I'm standing in the ice cold house and I thought, well, it's better if I go back to bed. It was clear, I mean, I like to get well on the cushion.

[34:58]

That's my theme for many years. But it was clear to me, at least for a couple of days, I really had to sleep some hours. So I got over the worst of this cold in a couple of days. But what struck me is how I need to go to Zazen for the sickness of selfness. I noticed that things get tangled up. I've got so many things to do. on so many different levels, they all get tangled up.

[36:04]

And I can feel that part of the tangle is selfness. But I find when I sit that it becomes very clear and the path through them is a path of less selfness. So we could say that what Bodhidharma means by the seal of mind is when the mind is sealed by less selfness. And the mind sealed by less selfness takes time to incubate. Yeah.

[37:10]

Well, again, I only got part way. Now we're stuck with some incubating less selfness. What happens to this incubating less selfness? That's also the theme of this koan. To be continued. Thanks.

[37:51]

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