It's a different feeling being in here. I don't compare them, it's just different. Okay, and I've been having conversations with the Amitabha Buddha, Amida Buddha and Avalokiteshvara here. And they both said to me, you know, we know you haven't forgotten us, but we're lonely over here. And we don't have to be in some special place. Just find a seat for us over there. So maybe we could put Avla Kichishvara down at the far end of the zender, just on the table next to Tara. She's blushing because she's now happy.

[01:07]

Actually, Ivo took some measurements of that opening there. I have some ideas of how we could build a platform in there with nice wood fairly simply and have maybe not everyone in there but more. And I... I noticed that Paul smiled when I said that because he knows he might be asked about the task.

[02:10]

You know, I'm always pointing out the differences between Buddhist culture and actually Asian culture and Western culture. And I'm still, after all these years, impressed by the significant differences. But I'm thrilled by or I find happy because of the significant differences. Yeah, and not because, well, I mean... because, well, because the differences give us an entry.

[03:30]

Entries. Okay. So somehow we got, you know, Hokusai in Japanese. Sino-Japanese. And... And we've been talking about Dung Shan and so forth because of that. So I thought maybe I should speak to Dung Shan's experience waiting in the stream. Sometimes I describe Buddhism as a practice philosophy. Yeah, not just a philosophy. A philosophy you have to practice in order for it to make, become real. Nicht nur eine Philosophie, sondern eine Philosophie, die man praktizieren muss, damit sie echt wird.

[05:00]

A certain degree of understanding is necessary. Ein gewisses Ausmaß von Verständnis ist notwendig. But it's just enough understanding to practice it. But maybe now I would say it's a medicinal philosophy. I'm not saying it's just for Neil. Because it's not just, well, I mean, maybe it's almost the same as saying a practice philosophy. But here, if I call it a medicinal philosophy, understanding the pill doesn't help you much at all. It's taking the pill that makes a difference. Yeah, tableta... It comes in little units.

[06:10]

Wados and stuff like that. That's not a true act. I never thought of that. Okay. Because it's important how you take the medicine. When, how, etc. which is a little more than just saying it's a practice philosophy. Okay, so now I'm talking about the understanding, practicing with unpredictability as I spoke the other day. Again, you label everything, name everything, unpredictable. Du benennst alles, du betitelst alles mit unvorhersehbar.

[07:14]

And again, everybody who's thoughtful at all knows that things are unpredictable. Und jeder, der überhaupt nur... farmhouses, mountains, they're all unpredictable. Again, I want to emphasize the radicalness, the thoroughgoingness that's necessitated by this practice. It doesn't help just to understand that everything is unpredictable. You have to enter into the unpredictability that you point out, that you name, that you reference. You really have to feel the unpredictability.

[08:24]

Again, enter into the unpredictability. I mean, it's a fact. You are entered into the unpredictability. But Even though that's a fact, understanding doesn't engage you in that fact. Understanding may even keep you from engaging in this fact. It might be better to not believe it.

[09:27]

To resist it. Until it just flaps you in the face and says, hey, unpredictable. That's what you are. It's not the right words, is it? I think it's unbelievable, isn't it? Anyway, sorry. Okay. I was being unpredictable. Because what happens when really you engage with everything that's unpredictable? You transform the precursor, the metabolic precursor of predictable. So your engagement with things as predictable becomes the mulch for unpredictability.

[10:44]

Mulch, no. When you take leaves and spread them... Spread them on the field, that's mulch. Yeah, okay. See, it's German and English, you know, dialects. No, sorry, but now I lost the sentence again. When... you really thoroughgoing practice unpredictability. The precursor of unpredictability is predictability. And the more you engage in noting unpredictability, Entering into unpredictability, you begin to mulch predictability. Munchkins are mulching.

[11:51]

Or you're transforming predictability into unpredictability. The farm, I said farms are unpredictable. Farmhouses. But I really should have said farms are unpredictable, not farmhouses. Because we're not really speaking just about objects of perception. We're talking about relational objects. So it's clear that a farm is a relational object. You have to cut the fields, you have to put the cows out, it's all going on around us. Cut the hay, put the cows out, send them to the slaughterhouse.

[13:19]

So a relational object, maybe we could call it a nexus. vielleicht können wir so ein in Beziehung begriffenes Objekt ein Nexus nennen. Nexus is, you know, things that are netted together. Ein Nexus ist etwas, wo die Dinge miteinander vernetzt sind. And the word Nexus comes from net. Und dieses Wort Nexus kommt vom Wort Netz. And so, you know, the plural is Nexus is, I sometimes say, there's no such word, Nexi. Like focus is foci. It's a way of making a plural. So when you enter into unpredictability, You're entering into the object perception as a relational object.

[14:36]

Its unpredictability is its relational unpredictability. Seine Unvorhersehbarkeit ist seine Unvorhersehbarkeit In the relationship. Recently, when we had the seminar, I walked around the campus and looked around. And from one point of view, these are just buildings. And I rather like the buildings and how we take care of them and things. But I was struck first of all with that they're just buildings. And then I thought, how extraordinary.

[15:39]

There's quite a few people here. Seriously engaged and exploring the Dharma. Wow, this is rare. And it's actually happening here. And I was thinking, geez, how thrilling it is that these buildings exist. We're actually exploring the Dharma. Investigating. So part of exploring the Dharma is to see what happens when you start doing it. And here, as I say, you're mulching or transforming And that's the point of Nagarjuna's metabolic approach to the two truths.

[16:49]

So in a way he's more like a doctor than a philosopher. You know, he's called the other Buddha, the second Buddha. Because so much of Buddhism comes from His insights in his way of presenting Buddhism. But he, you know, and people try to understand it in the context of Western philosophy, etc. But really it's he saying, this is medicine, and if you take it a certain way, something will happen. So it doesn't just make you understand unpredictability. The fundamental truth. It transforms predictability into into the door to engaging unpredictability.

[18:32]

So, Dongshan is taking leave of Yunyang. At least some of you have been reading this because you've spoken to me about it. And I seldom, I mean I never in fact, speak about people's experiences that are related to me in Doksana or in other ways. And if I do indirectly sometimes, or directly even, I don't say who it is or anything like that. Because I wanted us to be just engaged in a shared field of practice, but not a comparative field of practice. But of course here sometimes we need a translator, so there's three of us in Dokusan.

[19:47]

And duksan means to go alone, and then you bring a translator. Oh, well. But so far you've brought such nice translators. Okay. But some of you have experiences that are very much like duksan's. And in a way, you don't want to say, oh, now I'm like Dung Shan. No, you just sort of, but hey, my practice must be working. It's a taste of this. It's like Dung Shan. It's good to be proud of your practice but not proud of yourself for practicing. Okay, okay. So, Dongshan asks, says to Yunyan, In the future, how should I speak about this reality, your reality?

[21:44]

If someone asks me about our reality, your reality, or reality, Wenn mich jemand über deine oder unsere, deine Wirklichkeit fragt. How should I respond? Wie soll ich dann antworten? Okay. Now, what he's really saying to Jungian. Was er da eigentlich zu Jungian sagt. For whatever reason he was leaving, he was leaving. Aus welchem Grund auch immer er gegangen ist, er ist gegangen. So basically he was saying, I'm not leaving. because we now share the same reality the reality of our shared understanding of this lineage so he's saying I'm not really leaving you because I'm sharing we share the same now share the same reality Yeah.

[22:59]

But if someone asks... Now, that's a way of saying, yeah, we share the same reality, but I would like you to have this opportunity to teach me a little more. I'm including you now as I will include you in the future. I'm not saying that you have to You have to think about all these things like I'm thinking about it. I've been living with this story since 1961 or something. And it's been medicinally working in me. And one way it works in you is that all the things that Yunyan could have said or Dengshan could have said are there in the wings.

[24:25]

The wings are in a theater. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Are there in the... are next door but not spoken. Yeah. It's like maybe you could try out what would you say to me if you were leaving for a long period of time You didn't know how long. Would you say what, would you ask what Deng Xiaon asked? And if, no, you can say, I wouldn't say that. And then you could explore all the things you might say. And then you can explore, well, why did he choose this thing to say? Now, I mean, one thing that affects this way of thinking in Chinese Buddhism is our poems, our poetry tradition is primarily about the sound of the poems.

[26:01]

And the Chinese poetry tradition is much more so, maybe even more so, or is much more than ours, but even maybe more so than the sound. is the look of the poem. Because they're all written with a brush. And with each character the person can decide whether he writes in one of four different styles. In a range from very formal to very... So flexible that many people can't even read what the kanji is, even educated Japanese and Chinese people.

[27:22]

And if you can't read what it is, it's even more interesting. Because then you have to think, well, what could he mean? It might be this, it might be that. I've actually had this experience. Yeah, I mean, people have given me scrolls and I put them up and Nakamura Sensei, who couldn't be more informed about Chinese and Japanese literature. And we discussed the kanji and then she'd say, well, I have a friend and she'd bring in a kind of expert and then we'd discuss it more. Well, maybe that third kanji is this.

[28:22]

And she looked at it and then we discussed the letter. Then she got an expert friend to do it. We discussed it third. And then we came to the conclusion that maybe the third letter could mean this and that. That's why I like reading my notes of Suzuki Roshi, because I can't read my own handwriting. What does that straight line mean between those three straight lines? Hmm... So then I have lots of thoughts. So it's the look of the poem and actually the posture of the writer.

[29:37]

Because the posture of your spine and your hand and your state of mind is right there in the characters. And all of the, any character you write, any kanji you write, has oral sound, resonances with other characters, and also it's made up of other characters. So each character may be three or four characters put together. And you simply don't see that in an English poem. You can look at the roots and things, but it's not so present. And these characters don't have shared history.

[30:42]

They're quite different characters put together in a little cluster. So this poetic intelligence of the Chinese means that say that a character in a poem, the kanji, excuse me to say kanji, the kanji in a poem, the first kanji, is three characters put together to make one character. Now the person who reads this at a visually stable pace feels the presence of all three characters as well as the combined character.

[31:52]

And the writer, artist, poet may have filled his brush again with ink in the middle of the character, which then suggests he's emphasizing that character more than the other two within the cluster. And then the character may have more than one pronunciation. And the other pronunciations also refer to other characters.

[32:54]

So it's much more sort of like a botanist or somebody looking at a plant and then, oh yeah, and this, and there's that cell, and this one, you know, etc., So we can't do this. We don't write our poetry that way. Our spine does not appear in the English word I type in my computer. But we can see that These koans or these little stories are meant to be engaged by you. So you have to recreate for yourself a situation while I'm leaving my teacher. What would I say? Also musst du für dich selbst so eine Situation neu erschaffen, wo du dich fragst, okay, ich verlasse meinen Lehrer, was würde ich sagen?

[34:03]

And I would say, before you even look very carefully at what Dung Shan says, you should look at all the possibilities you might say. Oh dear. Because I went to lunch today, And I had almost no time before the tea show. I thought I have to talk about something very simple. That won't take any time at all. And here I'm not even at the beginning. I'm out of control, I'm sorry. So, Dongshan said, in the future, later on if I'm asked about reality or our reality or your reality and you must know that they're both in complete agreement of how they understand

[35:16]

Und ihr müsst wissen, dass sie beide vollkommen daran übereinstimmen, wie sie verstehen. And then he tears it open a bit and says, how should I respond? Und dann öffnet er das ein bisschen und fragt, wie soll ich dann antworten? Just say, just this is it. Just this is it. So it's not just a simple be here now kind of thing. Just this is it. So he's saying, responding to the way it's laid out here, like a kind of poem, layered and laid out.

[36:32]

Er antwortet da auch auf die Art und Weise, wie das hier dargelegt ist, als eine Art Gedicht, also geschichtet und auch ausgelegt. In the future you say just this is it. Er sagt, in Zukunft sagst du genau dies ist es. Yeah, just as we are now at this moment. But it also is, in the future, the situation that whatever it is, is it. So how do you, then the question is, how do you transform the situation in the future into the just this is it that he has with Yunyan? And this question is what Dogen means by a Dharma position. How do we take a Dharma position? And it's also, this is a Nirmanakaya position. Okay.

[37:49]

So, I'll go on a few more moments, not minutes, moments. We'll see. Hope your legs are okay. Okay. So, Dung Shan leaves. And he asked him this question. How should I respond? And he says, just this is it. So he's walking along in the midst of just this is it. And as he's walking along in the midst of practicing, percolating, incubating mulching just establishing a continuum of just this is it

[38:56]

he wades through a stream and he sees his reflection now you if we're practicing with this you have to imagine yourself walking through a stream In fact, I expect all of you right after the lecture to be out there in that stream waiting along in the cold. There's no reflection here. Just this is it. No, my feet are damn cold. Yeah. And then it for him became a verse. Yeah. And what appeared to him is don't seek from others.

[40:20]

Don't seek from others. Don't seek from union. Don't seek from anyone. or you'll be far estranged from self this is capital S-E-L-F now I go on alone and that's a terrible and a And wonderful revelation that we're alone. I mean, the shared reality, our reality with Yunyan. Now I go on alone. Nun gehe ich allein.

[41:20]

And remember, Jungian, I didn't mention it, but Jungian said, now you are in charge of this great matter. Und ich habe das nicht erwähnt, aber denkt dran, Jungian hat gesagt, nun bist du für diese große Sache verantwortlich. This is again the Nirmanakaya position. Und nochmal, das ist die Nirmanakaya position. Now you are in charge of this great matter. You must be most thorough going. So he's thorough going through the strings. Justice is it. Without comparisons, without explanations. And he happens to see his reflection. He's engaged with unpredictability. So he says, don't seek from others. Und sagt er, suche nicht von anderen.

[42:30]

Or you'll be far estranged from self. Oder du wirst dich weit vom Selbst entfernen. Now I go on alone. Nun gehe ich allein weiter. I am not it. Ich bin es. No, I am now it. It is not me. You must understand in this way in order to merge with suchness. So here's a metaphor, a metabolic, alchemical statement. It's not that this is the right way to understand necessarily, but you have to understand this way in order to merge with suchness or thusness. Okay. So back to Nagarjuna for a couple sentences.

[43:49]

So you're mulching, transforming predictability into unpredictability. Yeah, and what happens? If you really do it with everything, absolutely everything, unpredictable, unpredictable, Finally, there is something that stays, as I said the other day. And it's not just what stays. I mean, excuse me, and it's mind that stays. in the midst of all these things that are unpredictable, there's mind which is present with each unpredictability. So the continuum of mind becomes a predictable experience. And other practices are to make that continuum of mind

[44:53]

imperturbable. But the alchemy here is not just that the mind becomes a predictable continuum. But your location becomes the primary reference point. your physical location your sensorial location because you know there's another story where someone's crossing a bridge and he sees that the bridge flows but not the stream this is a shift to

[46:06]

The world is flowing by and you're the still point. You can't get there by philosophy. You get there by medicine or practice. If suddenly It's you that stays, is the reference point. Mind is the continuum, but your location is the reference point. Sorry, mind is what? Mind is the continuum. And your experience is, when you turn, for instance, It isn't that you turn, the world turns.

[47:16]

You actually feel the world is flowing around you and you're the location. This is big self with an S. So he's walking along and he sees a flowing stream And he sees his reflection. And it's not that he sees the reflection as impermanent. And if he steps the next step, his reflection is gone. But for a moment there's his reflection and him. the nexus this relationship and both are unpredictable but both are the reference point the reflection is the reference point at that moment with him And he's the reference point.

[48:33]

And that reference point is always changing. How can I say that? The mind is a continuum. The location becomes a continuum. reference point that remains. So in a way mind stays and the reference point, the sensorial reference point stays and the world flows in its unpredictability. Und die Welt fließt in ihrer Unvorhersehbarkeit. Okay. Nothing else you need to know. Es gibt nichts, was ihr sonst noch wissen müsstet. Ja. Nein. Nein.

[49:33]

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