The twelfth koan in the Shoryoku says scholars plow with the pen. And orators Wow, with the tongue. But we patched robed mendicants. Mendicants monk. Lazily watch the white ox on the open ground. Schauen faul dem weißen Ochsen zu auf der Wiese.

[01:05]

Not noticing the auspicious rootless grass. Nicht beachtend die... Das wurzellose Gras. Auspicious rootless grass. Special or... Das besondere... Das vielversprechende wurzellose Gras. No one knows what it really means. Niemand weiß wirklich, was das bedeutet. Yeah. Di Zhang asks a monk, where do you come from?

[02:08]

A normal thing to ask somebody. He says, from the south. How is practice in the south, he says, Di Zhang says. And the monk says, oh, there's extensive discussion. He says, how does that compare to me here, planting rice and making food? And the monk is a serious monk, you know, and he says, but what do we do? What do you do? What does one do about the world? Und der Mönch ist ein sehr ernsthafter Mönch und fragt ja aber, was wird denn für die Welt getan? And Di Chang says, well, what do you call the world? And Di Chang fragt, was nennst du denn die Welt?

[03:13]

Each of us, what do we call the world? How do you call up the world, call forth the world? Lazily watching a white otter. What kind of life is this? Is this initial mind? And it's a kind of plowing. It implies it's a kind of plowing, like orators or authors. How can lazily watching a white ox be plowing? The ox isn't pulling a plow. It's open ground. The ground isn't being plowed. Speaking of white oxes, maybe you could have the curtains on at least the windows behind people.

[04:47]

Not now, it's fine. Now you're all beautiful black silhouettes. Yeah, the benefits of Zen practice. Zen practice is, of course, zazen and mindfulness. That's the territory of Zen practice. But the point I'm making is that it's the articulation and articulation of mindfulness, which is Zen practice.

[05:58]

But, you know, I always say Zen practice, you know, one of the kind of seals and signs of Zen practice, is that it does very little guided meditation. Now, wouldn't guided meditation be the articulation of Zazen? No, it would be one kind of articulation. But it's not lazily watching the white ox. Lazily watching the white ox is also a kind of articulation. The zazen of uncorrected mind is also an articulation of zazen.

[07:17]

Okay, so we obviously have to ask what are the articulations of zazen? and mindfulness that make it Zen practice. Certainly one of the articulations is to profoundly leave yourself alone. Okay. So, zazen and mindfulness and also the articulation of zazen and mindfulness.

[08:27]

I looked yesterday at the two major categories within Zen are gradual articulation and sudden articulation. Yeah, here we could say instead of articulation, just pedagogy. Okay, now, as I said yesterday, and I want to say it more... clearly today, I really don't like the word gradual. Und ich möchte nochmal wiederholen, ich mag dieses Wort graduell nicht. And yeah, it's the political negativity of the term within Zen schools.

[09:36]

It's not really the reason I don't like it. Also es ist nicht... It's because I really don't think practice works gradually. If you sit zazen all your life, And you sit, yeah, every day, you know, a very nice guy or gal. Yeah, there'll be some difference after 40 years than there was at the beginning. But there may not be much. Yeah.

[10:36]

So, and it's not really Zen practice. Even if you accelerate your car gradually. In fact, you're shifting the gears. And even if you have an automatic... You may not be shifting the gears, but the engine is shifting the gears. So I would prefer maybe incremental practice and sudden practice. Maybe I'll learn German after another 40 years. It won't be German, though. Okay. So I would like to speak as a kind of review of three shiftings of the gears.

[12:08]

You know, I find to advance our dharmasanga practice Incrementally advance our Dharma Sangha practice. It's best to keep going back, often anyway, it's good to go back to practices we already know. Because you already have a purchase on them. A purchase means a hold. You already have a taste, a feel, a hold on them. And then to look at them in more depth. Or with more thoroughness.

[13:22]

And to then look at them in a relationship to other practices. Because if you can get a foundation in one or two practices, To a surprising degree, Buddhism will start teaching you. And remember, Dogen said, lengthy explanations and long study are not necessary to realize this practice. A single four-line verse will do. So what kind of practice is this?

[14:33]

The single four-line verse will do. Hey, we can all have one of those. Shorter than some of the phone numbers we have to know. You can just dial up enlightenment. Yeah, I've just got this simple four-line verse and boy. Yeah, like that. Like this. Okay, so as I said yesterday, let's look at one articulation or shift in Zazen practice. Ja, und wie ich gestern gesagt habe, lasst uns eine Artikulation, einen Wechsel, einen Übergang in der Zazen-Praxis anschauen. It's the still sitting that breaks the connection between thought and action.

[15:37]

Do you understand what I mean? It ends the magic of words. The magic of thoughts. That thoughts somehow contaminate me or you or have some power. Yes, they have some power. If you act on them. If you intend them. If they're affected by your past. But practice is to let go of all this.

[16:42]

And the main technique is still sitting. And the symbolic instruction is don't scratch. So finally, you discover you can just sit through anything. Whatever your thoughts, whatever your distractions, whatever you think, I've really got to go do this, you can just sit. This is one of the greatest powers in the world. And it's the root of the mind of Buddha. It's the root of... What's the word?

[17:55]

Imperturbable mind. But it's realized, developed, actualized through simple, repeated, being able to sit through whatever comes up. And if you're a person who can sit without pain, I'm sorry. I feel sorry for you. Because then you can probably just sit and think happily for 40 years, cross-legged, etc., We have an expression kids say when they're accused of lying. No, I'm not. This is the truth. I cross my heart and hope to die if I'm not telling the truth. And somehow this became in the early days of my zazen, I cross my legs and hope to die.

[19:18]

So it really helped if you also have to learn to sit through the feeling of pain and the thought of pain. In any case, you want to break the connection between thought and action. So you can freely think anything. Now, I often point out, I remember reading Dostoevsky at the, I don't know which one it was, but the thought of killing the father is somehow some kind of guilt or there's some kind of power to the thought of killing the father, even if you don't kill the father.

[20:54]

Ja, in Dostoyevsky, da kann ich mich erinnern, dass ich das gelesen habe, dass schon der Gedanke, den Vater zu töten, dich schuldig macht, auch wenn du ihn gar nicht tötest. No, I think that's really very characteristic of our Western culture. We feel kind of morally involved and responsible for what our thoughts are. To a minor degree or a big degree. But now, recognize The mind and the thoughts are just forms within the mind. And as you free the mind from thoughts, you break the connection between the mind and the body too.

[22:14]

Or consciousness in the body. In a way you release the body from the mind. But you release the mind from the body. You release the arms from the shoulders. Now this sounds funny because we're supposed to be in practice weaving mind and body together. But maybe if we use the image of weaving, we've got to let all the threads be free and then we can start weaving. Aber wenn wir das Bild des Verwebens nutzen, dann sollten wir vielleicht alle Fäden mal frei sein lassen, um dann zu verweben.

[23:18]

So this practice of still sitting is at the center of loosening up, of releasing. Okay, so now you're in first gear. So jetzt bist du im ersten Gang. But you're not going anywhere. Because we don't want to go anywhere. We've got nothing to do, nowhere to go, you know. But you're sitting in first gear. Without the engine on, I guess. I remember this Irish guy I knew. He was real poor and he bought a car and he got it home and it never left the backyard again. And he used to go out behind the house and sit in the car and read or turn the radio on. The radio worked. And he had travel posters all over the window.

[24:36]

That was Ireland before it joined the EU. I wish Valentin were here. I could tease him. Okay, what's second gear then? Yeah, okay. Again, reviewing, breaking the connection of the continuity of self with the continuity of thinking. Of self. The self's need for continuity. And that's satisfied by the self-continuity in thinking. Okay. And again, I say the easiest, probably the most effective way to do that is to bring the breath to the attention, to the breath and the body.

[26:06]

And attention, as you know, will keep going back to thinking as long as you establish your continuity of self and the world in your thinking. Once you've finally got it so that attention just rests in the breath and the body, Then you think, when you want to think about something, solve a problem, but you don't think as a continuous sort of sense of how you establish the world.

[27:10]

As Dijon said, what do you call the world? What do you call the world? Is it your thinking about the world that you call the world? Do you design your whole life through what you think the world is, how you think the world? Okay, so that's, yeah, that's second gear. And now we want to go to third gear. Don't you? Andreas is already in fourth gear. Slow down, Andreas.

[28:15]

Third gear, I'm going to just, you know, this review is establishing initial mind. The initial mind in non-thinking consciousness. Yes, and that breaks the connection between thinking and phenomena. You don't think your way, for example, into a room. You're almost like a blind person. You feel the room. Now, more and more that this is not just an occasional mind, but your initial mind. A mind you give priority to. It's almost a birthright, this mind.

[29:40]

I think of the infant waking up in its first wakings up on a pillow, say, or the mother's breast. Yeah, and it sees a chin or a pillow or a cloth. And it has a wordless, nameless knowing. Now it helps, you know, it's interesting to watch Sophia learn words and names and learn names and then turn the names into words and sentences and so forth. And it allows her to sort things out, you know. But it shouldn't absorb, I think, all the attention of her mind into only a worded description of the world.

[30:58]

Didn't she keep this birthright mind, this initial mind here-ness or there-ness. The power in that. Then if she needs to sort things out, she can think about them. Now this, what I'm calling this birthright mind, the here-ness, the there-ness, you don't make that distinction in German, do you? Here and there. Here, here, here and there.

[32:00]

Yeah, not so. Yeah. Oh boy, all the German speakers I know sure make mistakes about it all the time. In English. I'll be on the phone and somebody will say, I'll say, are you there? And they'll say, I'm there. Yes. No, no, you're there. No, I'm... Yes, I'm there. No, here. Anyway, the fearness, that's here and there combined. The fearness. See, we have to get beyond these words.

[33:02]

Yeah. Can that mind be any different from Buddha's mind? Can you imagine? How could any... this mind... that's non-thinking consciousness, that's not worded? If that's somehow so fundamental, how can it be, mustn't it be the same as Buddha's mind? Yeah, this kind of knowledge of feeling or assurance we need to have.

[34:03]

But it's not way back there in the past. Otherwise, if he... The Buddha's way back there in the past, this practice has no meaning, very little meaning. Okay, this third gear going nowhere is the establishment of an initial mind On each appearance. On each sighting. Sighting is like when you sight a UFO or sight a hippopotamus out in the garden.

[35:09]

I couldn't see the sailboat, and I sighted land or something. So sighting, each appearance is a kind of sighting of what you didn't expect. So this third gear is initial mind, this third increment. Also diese dritte Stufe, dieser dritte Stück, dieser dritte Gang ist der anfängliche Geist. And it's something each of us can realize through intentional practice. Und es ist etwas, was jede und jeder von uns realisieren kann durch absichtsvolle Praxis. And the more you create a realm of non-conscious, non-thinking consciousness, The more you've created a realm, a territory, free from self-reflection,

[36:11]

All of my talks in the last few months have had in the background Dogen's statement to cultivate and authenticate the myriad things By conveying the self to them. By conveying... Conveying... By bringing the self to them. To convey is to carry or something like that. Is delusion... Das ist Täuschung.

[37:22]

To cultivate and authenticate... No. To let myriad things come forward. Ja, unzählige tausende Dinge kommen zu lassen. Vorne kommen zu lassen. And cultivate and authenticate the self. Und... is realization. Okay. If you have created a territory of knowing, free of self-reference, You've created a territory for Buddha-nature.

[38:29]

Now you can see here, Buddha-nature is not just some way to sneak the self back into practice. If you could cultivate the myriad things by conveying the self to them, this is not Buddha nature. If you let things come forward, And cultivate and authenticate the self as Buddha nature. How do you translate it? To become authentic.

[39:30]

Authentic, it means to be the author of something, to authenticate it and to make it true, to make it true for yourself. If I call that a tree, I authenticate it, I author it, I turn it in to an object. If I call it treeing or a mind object, I'm authoring it or authenticating it in a different way. So how we name things, how we call things, repeatedly authors our world. To let things come forward. And cultivate and authenticate the self as Buddha nature.

[41:01]

His realization. Now this self is a different self than the self in the first phrase. This is the self, which Suzuki Roshi would have called the self which covers everything. No, I wanted to go a little further, but the snow is softly falling all over Ireland. I don't know if you know James Joyce's story, The Dubliners, in The Dubliners Called the Dead. It's one of the great stories of any length. It's one of the great stories, short or long.

[42:05]

And it ends with, just as the newspapers said, the snow is falling all over Ireland. Yeah, it goes on a little bit, the paragraph, but it's like... Thank you very much.

[42:32]

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