I feel very privileged to be able to speak to you about these things. And what we've been speaking about is a kind of peak, like the top, an ultimate in what's considered to be advanced Buddhist practice. And I wonder if you know if we can practice it. At the same time I don't want to leave Buddhism to some kind of spiritual or religious elite or something like that.

[01:08]

I mean, I have always been motivated by the feeling that Buddhism has to be for us. It's too important to leave it to a few people who are kind of some sort of special adepts. And now I'm convinced living in Germany now for I don't know, 20 years or more, off and on. A lot of the time, if you can learn German, if people can learn German, then they can learn Buddhism. Yeah, but you started younger. Anyway, my sense is... Buddhism is too important to waste on the few.

[02:22]

But we may in fact be the few. In any case, we're the ones who are doing it. Now I also, you know, wonder or worry a bit about If the winter branch's schedule is too demanding for people, for you, lay lives with a lot of commitments. I have nights of brooding and guilt that I'm taking all your vacation time. That's an exaggeration.

[03:22]

I mean, but often I feel I don't want to take everyone's vacation time away just to study this old Buddhist stuff. Then I think, well, maybe this is the best vacation. Anyway, I'm just pointing out that I wonder if this schedule is going to work for us dead sticks. On the other hand, I think, you know, I've been... quoting Dharmakirti or Dharmakirti's implication that the refinement, the education that's possible through Buddhist institutions are a necessary prerequisite for understanding the world in the way Buddhism thinks it actually exists.

[04:36]

I think I quoted Dharmakirti. Excuse me, that was a long one. I know, and it was not very clear. Dharmakirti assumes a certain kind of refinement is necessary. And today I maybe can talk about this refinement. And I equated it earlier in the seminar to the refinement a physicist might have or a poet or a painter or something. The certain kind of education is necessary to understand physics. And Dharmakirti assumes a certain kind of refinement of the senses, the mental and physical senses, if we're going to understand Buddhism.

[05:46]

Particularly in an ancestral temple or a lineage temple, as I... conceive of Johanneshof to be. What's the difference? In other words, not just enough Buddhism so you can enjoy your life. But enough Buddhism that we can, over generations, keep the teaching on track. Okay. Now, what motivates one to practice?

[07:06]

I would say that probably first it's when you really feel it strongly, it's usually, for us anyway, Zazen practice. And I would say, first of all, if you feel it clearly or strongly, then I would say, at least for us, the Zazen practice. Zazen meditation, Zazen practice gives us... Yeah, a... a new sense of our identity. Or perhaps a new sense of being in the world not so caught by identity. Some sort of freedom, as Peter pointed out the other day.

[08:12]

Of a more fundamental nature than our kind of nature we grew up in. Okay. That's, I think, a necessary dimension of necessary of proceeding in this practice. The second aspect is and you know I'm probably not as essential but equally important.

[09:17]

Does that make sense? Is that one is intelligent enough, that you're intelligent enough to want an intellectually consistent world. You want the world to sort of compute It makes sense rationally. Okay. Now, as you begin to look at the world rationally, actually having, for some reason, Zazen also in a way makes us more rational. And there's a certain clarity that comes from sitting that supports rationality.

[10:27]

We have enough satisfaction and a kind of basis that we can take the consequences of looking at the world rationally. Not look at the world through our eyes. habits. I mean, a gross example is we wouldn't accept that the world was created six thousand years ago when there's so much evidence to the contrary. We wouldn't think that a book somehow is truer than a fossil. Than a what?

[11:28]

Than a fossil. Fossil. Fossil. Yeah, of course. Fossil. I should have known. No kidding. And I think fourth, what's necessary. There's three if you want. Zazen or meditation and rationality. Then I added zazen for a third. And then fourth, that you're doing it for others. This is really too big a task to do just for yourself. And if you're too modest to do it for others, then you at least do it because someone should do it.

[12:34]

Yeah. Yeah, okay. So some kind of... And I'm mentioning this because Dharmakirti and others make it clear that you have to think through your motivation. You can't, oh, I'm motivated, this is great. No, you think through your motivation and establish it more fully in your life. Und ich sage das, und da mal gehört ich darauf hin, was ist, dass ihr vollständig eure Motivation sozusagen durchdenkt und nicht einfach nur annimmt, ja, oh, ich bin motiviert, sondern einfach wirklich vollständig durchdenkt bis zum Ende eure gesamte Motivation. Because your motivation is a kind of... Bulwark. Castle. Bulwark. Bulwark. We have the same word. Bulwark. Oh, you do. I knew English is just German, really. With a lot of French. Partly, yeah. So your motivation has to withstand lots of desires and... Attractions and so forth.

[13:45]

Okay. So you want to strengthen your motivation. Clarify your motivation. And when you feel weak sometimes you come back to the motivation and say, yes, I had that motivation. And exercise in your own autodidactic vision. and practice them in your autodidactic view or vision. Now the koan starts, let's look at the pointer. It says, when you see smoke on the other side of the mountain, you know there's already a fire.

[14:46]

When you see horns on the other side of the fence, you know an ox is there. Or my daughter in a costume. I've seen that more often than an ox. Anyway, you know an ox is there. Or when you pick up one, you know three. Yeah. Now I've gone back and forth on that because, you know, when I first encountered that phrase, I liked it a lot. And I can imagine picking up a square and knowing the other three corners or a cube and knowing the other six or whatever it is. Eight. Other seven, yeah. Other seven. And sometimes I more intellectually took it to mean the ayatana, the field, the object, the...

[15:57]

perception in the field, etc. But it really means simply to know the hidden aspects through knowing one aspect. And to know... And to be able to judge precisely at a glance. This is the ordinary food and drink of the patched robe monk. The patched robe monk. Yeah, or the ordinary food and drink of the patched robe lei raksu holder.

[17:22]

This is also a patched robe mug. That's why we make it into patches. Yeah, that is a patched robe mug. That's why we make it into patches. Now, this first part of the pointer, the introduction, basically lays out the position of Dharmakirti, Chandrakirti, etc., and all the other Kirtis. Anyway, that we know the world perceptually and through inferential logic, through inference. And we can only be sure of a valid cognition

[18:26]

Through inference and actual perception. Yeah. I was amused the other day. I read an article about real thieves in a virtual world. It's not clear whether they arrest their avatars or they arrest the guy. They arrest? Arrest? Arrested, yeah. I guess the recent case was somebody had their avatars steal furniture from someone else's virtual house that was designed by somebody and they moved the virtual furniture to their own virtual house and they were arrested for doing so.

[19:42]

Because you can sell This virtual furniture for virtual money which can be transferred into real money. I've had this experience in Zazen. Trying to support Creston and Sophia with virtual, I mean, Sophia and Creston with virtual money. Anyway. But this fits Chandra Kirti's formal definition of an object. An object is something that you can hold or that appears, that you can see or that you can use

[20:56]

or that you can conceive of. So, virtual furniture is something you can use and conceive of. So, see, the modern world is still defined by Buddhism. Okay. Now, the point of the first part of this introduction is that, and the first introduction to the first koan in this primary and major compilation, You don't just read this and say, oh, yeah, of course. You actually try to make your life one based on perceptual and inferential knowledge.

[22:15]

And you use it in a contrastive way, or you use it in a... So you notice when you're making generalizations or you're saying something out of habit or you're saying something because Other people think it's true. Or you're saying something because you've read it. No, you really try to have the rigor to really feel when you're saying this because it's perceptual knowledge or inferential knowledge based on valid evidence.

[23:27]

Also, ihr habt aber stattdessen die Stärke, sozusagen, etwas nur zu sagen, wenn ihr wisst, dass es aus wahrgenommenem Wissen, wahrgenommenes Wissen ist oder selbst erschlossenes Wissen. Yeah, I mean, you kind of train your mind to be rational and notice when it's not rational. And you train your mind to not think about things a lot, but to judge precisely at a glance. Trust your perceptions. So this... The first part of this introduction is a recommendation to train yourself, educate yourself, refine yourself in this way.

[24:34]

So you can enter into, understand, experience the world symbolically. Bodhidharma is presenting, bringing into China. Yeah, okay. The second part of the introduction, this point actually is going beyond Dharmakirti and Chandrakirti and so forth. Or taking the position that the first half is what you can do with your ordinary experience and intellect.

[25:34]

And the second half is what you can do when you become a person based on that fundamental nature that one generates through meditation. What about the person who cuts off myriad streams? Who is free to arise in the east and set in the west. Who can go... go against or go with, in any and all direction, and is free to take or give.

[26:55]

What kind of person is that? Okay. Now, I think you can see that the image, the metaphor here is the earth. The activity of human beings is put into a kind of planetary metaphor. Yeah, you can cut off streams. That's like cut off this pond, the stream. Cut off mere streams. And so there's the stream, and then there's the sun rises with that. East sets in the west. And then beyond east and west, there's any and all directions, the ten directions. And within those directions, things go against or go with. And within that, the actor is free to take or give.

[27:58]

And the last is often equated with the process of teaching, to give and take in a way that teaches. This way of thinking is... commonplace in, I mean, is part and parcel of Chinese poetry. You hear the cries of the falcons, the hawks. You feel the moment the terror of the rabbit or the mouse.

[29:12]

And the silver flash of the hawk's wing. Yeah, while you're doing the dishes. There's always in Chinese poetry this parallel, the world as it is, and you as you are. And that kind of interlocking metaphor is in the second part, particularly the second part of this pointer. Okay, so the subject of this koan is, this particular, the Blue Cliff Records one, How do we cut off myriad streams?

[30:14]

How do we really feel free? As I often say, we don't get up in the morning because the sun comes up. We get up because we get up. We let the sun do its own thing. Yes, in some senses, of course, our climate is governed by the sun. But we're all separate parts. The sun is also just a part, a big one. Phil, we know the sun's going to come up sometime this morning, but we usually, the whole idea in Buddhism is you get up before the sun and are there with first light and the birds. Natürlich wissen wir, dass die Sonne irgendwann aufgehen wird, aber wir stehen vor der Sonne auf. Und wir sind da, wenn das erste Licht erscheint und die Vögel.

[31:19]

It's a symbolic kind of enactment of we're free to arise in the East and set in the West. Und das ist eine symbolische Darstellung dessen, dass wir frei sind, im Osten aufzugehen und im Westen unterzugehen. It's like much of the Orioki. I pointed out to someone the other day, when you touch the bowl... to the side of the, when you put the water, the dish water, the bowl water into the big bowl. The point is not to just click, get a nice click. Cheers. It's an enactment of the Huayen teaching of inner penetration. To remind you.

[32:21]

So you touch the rim where you drink. It doesn't have to be exactly where you drink. You touch the rim to the inside of the bowl. the rim where you drink at some point to the inside of the bowl. And you put your hand over it when you do it. So it's poured in the dark. Yeah, and that's very much like the talking heads. The water flows underground. Or the sound of a kite. The water flows underground. hidden streams. Or not Cleary translated this, that Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtze in secret, but actually I think in the Chinese it's in the dark.

[33:32]

So the whole idea is that lots of things happen in the dark outside our perceptual field. So this water, this inner penetration which occurs outside our perceptual field, you make the water dark by covering it and then you pour it. This is one reason. There's a certain importance in learning to do these things exactly like each other because they carry certain teachings that you may not even know about, but still, they carry certain teachings and you begin to embody them by enacting them. So, what my subject of this day show

[34:34]

How do we practice this advanced teaching? Because why not? So let's try to find a way we can feel it And if we feel it a little bit and begin to enact it a little bit, it starts to work in us. Okay, so imagine you're in a dark room. You're brought into a completely dark place. Someone's brought you in. Okay. You actually don't even know it's a room. You know there's a floor under your feet, but you don't know if there's a cliff in front of you. Okay.

[35:53]

So, you smell something. Am I in a bathroom? Yeah, or maybe the kitchen? I can... Yeah, maybe a kitchen. Is this a kitchen? Well, you're completely in a region of enlarged nostrils. You're completely in a region of smelling, of odor, of fragrance. You can't do it as well as I can. Anyway. It snows. Yeah. You don't know if you're in a room.

[36:54]

What you know is you're in a realm... of smell. Or maybe you hear something. Is it a thief, a robber? Is it a cat? Is it a Martyr? I hear them in my office sometimes. And you know, I'm convinced that mice and martyr are able to feel you at a distance because as soon as I get alert, they shut up. And I'm convinced that mice and maggots can sense you from a distance, because as soon as I become aware, they stop. And I hear them somewhere around. And I just look up, and they stop. And I'm impressed that they are more subtle than I am. So when you hear, you don't know if you're in a room, you might be able to tell it's got walls probably, the way the sound works, but you're just in a realm of sound.

[38:16]

Du weißt nicht, ob du im Raum bist. Es könnte zwar sein, so wie der Klang sich verhält, aber du bist jedenfalls in einem Reich der Klänge. Or maybe there's, once your eyes get adjusted, there's a faint feeling of light somewhere, then you're just in a feeling of light. You're not in a room. Maybe there is a tiny shimmer somewhere so that you are in a feeling of light, but you are still not in a room. Okay. I think you can imagine this. Something like this must happen to us sometimes in a completely dark room where we stumbled into a hotel or something. So what you're experiencing is a region, six regions, One for each physical sense and one for the mental sense.

[39:22]

But that's how we always live in the dark or the light. You're living in six regions. Now, the second part of this pointer, can we extend these regions? What is it called in the eyebrows in the blink of an eye? Now, as soon as we're in the light, you know, like this. In the conscious sense world, which is also the common sense world, well, we think we're in a room. And we're persuaded that it's somehow complete knowledge of the room.

[40:28]

But the enlightened person, or the person Dharmakirti imagines, Yuan Wu and the Blue Cliff record imagines, is aware always that he or she is walking, living, breathing in six regions only. And until you begin to have a daily... all the time experience of these six regions, you don't know the boundaries. You don't feel the boundaries. And when you feel the boundaries, you feel the mystery. That you're always simultaneously walking in the dark and in the light.

[41:38]

The dark you don't notice because it's not one of the six regions. And you don't know you're always in the dark as well as in the light. Until you begin to experience the six regions, and the boundaries of the six regions, this is much like I said yesterday afternoon, you feel that each situation is a stage set. So, we're each in this room, we're in six regions. And sometimes one region is more prominent than the other. I imagine musicians, particularly when they're playing together with others, enter a region primarily of sound. The reference point is the field of sound.

[42:44]

No, I think you can intellectually understand this. The question, how do you make the shift? Well, again, Dharmakirti says, if you use rationality, To understand, like what I'm saying. And you keep being ready to notice it even if you don't notice it. At some point, there's a shift. You suddenly find you're not in an externalized substantial world, you suddenly find you're in six regions. And when a bird flies through your region, you think, oh, it's flying.

[43:47]

His regions or her regions are flying through my regions. I mean, this sounds crazy, but yes, this is the way it is. As I've often said, birds, perching birds, songbirds, Songbirds. Perching birds. The birds that sing are birds that perch on branches. They can sing two notes at once. They have a far wider range of sounds they make, far wider range they can hear than we can hear. So their region of sound they live in is just...

[44:48]

Different than ours. More complex, actually. So from our point of view, they live in a kind of darkness. I mean, if you were swimming, snorkeling or something, and while you're swimming, one of these big kind of triangular diamond-shaped skates comes out of the dark along the sand. It's coming out of the darkness you already live in. So you can intellectually understand that we live in six regions. and you can understand that it's possible that there's a shift where your reference point becomes your reference point

[45:58]

becomes the six regions and not an outside substantial world. And to be able to shift between those two, as if you had one foot in each, and you could shift your weight back and forth, Und in der Lage zu sein, hin und her sich zu bewegen, so als ob man in jeder der Bereiche einen Fuß hätte und man sich hin und her bewegen kann, das ist die Praxis und die Lehre der zwei Wahrheiten. you can feel the reference point of the six regions and you can feel the reference point of a substantial externalized world. And the adept can shift back and forth. I'll give you an example of a reference point.

[47:17]

I know I've gone beyond the time and the legs, but you've got all afternoon off. And I have a prop here, so I have to continue, so I don't have to carry this prop another day. Many years ago, I was sitting at my desk in San Francisco. And I had a Hamada cup. I've told this story occasionally. Someone got for me and gave to me when Hamada was in San Jose making pots for the only visit he ever made to America, I think. And Hamada was the most famous potter in Japan, a national treasure, etc. And his pots, his bowls are invaluable. Unpurchasable.

[48:29]

Yeah, and my daughter Sally came in and was talking to me. It was before breakfast, I think, and she knocked it off the desk onto the floor, and it broke into a lot of pieces. Yeah, and I looked at it, oh, now it has to be repaired. I had no feeling of loss or a problem or anything. So I thought about this, you know, I'm really a kind of guy that gets attached to nice things. And I'm full of melancholy and longing and regrets about things, you know.

[49:32]

And here I dropped this really valuable bowl, and it was like nothing. And I realized that because I'd been doing Zazen, without my knowing it, my world had changed. In the sense of how I locate myself in the world was different. Yeah. So I located myself in the past Up until that time I thought, I hadn't noticed that my location had changed. The world was exactly the same, except my location was different. But I hadn't noticed my location was different.

[50:41]

Yeah, but when this broke... I realized my location was something like the cup as an activity, not the cup as an object. As an object. With a past, present and future. It was a cup I used, now the use of the cup was sweeping it up. This is not something I tried to achieve. It just happened through zazen. The world remained the same, but my location had changed.

[51:44]

Now if you can stand it for a minute more. And you have the afternoon off. This is a little pot made by Marlena. All right. Yes. Oh, right in front of me. That shows you how alert I am. Okay. So pots or jars are used constantly by Dignaga, Dharmakirti, Chandrakirti and all the other Kirtis. Yeah, he was a little Scotsman, Makurti. Okay.

[52:50]

So we tend to look at this as a perduant, as they say, object, an object that persists, that's substantial. So what you want to do using rationality is you want to change You want to break the habit of permanence. And you want to create a new habit. A habit of seeing impermanence. And you just have to take this on as an exercise, like a class in school or something. And may Let's just look at the word habit. A habit is something you inhabit. You can change how you inhabit your habits.

[53:57]

You can create contrastive or disjunctive habits. Smells good, you Marlene. What room am I in? Clay. Anyway, so a disjunctive habit or something, a contrastive habit would be to train yourself to see impermanence whenever you see an object. Yeah. I mean, Aristotle would say the color of this is only an attribute, the object is more real, but from the point of view of Buddhism, they're all the same. The color of the object, the shape. Okay, so let's start with the color. Well, it's sort of black.

[55:07]

It's got some gray and brown or something in here. So if you look at the color, you can see that the color is hard to determine. And it's rather impermanent. It's one color here and it's another color there and another color in the shade. As all painters know, when you paint something, the context colors the object. So maybe train yourself to notice the impermanence of the color. And I always say, Add the activity. Notice the activity.

[56:10]

I use it for sticks of incense or you could use it for an incense burner. Sake cup. Yeah. Floating on the hot bath. Or it can be in my sleeve. So you remind yourself that it's an activity. You remind yourself it's a construct. There's the constructor. And all that dirt out there, sometimes good clay, it's a construct. And it's interdependent. What is it? It has to sit on something. It can't be all by itself. It's dependent on me not throwing it on the floor. Or Sally. And it is in itself an object of the six regions. Smell. Sound. So you just remind yourself that it's a perceptual object, it's an activity, it's a construct, and it's independent.

[57:33]

If you consciously and intentionally break the habit And this is the ordinary food and drink of the patched, robed, rock-sue holders. Then you're ready to go on to the second part of this pointer and the rest of the koan. Okay. Is that more like the Buddha? Are those horns you see over the edge of the fence? Thanks a lot.

[58:18]

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