And I don't know what to do about it exactly, but I definitely feel that Many of you, the next step for many of you in practice requires us to think about how to actualize this next step. Looking at the koan again.

[01:22]

As I said last night, the Buddha held up a flower. And Nanchuan saw it was a peony. And Nanchuan saw it as a peony. And what did you translate it as, Ulrich? A Pfingstrose. A Pfingstrose. It's the same flower? Yeah, we think it's the same family. You could get some flavor. They're different kinds. Well, I'm sure it's beautiful anyway. Ich glaube, es ist auf jeden Fall eine schöne Blume. And in China, when you say the word flower and you don't say what kind, you mean a peony. And it's also related to the flower of medicine and maybe the name for Apollo, the god of medicine, may be the same word.

[02:29]

So I think it's good that Dr. Apollo MacLean knew the name of the flower. Now how to reintroduce this koan, this sense of what is this flower that the Buddha held up? How is it understood in this koan? Because Lu Gang quoted this statement of Sanjaya's.

[03:43]

And Nanchuan took some again and said, come over here and look at this flower in the garden. So you have to understand here, when you recreate this koan and you're feeling that this doesn't just talk. It's not just speaking. Yeah, Lugang quotes Samjao. Lugang. Lugang citates Samjao. And then... Nanchuan doesn't just say something, he takes Lugang and has him look at a flower. And sometimes understanding cannot occur except through taking an act. That's one reason we don't just think about the precepts, we take the precepts.

[05:10]

So he's saying, come see the precept of the flower. It's not just in the realm of sutras and... and understanding, but it's also in the realm of looking at a flower, as the Buddha held up a flower. And so he says, People nowadays see this flower as in a dream. So again, he's saying, you know, as we talked about, a kind of conventional response, agreeing with Lugang.

[06:25]

Mm-hmm. But unspoken in the statement is also that they see the flower as in a dream, but they don't see the dream. And what is this dream? In which Buddha is still holding up the flower. In which heaven and earth share the same root. Where is this flower blooming? It's neither inside nor outside. It says in this koan, mountains are not seen in a mirror. And there's no medium of perception.

[07:29]

So, So wakefulness and dream are both non-existent. This mind is neither inside nor outside. The mountains are not seen in a mirror. And what mind is this that Buddha is still holding up the flower? To see not only the flower Buddha held up, but the mind that Buddha held up. And this is the lotus that covers heaven and earth that Zhang Jiao is pointing out. And which myriad things are one body.

[08:31]

Where countless things are one body. So the koan says that seeing, hearing, sensation, knowledge are not one and one. If sensation isn't the right word, substitute sangha. Sensation? No, I'm just teasing. I said, seeing, I'm not sure it's sensation, but it's not so important.

[09:35]

Seeing, hearing, sensation, knowledge are not one and one. And this, it's also translated by Cleary as are not one and the same. But I think a better translation is, are not one and one. Which means they're different things, but they're not independent, one and one. And they're not to be... Can you say that again? They're independent. They're different things. Oh, yeah. Sie sind verschiedene Dinge. But they're not independent, one and one. Aber nicht... But they're not to be added either, like one and two. So it's like if you say, this is one and this is one.

[10:36]

But here he's saying this, it's not one and one. Sorry, it's hard to translate. But the sense is, they're separate and yet somehow also one. So how do we bring this knowledge, seeing, hearing, sensation into our basket of awareness? This is the effort or this is the point of this koan to establish this mind which is neither inside nor outside. And it's like I said at the beginning, well, someone asked me about the form skandha.

[11:52]

They understood the realm of the feeling skandha and perception skandha and so forth, but the form skandha had to have some kind of thinking or feeling. but I wanted to know more about this form scandal, also in connection with thinking and feeling. And of course that's the case. And as long as you're alive, feeling, some level of non-graspable feeling is always present. But you have to start with such a system of analysis somewhere. And if we start with feeling, for example, you don't have the object of perception that initiates the feeling.

[13:00]

So let's take this object here, this old staff. And when my hand touches it, there's a contact immediately. But that moment of contact may have no dimension. Because there's immediately a feeling and a cognition that I'm holding something and so forth. It doesn't mean that that moment of That dimensionless moment of contact isn't important. So that's the form skandha, the realm of dharmas. And when this becomes feeling and then perception and then associations, you're into your personality and your own identity.

[14:40]

In this sense, the skandhas are a kind of identity. And you're knowing this from your side. But if when you touch it, you know it from the side of the staff, and feeling arises and perception, but it's from the side of everything else. It's like as I said in the beginning, you bubble through this into the skandhas of the other side. It's almost like if you imagine an hourglass and the sand is coming through the little opening.

[15:55]

But it's not falling into, when it goes through the opening, it just falls into space. And somehow when you turn this back up, all the sand goes back in. Now one of the, changing the topic slightly, one of the secrets of practice is persistence. Is repetition. And these stories like married things and the root and all that, have the quality of an image you can stay with or repeat. Or Nanchuan's statement, seeing things as in a dream.

[17:00]

So persistence, repetition, almost are always too powerful for rational thinking. Our ordinary reasoning, which seals us into the substantiation of our particular way of seeing, is worn down or will give away in the face of repetition. And that's true also for some psychological problems.

[18:02]

If you can use zazen to see your psychological problems with clarity, And then just have the desire to change it, which you persist in. Sometimes they'll change. Again, it doesn't mean you shouldn't use other methods, but this zazen can help by creating the ability to see things and persist in wanting to change them. So this is a kind of gradual approach. Gradual realization of the teachings. by presenting persistently presenting them to yourself putting them in front of you even if they don't always make sense or they make sense but you can't feel it so you keep putting them in front of you and one day you feel it

[19:28]

And when you feel it, it often creates a different mind in which you feel it in ways you couldn't have imagined. Okay. Now some things in practice are not a process though. They're not gradual, they're not affected by persistence particularly. Einige Dinge in der Praxis werden nicht durch graduelle durch graduelles lernen They're awakenings. They're shifts in basis. Yeah. The world is suddenly a different color. And sameness, the practice of sameness is a technique for bubbling through.

[21:06]

If you start practicing with sameness, by creating the conditions for it, and actually feeling it sometimes. Let's just take a simple thing, again, eating the cereal in the morning just as it is. You can add salt Or you can add salt by finding the salt in your own taste. Or you can add nothing and just see the cereal from its side. And the cooks from their side. Now, this is a small thing, you know, and if you want to put Gamacio on, please load it on.

[22:30]

We're not running out of Gamacio, and I'm not trying to save the... In fact, just a spoonful of cereal and ten of gamasio is all right. And then you'll discover gamasio from that side. So... But you have to find small ways to find things from their own side. And not always from your side. And this is also the skandagative form. When you touch this, You don't let the process happen into your feelings and your perception.

[23:39]

There's the subtlety of the mind of non-doing. And there's the... gate of non-attachment, the entry of non-attachment, the emerging of subtlety, as I discussed earlier. And this is where the form skandha is a gate where you bubble into things from their own side. Now when that happens, you may suddenly see, you'll know it happens, I mean, when that happens, Signals that it happened are sometimes that you see a leaf the way you've never seen a leaf before.

[25:01]

Or some anything. A peony flower. And it often turns on a physical object. And again, this is not a process, it's a sudden shift in basis. Okay, so what this koan is trying to say is this... is this basket of awareness where you're more and more aware of the weave has woven into it now clarity ecstatic experience so that when you have some kind of experience like listening to music or sitting zazen or whatever some kind of where you

[26:22]

where you feel overflowing. Yeah, so when this isn't something, oh, that happened three years ago in the second sesshin. That happened listening to Michael Jackson. And I couldn't drive anymore. I had to pull over to the side. I don't care. And So whether we're talking about ecstatic moments, or moments of ease and clarity, Entspannung und Klarheit.

[27:32]

Or moments of numina, of cognition, like knowing the moment of going to sleep or something like that. Oder Momente von Wahrnehmung, wenn wir zum Beispiel einschlafen. And then all of our ordinary hearing, seeing, knowledge and so forth. Und alle unsere täglichen none of this is anymore in the past or somewhere else. It's all woven into a present basket of awareness. It's all woven into a basket in which new threads are constantly being added because everything changes means everything is being created

[28:38]

Alles ändert sich permanent, heißt, alles wird immer wieder kreiert. And so everything is a constant act of creation. Und alles ist so dann ein permanenter Akt der Kreation. And we need to answer that with our own act of creation. Und wir beantworten dies mit unserer eigenen Tat des Kreierens. With our own continuous act of creating our mind that's neither inside nor outside. And a sign of knowing that is when we feel a deep self-confidence, a deep unexplained satisfaction. Yes, so it says in this koan after knowledge, seeing and so forth. It says seven flowers and eight blooms.

[29:46]

So what is seven flowers and eight blooms? If you see seven flowers, one blooms in you. And also, when there's seven flowers, together they make a noumena, a noumena bloom, that can't be pointed out, but that you experience. So the Buddha held up this eighth bloom. Which Nanchuan saw in the peony. And Sangjiao saw, Lugang saw when Sangjiao held up his body. So this mind is neither outside nor inside.

[31:17]

Things are not seen in a mirror. And one of the gates is the form skandha, where you begin to see things from their own side. Where you have a shift in basis, And feel deeply released into the world. And released into yourself. And you recognize that heaven and earth and I Share the same root. Myriad things and I are one body. So I leave you with this eighth bloom. May our intention equally penetrate every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's Way.

[32:43]

Thank you. I vow to save them. I vow to protect them. I vow to master them. The Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to attain it. The gypsies. kware manken no ji juji suru koto etari negawa kuwa nyorai yo shin jitsu niyo geshi tate matsuran

[34:39]

An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of that decadent verse. So I presume this is the last lecture.

[36:03]

Unless we stay on a few more days. Which at this point I always feel a little sad to end with not having... Anyway, yeah. In the beginning sometime I spoke about this Carl Jaspers idea of an axial point in history. And I think there may not be any Confucius or Buddha around, or Socrates or Parmenides, but I think we're at an actual point of a kind in history today.

[37:15]

Culture isn't at a point where it can be influenced quite the way it could then. But this coming together of Asia and... Western culture is a kind of axial point, as I may have said. And we have to remap this practice of Buddhism in our own consciousness. And I think when I open these things up the best I can, because I'm in my own process of discovery, When I open these things up and try to find words for interior consciousness, the territories of interior consciousness, I'm...

[38:35]

it's going to be somewhat different than it is in Asian countries. Because the culture we've inherited is different. So, of course, Suzuki Roshi never spoke to me about things like precinct consciousness. Yeah. Yeah. And precinct consciousness, what I mean by it, like the territory, the enclosed consciousness we have, for example, just before we go to sleep.

[40:03]

Or the kind of lucidity that's in a dream, say. We could say as a local consciousness which influences what happens. Now in this koan, when Nanchuan points to the peony flower, He says people these days see this flower as in a dream. Now, one traditional way of understanding this koan is this is a Zen anti-chittamatra or yogacara position.

[41:15]

In other words, against a kind of extreme Berkeley, the English philosopher, everything is just a mind, it's not real. And in that way, the... The understanding of the koan is that things are not seen in a mirror means that things have a reality, they're not just in our mind. Yeah, of course Zen doesn't buy Barclay's position. Of course Zen doesn't buy Barclay's position. But I think Zen virtually, I mean Zen is Yogacara or Chittamatra teaching.

[42:18]

So when you're doing these koans as kind of quick positions and testing the state of mind, it loses, it simplifies it too much. When we look carefully at the koan, I think we can see that this teaching, as the compilers and as Nanchuan himself probably intended, He's not saying, because people of those days, even the Buddhists didn't tend to see this flower as if it was mind only. Although it's possible that Officer Liu Geng got himself into that position. I think the koans, both koans, both versions of the koans, make clear that Nanchuan is saying, is not saying, wake up from the dream.

[43:56]

But wake up into the dream. Mm-hmm. And one traditional way of practicing with realizing our inclusive mind or big mind, to see is to see daily mind as a dream. It's a kind of another version of the practice of sameness. In a way today I'd like to, I mean, what I feel like most is just sitting with you or having a lecture that was mostly just a kind of just sitting with you.

[45:32]

But I still should finish with this koan to some extent. Would you, Neil, would you mind turning the light up a little bit? I may just slip into meditation if we don't have a little light here. Okay. Good. Okay. So Suzuki Roshi didn't talk to me about precinct consciousness.

[46:37]

She didn't talk to me about precinct consciousness. Now, what I would say is that, and you've probably never been talked to about precinct consciousness either. And yet it is something that you know about. Just for the example that you go to sleep. This process of narrowing our consciousness enough so that we can go across the edge into sleep. So it's like, in Germany, do they count sheep?

[47:38]

In America, they count sheep, too. Probably it's a German custom we inherited. In Texas, they count cows, but they don't count cows. Yeah. I don't know if you can go to sleep counting cows. Anyway... Anyway, it's a... process of narrowing your you know as you know that if you are thinking a lot but while you go to sleep it's very difficult to go to sleep so this is something familiar to us but we haven't named it we haven't made it conscious and we haven't seen that it can be moved about it's not just a it's part of a language of interior consciousness it's not just about going to sleep now the territory of interior consciousness is virtually unknown to us

[49:12]

And it's definitely part of Buddhism. And it's definitely part of some cultures. Although each culture will have their own way of doing it, just articulating it, just like we have our own way of articulating exterior consciousness. Now what I want to speak about here is if Sukhiroshi never spoke to me about this, how did I study this with Sukhiroshi? Because when I speak about this, I definitely have the feeling on my body of knowing this from Suzuki Roshi. Now, someone told me that...

[50:31]

When they do gassho or put their hands like this, they feel, even if they're wherever they live, they feel a connection with me and with lineage. And I would say it's maybe with me, of course, because we're all practicing together, but it's really with the lineage. And if you saw a movie, if there was, there is a video of a TV program made of Sukershi and myself going to Tassajara once. But if you saw a film of Suzuki Roshi, you would see your friend's gassho in Suzuki Roshi's gassho.

[51:51]

And probably his teacher and his teachers. Even though everyone bows about the same, still there's something you can feel, a fragrance. So you not only feel it in yourself, you can see it in your Dharma friends. So when we are practicing together, we are appropriating states of mind from our teacher. Yeah, appropriating with a tacit or understood or unspoken permission.

[53:19]

We almost don't know we're doing it. It's a kind of dance occurring in the midst of, in between ordinary activities. So we're studying much more than we realize. Our big mind is studying. And even though our big mind is appropriating folded up dried seeds, or appropriating Well, anyway, that's enough.

[54:32]

Still, big mind is computing or is in a self-organizing or own-organizing process which knows what it needs. So it is intuitively requisitioning. Do you know the word requisition? To... No, requisition means, well, like in the army, if you need supplies, you requisition the supplies. It means you request the supplies because you need them. So there's a kind of intuitive requisitioning of what we need from the teacher. I was going to say, whatever she said is true, but I'm not sure. Appropriating in English means you take it often without asking.

[56:00]

So there can be a certain misappropriation of the teaching. But really, usually between people practicing together, there's an understood, unspoken agreement that you appropriate. And some of it has to be done in the dark of night. Or secretly. Actually, the formal transmission ceremony occurs at midnight. As a symbol that lots of the teaching occurs in the dark, a kind of dark where there's clarity. Not a darkness of permission.

[57:17]

I mean, not a darkness of depression. But a darkness, as I said, of permission. It's like right at this moment, if you imagined that the faculty which perceives the light in this room We're turned off. Then we're not talking about night or day. We're talking about a darkness because the faculty that perceives light is turned off. And when Buddhism sometimes talks about utter darkness, it means an experience which is comparable to an experience of the clear light, but it's talked about as utter darkness. You may experience this for a moment sometime.

[58:22]

It's like between two moments there was a split second of darkness. But it's a little bit like a pore on the skin. If you're on the skin, the pore is very small. But if you go down into the pore, it leads into the whole body. So it's almost like a timeless realm. For a moment, when you're in that darkness, it feels very big. But when you come back, it feels like it was only a moment.

[59:23]

And in that darkness, which is not part of our socialized consciousness, a certain kind of teaching occurs. The magical entity of the body. And again in Sashin we're trying to create a pedagogical situation where darkness, where we study in both darkness and light. So this kind of precinct consciousness, you feel, you get.

[60:39]

There are so many things you get in the darkness of the teaching process. And you don't have to do anything to do it. You just have to be together. In certain situations. Now if we go back to Peter Tosh's song. He says, I'm a man of the past. Living in the present. walking in the future, stepping in the future. And then he says, I'm a mystic man. He was a Rastafarian. He smoked a lot of grass.

[61:43]

I knew him slightly. We were kind of occasional friends. And it was almost like we recognized each other. Him with his grass and me with my meditation. It was like we'd hail each other. He was a very nice guy. So we have a sense, if you're practicing, I hope you have a sense that you do your daily life but you're also a mystic man. Or a mystic woman. Yeah, I'd like to be a mystic woman, actually.

[62:47]

If I'm going to be a mystic, I might as well be a woman. Much more interesting. No, but I seem to be stuck. I guess Gerald gave you the wonderful quote from Sandokai of Shido. Which ends with I humbly say to you I humbly say to those of you who study the mystery, don't waste time. That's true. But... Very true.

[63:49]

But it's, I would say, not so modestly. Those of you who study the mystery waste a lot of time. Take it easy. Relax. Trust the mystery. The mystery will take care of you. You don't have to. This darkness, this mystery is working all the time. And this is one of the things that is the subject of this koan, the mysterious working of Buddhism.

[64:54]

That we can intuit or imagine, but not much more than that. But we see the results. As Gural said, in translating, he began to feel in his body where the translation is coming from. And I begin to feel in my body how to relate, how to find that place in his body. And this is quite simple. And when you're practicing together the way we do for so many hours, you know, we find our complexity begins to touch each other in many ways.

[66:07]

It's again like, you know, it's not in the realm of time, it's again like the fairly common experience of somebody who has a the fairly common experience of somebody who has the uncommon experience of a near-death experience, that their life passes in a moment. So much of their life passes before their eyes. So a tremendous amount can be present in an instant. So brief instants of this darkness, a great deal of teaching occurs. And it waits until we are ready for it to unfold.

[67:26]

For us to water these folded up pieces of paper or seeds. Which reminds me, someone had a dream. Remember I said that this room could fill up with water? And that, you know, I talked about waves and the surface and etc. Well, someone had a dream they went into a room filled with water and they went in with a friend a kind of dharma buddy. We say in English, swim buddy.

[68:30]

Which is, you don't have swim buddies in German schools, do you? So all the kids are divided up into pairs. So you'd be my swim buddy, and we'd watch each other, and you two would... Usually boys would be swimming, you two girls instead of... You don't have to translate that. Unless you want to. Um... So anyway, this person went into this swimming pool with their swim buddy, I mean their Dharma buddy. And they got in there and they found that there was only one little door or window to get out of. And maybe it was, I'm probably making this into my own dream, but anyway, it's all right.

[69:43]

Probably it was that little door back there, you know. Up above Norbert's head there. And the waves kept covering the door, so it was very hard to get back out. And so you had to wait till the wave was just right and then go through. And this person found that they got through the door without getting wet. I think this is a great dream. I wish it had been my dream. If it were my dream, I'll tell you how I'd interpret it. It's not even an interpretation, it's obvious.

[70:45]

It means, I would say, hey, I know a lot about Buddhism. I know I need a Dharma buddy. I know I can now see the water. I can see these kind of distinctions between wave and water. And I see that the waves hide the door and that the waves block the door. But I could see that I still have my own power. I have the power to enter this room. And I have the power to avoid the wave and slip out of the room. So it means I already have accumulated the kind of energy necessary, which is a very big part of practice, to accumulate the kind of energy to see differently.

[72:07]

I've accumulated the kind of energy that allows me to be outside the wave. And I have the ability still to enter this room, that strength, but I also have the strength to get back out safely. So I definitely have the power, I've entered a stage of practice where I have the power to be outside the wave, to see the water, to come and go in and out of these realities, I'm not yet sure I want to get wet. But if I have the power to go in and out of here, and I know I have my swim buddies, probably I'll have at some point the strength to enter the water.

[73:12]

So then I'd use that dream to come to a pivot phrase or a turning word. I don't like the phrase turning word too much, but I can't find another one. A refracting word, a pivot phrase, I don't know. Because it has all these qualities. It's something you turn, it's something you repeat. It's something you turn yourself on and turns you. It's something you pivot reality on. And it's something that refracts or bends the way you see. So I'd look out of this dream for some sort of pivot phrase.

[74:55]

And if this were my dream again I would probably say when is the right time to enter the water? And why isn't any time the right time to enter the water. Or I'd turn it into the phrase, already wet. Already wet. And whether you know it or not, it's true, you're all already wet. And about 10 o'clock tonight, towels will be passed out. You can all take a shower and dry up and go through the little door.

[75:58]

We're locking all doors and windows tonight, only that will be open. Except for Norbert, we're going to leave this door open. Because I could get through there, but I don't know if you could get through there. Mm-hmm. So one way again to meet this, discover this continuous mind, the mind that continues within all our minds, states of minds.

[77:00]

is to practice sameness. Or another way to think of it is to imagine a stream in which there are different currents at different levels. And you take a little piece of silk or something, or ribbon, And you put it down in the water and you wait to see which way it goes, at which level of the stream. Even counting your breath can be a practice like that. Because almost while I'm talking and while Ulrike is translating, and I can feel Geralt translating, is I can sort of count my breath.

[78:14]

As if I'm stitching myself into this continuous stream of mind. And some stitches, if you've made a raksu, some stitches sort of miss it and some stitches, sometimes the needle of the breath reaches right into that stream and I feel myself pulled along in the darkness of the water. The sense of from the other side is, you know, the five, the form skandha and bubbling up into the, to see, know things from their own side. Which is also because consciousness is loaded with feeling, emotions, etc.

[79:39]

But when you get to form, you have the hinge into awareness, non-dual consciousness. And how do you act? You can act or have memory, feelings and so forth. There's a territory of action in each of the skandhas. And how do you act in the form skandha? You act by non-doing. It's where you stop. It's where your breath stops for a moment at the bottom of the inhale and exhale. It's where you stop and Samantabhadra's door opens without taking a step. And you enter things from their own side.

[80:46]

And this is again part of the territory of interior consciousness. And I remember when Suzuki Roshi started speaking at one point about knowing things from their own side. I immediately thought this was very curious and interesting. And as he was saying it, I can remember I put my body in his place. So while my mind thought it was curious, I tried to put my body in the darkness with him to study.

[81:48]

And I found it curious because I'd been practicing up to that time. This was, I suppose, after a couple of years or so, two or three years of practice. I've been practicing with non-dualism, trying to. Because if you can imagine a dualistic person, I was really dualistic. I was so dualistic I was driving myself and my friends crazy. The two parts of, I mean, there was a glass wall a meter or two thick between me and everything. And I kept scraping my fingernails in this glass wall once I saw it was there.

[82:58]

And it took a year and a half or so, but at some point there was a shift in basis and the glass wall went away. And then Tsukiyoshi started talking about things from their own side, and I'd just gotten a taste of non-dualism. And I thought, what the heck is he doing? And actually it took me many years to really understand things from their own side. Or let this flower bloom in me. Because Lu Gang represents seed practice.

[84:04]

And Nanchuan represents already flowered practice. No stages, no intermediary, already flowered, already flowered, already wet. So there's seed practice and there's flower practice. And this seed practice or this from their own side is expressed in the koan with a funny little poem. Which is he, he, he, not laughter. The pronoun he. Or maybe we should say she, she, she. I, I, I. North, south, east, west. Everything is all right.

[85:26]

All right, not all right. But for me everything is always all right. But this he, he, he, I, I, I means from my side, from the other side. To know things from both sides. Yeah, and there's so much more in this koan. But let me give you a little poem, Chinese poem. Because we get so bored sometimes with all this unfolding of the teaching. And it's so complicated. And there's the long, flat slope of the learning curve.

[86:28]

I mean, it's not even a plateau, sometimes it's plummeting. And so much patience is required. And the boredom barrier is so immense. Who believes in this darkness anyway? But it does come back to being simple. And when you practice it, you'll find out how to make it simple. But when it flowers in you, it will touch the whole world. And even if this isn't true, I want you to believe it. So anyway, this little poem is We only saw the meandering of the road and the winding of the stream.

[87:52]

We didn't know, we didn't see that we were in the valley of the peach blossoms. I'm sorry, I'm so romantic. Thank you very much. May our intention equally penetrate every being and place.

[88:12]

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