You know, each of you or this group is a very select group of practitioners. Select like astronauts or a select group of pilots. And you're a self-selected group of practitioners. I mean, since 83, I'm not trying to give you a compliment, I'm just stating a fact. I mean, since 83, I've practiced, I don't know, given lectures, so forth, to what must be some thousands of people. And many hundreds of people have come here or come to sesshins or come to seminars and so forth.

[01:13]

And many people come for a year or two and then they just disappear. I kind of hate to look at old photographs. I see, oh, what happened to that wonderful person? So somehow you, this select group, you stayed. Oh, you've stayed long enough to at least do this unique first practice period in Europe for us.

[02:16]

But you haven't followed the pattern of traditional pattern of practice. And usually I mean I don't think we fit the traditional pattern but we can look at the traditional pattern to learn from it. Yeah. And The traditional pattern is that some practitioners stay in the monastery or with the teacher in a monastic-like practice for ten or more years. Let's just say ten years, but usually it's more. Then another group stays two or three years.

[03:17]

And then another in the larger group stays, I don't know, six months to a year in monastic practice. And the first group, sometimes they, you know, get a license to be head of a temple. Stay six months or a year or so. And at the end of this practice period, Atmar will be giving out licenses. To be ahead of nothing at all. And people who stay two or three years, I mean, you basically just learned priestcraft in six months or a year. And the next two or three years are crucial because maybe you learn how to practice.

[04:47]

And ten years in the monastery or with your teacher, at least, something like that, is to mature your practice. Yeah, and this latter group is... the person they choose to be the next head of the school or, you know, becomes known as a Zen master outside the temple. Okay, now in lots of ways, in almost every way, this doesn't fit us, you know. And many of you have already done one or two or three, ten years of practice.

[06:01]

And one of the conditions of practice in a monastery Zen monastery is, there's no study allowed. And when I was, I sat at, studied at Daitokuji for two and a half years or so. That's a Rinzai monastery in Kyoto. Yeah. And sometimes you'd find burned matches in the toilets. Now, the toilets were open latrines, you know, pretty smelly.

[07:06]

But the matches weren't to kind of burn away the smell that you find in very sanitized toilets in America. The matches were to read a little text before Dokusan. Because the teacher was going to question you about a koan and you didn't have anything, so you... Light a match and then you'd light another match and try to read it. And there were shared toilets so you couldn't stay too long. And if you got hurried sometimes your text fell into the so you can see study was not encouraged and musical instruments are not allowed and what's the reason well

[08:23]

for example, simply with musical instruments, you really want, the idea is, everything your ears need in hearing ought to come through the ears and not through, you know, just nature, sounds, birds, etc. One of the main traditions of Zen monasteries and Zen temples in Japan is their beautiful gardens. And the gardens are there for the birds, the smells, the sounds of the rain and so forth. So the sense of it was, yes, we want to study.

[09:48]

Und das Gefühl dabei war, ja, wir wollen studieren. But the first and primary study is your immediate situation. Aber das erste und das Hauptstudium ist deine unmittelbare Situation. Everything you want to find through study. Alles, was du durch das Studium suchst, We can just stop there because everything you want to find through study... Anyway, is your immediate environment. The teacher. The tashos. The meeting and speaking. The chanting. the other practitioners.

[11:00]

And if you read the koans, you can see that almost all the stories involve a teacher usually, but they also involve the other practitioners helping each other. You never see stories about the rivalries between practitioners in the monastery. Yeah. And so the sense is you come to know what's the strength of other practitioners. And you find ways to support their strength. And support them to support their own strengths.

[12:09]

And Mahakali asked the other night in the meeting, is the chanting, he said something about, and which I'd said too, you know, I think something like that, about discovering a mutual body. Yes, we can say that and something like that happens but the more fundamental dynamic is to find a mutual body with everything, with phenomena with the gardens with the birds with this traditional sheep herder who I haven't seen yet who brings his sheep through here once a year twice a year yeah

[13:15]

So you may have noticed that if you're chanting and you decide for some reason you want to look at the chanting card, to learn it better or to check up on your memory. Vielleicht um das noch besser zu lernen oder um dein Gedächtnis zu überprüfen. The shift from chanting to reading the card is a little jump, it's not so easy to do. Dieser Sprung vom Rezitieren hin zum Lesen der Karte, das ist eine Art Sprung, es ist nicht so leicht das zu tun. So it's really that you're shifting from one modality of mind to another. And that shift is not so easy sometimes. You miss a couple of syllables and then you have to locate yourself and start reading.

[14:33]

Du verpasst ein paar Silben und dann musst du dich erst wieder neu finden und dann lesen. And if you got stopped in the middle of chanting, for some reason, and you want to know what the next syllable is, you can't think your way to it. You have to just hope it pops up. So something knows the chanting, which isn't ordinary thinking. And so that when we're chanting with each other, we're in a modality or mode of mind, which we could say something like knows without exactly knowing.

[15:44]

And we could say that really it's a kind of field of mind. Yeah, Feld. Do you say Feld in German? F-E-L-D or V-E-L-D? F-E-L-D. Because that's an old English word for a meadowland, Feld. Feld ist auch ein altenglisches Wort für die Weide. If you say Welt, it's a mind world. Oh, that's good, too. All right. Ah. Now, we looked at, we've started to look at the Hokyo Zanmai a bit.

[17:02]

The intimately transmitted suchness. And I think we ought to try at least chanting together, if not in service, the Hokyo Zanma. If not together, then at least at service? Together, but not necessarily at service. And the stories of the teachers that have been saved and shaped as teaching devices and the teaching stories about Dung Shan usually start with his asking

[18:20]

national teacher Nanyang Huizhong. He asked Huizhong about a statement of national teacher Huizhong. and Wei Zhong's statement that insentient beings ceaselessly chant, ceaselessly teach the Dharma. Well, these first two or three years of monastic life are based on this concept, basically. If insentient beings are ceaselessly transmitting the Dharma,

[19:37]

then you just have to find out how to be part of that, how to listen. You have to discover how to be in the midst of that study. That investigation. Mm-hmm. So maybe we could say insentient beingness. Maybe that makes it a little more accessible to us. Ceaselessly teach the Dharma. Insentient beingness. Oh, I'm sorry, it's a chat. I'm wondering if that makes it more accessible. Well, there's being and there's the condition of being, beingness. The nest of being where the eggs of realization hatch.

[20:47]

Das Nest der Wesen, in denen die Eier der Verwirklichung schlüpfen. Yeah, well, of course, nest and nest and not... Yeah, okay. I'm just fooling around. But seriously fooling around. So the mode of mind of chanting with your ears... It's, yeah, the same tactile field of mind. The mind that doesn't read, but absorbs. And the word Zen means absorb.

[22:06]

Zazen is sitting absorption. The mind that absorbs the monastic tradition is it takes two or three years of no access to books and things like that to discover this. that's why it's emphasized as the first two or three years of monastic life that's why it's emphasized as the first two or three years of monastic life when you don't study All right, but we've been practicing 10 and 20 years and more, and we've been studying a lot of the time. And study has helped us a lot in our practice. And we can't undo that and we wouldn't want to.

[23:28]

But how can we make use of this now? We're in this practice center for at least three months. Most of you probably won't be back. I won't be back. How can we make use of this tradition? How can we set aside time for the teaching of insentience? Yeah, that's a challenge. But if we look and learn from the frame of teaching in traditional monastic life in East Asia, Then this openness to the insentient, this mutual body with phenomena,

[24:35]

where you learn everything you need to know, you learn through the insentient teaching of phenomena. And this initial condition of immediacy is all you need becomes the basis for your further maturation and becomes the basis for your finding yourself on the inside of the teachings that you study this story of National teacher Hui Zhang and Dongshan was very important to me in the first year or so of my practice.

[25:57]

And the capping statement, although you do not hear it, do not hinder that which hears it. became a form of my innermost request with which I ordered the present. So what, you know, I know you spoke about yesterday the innermost request. And I will find a way to speak about that more. But the innermost request, I mean, you're already alive, right?

[26:58]

I mean, it's too bad, but you are. And my daughter is not yet given birth, as far as I know. And the father of my, I hope to be grandchild, a daughter I know. Her, the baby's father has the largest hat size you can buy. And Elizabeth was 11 or 12 pounds when she was born and had a head size off the charts for the first year of her life. So they're a little worried that the baby's a week late already and may not be able to get out.

[28:12]

I mean, I am in here, but let me out. But once it's born, it has to die. Once it's born, it has no choice but to eventually die. So we're already alive, all of us. And whether we like it or not, we have the responsibility of being alive. And the innermost request is inseparable from recognizing that your being alive has a lot to do with other people being alive. You're alive not just for yourself, you're absolutely alive for others as well.

[29:24]

And the bigger problems you have, the more you, by living them, it helps other people live them. their problems. And Dogen calls this ceaseless activity. Because you're always ordering the present. This present is beingness, is being. Weil du der Gegenwart immer wieder Ordnung gibst. Diese Gegenwart ist Seinsheit, ist das Sein. And you're giving form to the present, creating the present at all times, this gateless gate. Und du erschaffst diese Gegenwart zu jeder Zeit, dieses torlose Tor. And the better translation of Mumon Khan, which is gateless gate, is actually...

[30:26]

The emptiness gate checkpoint. The empty gate checkpoint. Checkpoint Charlie. I went through there once. Well, a barrier, checkpoint. So each moment of this present appearing is an empty gate checkpoint. and you bring your decision to stay alive to it and you can also as I did in those years and still do bring this sense of not hindering that which hears it

[31:32]

Und du kannst, so wie ich das früher gemacht habe und auch immer noch tue, das Gefühl, nicht das zu verhindern, was es hört, auch dahinter zu bringen. Obwohl du die Lehre der nicht fühlenden Wesen nicht hörst, verhindere nicht das, was es hört. Okay, thank you. You want to say it again? Good. Thank you very much.

[32:27]

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