I think it's necessary that we have something like that. And I think if that's the case, we'll have to think about the legal form again. And the articles in this small association constitution, they can be changed at any time and can be adapted to our current needs. I just want to avoid that... not suddenly the opposite situation occurs where we have to adapt to this association. I prefer that the association grows with us and then we can express the needs in the association that we have and that we are not oppressed. The spread of Zen Buddhism. Thank you. Maybe now is a good time to stand still, that if it comes to a different order, Dhamma Sangha, that in the last five or six years we have done an incredible amount of work and energy to keep the Dhamma Sangha together and I would like to thank you for that.

[02:00]

Thank you very much. I never thought this would happen. I'm very surprised. Yeah. Um... Well, you are such a dungy man. . [...] I can add that it will change to a certain extent that it will be two-dimensional.

[03:33]

I would also like to thank Christian. He does an incredible amount of work. Some of you seem to, and I think it's nice that you take for granted that you're coming, and we all know you're coming to the next session. But sometimes some of you who assume I know that you're coming don't come because of some conflict with your job or something like that.

[05:01]

You can't actually depend on my knowing, so you should tell Ulrike for sure, because sometimes we finish in one afternoon, we do the whole thing, then two people are left out who thought we knew. I also want you to know that all of you can consider Crestone your home in America if you ever want to come. Right now we're putting in the, we're going to have a slate floor in the new Zendo. With heating pipes in the floor. And it's the only way we could figure out how to heat it actually because of the meditation platforms on the side.

[06:26]

So we put down what's called gyp creek around pipes and we put the slate on top. And we're doing the sealing of lapped cedar boards. Overlapped. And the reason for doing it lapped is that you see the sealing in its flat surface and you see it in its profile simultaneously. It means you see the board this way, but you also see it this way.

[07:29]

And the result makes the ceiling feel very light because you can feel how thin the boards are. So it makes a very light feeling ceiling. And the ceiling is being put in now. And the meditation platforms are being built. And we might even have the kind of tanzu cupboards made for all 48 seats for the bedding and the clothes. Because at the end of the meditation platform, there's a kind of little chest of drawers, in a sense, with two doors that open where you can put your bedding and you can put your clothes while you're doing sashim. And that's just making 96 doors alone is quite a job.

[08:46]

Anyway, they're doing the finishing there now, and I think we'll have it pretty nearly done. We may not have the tatamis, but we'll have it pretty nearly done, done enough to use for Sashin in April. And then this spring we'll start building the dormitory. Okay, now is there something you'd like to bring up with me in English while I'm here or do you have something about the koan or whatever? Okay, should we take a short break and then gather for a little while and then end?

[09:50]

And I'll go through the koan again a little bit more. So let's have a short break and then we'll start. So any last minute questions about the koan that won't get answered till next year? Yes. You want to make some announcements? Can they wait until after we're through sitting? Oh, no, make them now. Great. Oh, okay, make your announcements. Yes. Thank you.

[10:51]

That's all? Okay. Okay. Und die Kassettenliste, ist die wieder zu dir zurückgekommen? Oder der? Ah ja, dass er daran denkt, mir die mitzugeben. Ich gebe die, schicke die oder faxe die in David und er macht dann die Kassetten und schickt euch dann eine Rechnung. Yes, please.

[12:33]

Thoroughly? Yeah. Thoroughly. Truly is good, too. It means sort of the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. asks, not knowing all these symbols and metaphors, to read the code and to only work with the images we have. A lot of sense. Want to say that in Deutsch? Yeah, that's the same question, really. Somebody asked about reading it as literature. As poetry.

[13:47]

Because these koans, you don't really need to know all this stuff for the koan to work. That's why it's written at a conventional story level. And mostly, when you work with these koans in one traditional sense, you just take certain phrases out of it and never study the koan as a whole. And these koans are meant to be, it's like a relationship with a person. The more you spend time with them, the deeper you get to know the person. And you could study one of these koans, one of them, all your life.

[14:52]

And every few years you could go as far as you want at one time. A few years later you could go much deeper into it. For example, the expression I've used quite often, which is from the iron flute collection of koans. The southern branch of the fully blossomed plum tree knows the whole spring as also does the northern. The southern branch of it. And I Just knowing that poem had a pretty deep experience of this.

[16:04]

It was one of the turning experiences for me in the early 60s. But it's in a koan about Yun Yan and Da Wu, where will we meet after death? And I didn't understand anything about the whole koan. But just from that one line of poetry, now when I go back, I see I understood the koan. Because all these koans are sort of holograms In all the different parts, the whole is built into it. At least that's the idea, and that is largely true.

[17:10]

So if you just read it and sort of get bored with it, then read the next one. And if something sticks with you, then you let that stay stuck with you, and often it will open the koan up for you. But what I'm trying to do here in showing you and going through the koan with you is not to intimidate you and make you feel powerless in front of the koan. But to show you another way in which the koan is also a vehicle for Buddhist culture and Buddhist understanding. But I don't want my explanation to interfere with your also being able to use the koan in a more traditional sense. In other words, I still want you to wonder, ah, can I honor someone? Can I find my seat?

[18:37]

In what sense is my zazen closing the door and sleeping? I'm trying to talk about this koan that it doesn't take the power away from your using phrases in the koan. But as Roland pointed out a little while ago and other people, the way I'm teaching here is quite untraditional. Much of what I'm doing here is done only at the transmission stage of Buddhism after 10, 12 years. When you sit down with your disciple and try to mutually understand the teaching very clearly and confirm that each of you understands. Wenn man sich mit seinem Schüler oder Schülerin hinsetzt und gegenseitig versucht herauszufinden, was man gegenseitig versteht.

[19:48]

And if you all move to Creston with me for 10 years, we'll do it in the more traditional way. Wenn ihr alle nach Creston zieht, dann werde ich also in 10 Jahren das mit euch auf traditionellere Weise machen. But I know you're not going to do that. Not many of you anyway. So I care for what we're doing too much to not try to find some new way to teach. So I'm trying. And you can tell me, am I succeeding or failing? And I will try to improve. Okay. No, no, I'll just pull one. I thought it'd be nice to hear the bell. Is there anything else? Yeah. Yeah, it's what your question is doing. Yeah, that Manjushri, we don't know what to do about him.

[21:05]

Okay, so let's look at the koan a little bit then. Now I'm just going to skim, because we only have a short time, and also what we've done is quite intensive already. So I'm just going to skim through it rather lightly, and you can stop me if you want. So we have the world-honored one, which initially asked the question, are you capable of honoring someone? Are you capable in your own freedom of having an unequal relationship?

[22:07]

And then ascends the seat. Can you find your own seat? And we discussed closing the door and looking, reflecting, stretching, and the sense of that. And then it says, how can it bear sitting on the carved wood seat? Okay, where does that come from? That comes from, first of all, the potential, the highest potential, as it says, of deep Dharmakaya Samadhi. Where nothing is, you know, etc. And then we have yoga and contemplation and mindfulness. And already these are moving toward the granting way or toward a kind of leaking.

[23:18]

To set up the Dharma Sangha is a kind of leaking. Because it causes some problem and so forth. But then even more so, what if you have to get up and be the teacher? Then you're really leaking. Here I am, up here, just this puddle around me. And I'm sporting, you know, devil eyes. The sense again that a glance comes from your eyes, you know. And then you're really asking for trouble. And they say if you talk too much, your eyebrows grow and everything. So, So the Buddha gets out of this predicament because he just gets up there and then splits, right?

[24:33]

So that should be good enough. He left. That's all right. Emptiness. The world goes away. But Manjushri can't leave well enough alone. Yeah, so he starts messing around and, like you guys, we're all banging for a Rico a while ago. Behold the Dharma of the Dharma Queen. The Dharma Queen is thus. Yeah. And immediately Ulrike got down from her seat. Okay. So then the next paragraph here.

[25:34]

Yeah. Raising the eyebrows. This means, you can see it in this picture of Suzuki Roshi, in the back of the book, there's one eyebrow up. This means the Sambhogakaya body speaking. So this means when they say raising the eyebrows, etc., this is called ascending the seat because you're taking on the lion throne of the Sambhogakaya body. Okay, so forth, all right? But when you do this, you're already falling into discrimination. Should have fallen into discrimination means to fall out of awareness or samadhi into a discriminating mind.

[26:54]

A discriminating mind is equated with leaky. Now, this word saindhava is a kind of curious word. And I would say it's a pun on Svabhava, meaning own being. And the teaching of Buddhism is that nothing has own being. But everything here has Saindhava. And the sense of that is that everything does have a meaning, but it's according to the situation. So sometimes Saindhava means salt and sometimes it means horse.

[27:55]

And sometimes Dharma means one thing and sometimes Dharma means something else. Okay, now, so do you have a clearer sense of what's meant by leaking? Basically, to be a bodhisattva is to leak. The Buddha is the one who enters nirvana. And what does the Bodhisattva do? Bodhisattva says, I'm not going to enter nirvana. That's very selfish. I'm going to hang around with everybody in the mud as long as there's mud to hang around in. And occasionally a lotus may grow out of this mud. But I'm going to stay in the mud and help people.

[29:04]

So that desire to help people or compassion is equated with leaking because you're deciding not to enter nirvana. This is very subtle, but it's also very, I mean this is very obvious, but it's also very subtle. Because it means when you're in zazen and you're practicing uncorrected mind and you're distracted and you're losing your energy this you're losing your energy is also kind of you're not doing as good zazen as you might. But you're also losing energy because you're engaged in this life and you're trying to live your life. And also, this whole thing about he saved half and imparted half, all of this is related to teaching as much as you can, but not teaching so much that you lose everything.

[30:32]

So even in this leaking and this practice of the granting way and the grasping way, there's still this pulse of nirvana and samsara. Of detachment and engagement. Of the bodhisattva being able to enter into another person's shoes without leaving their own shoes. If you just stay in your own shoes, then you're not leaking. If you enter someone else's shoes and leave your own, then that's too much.

[31:41]

You've gone too far. So this leaking as compassion as entering the world is taught within the practice of granting and gathering. Or the pulse of form and emptiness. So here this equation of the bodhisattva decision equated with leaking subtly or directly relates it to your own sense of sometimes you leak and sometimes you don't leak. So it's a very kind of powerful way or direct way of showing you that bodhisattva practice is your own ordinary life. So it shows you directly where to practice at this pulse in the fine details of the brocade of granting, grasping, detachment, engagement.

[32:55]

And this is what the Mahayana, the middle way, means, is that you join these two ways in one practice, in one being. And this weaving of granting and gathering is also weaving the ancient brocade and bringing in the forms of spring. So as you practice Zazen, you learn Zazen mind? And through mindfulness practice, you begin to weave ordinary mind and zazen mind, ordinary mind and zazen mind in your breath.

[34:18]

You begin to feel it as something that's an activity of practice and being alive in a very fundamental way. There are notes, if you have the book itself, there are notes to the koan in the back. And one of the notes on page 431, if you have it, more or less explains why Mahakashapa is in the back of the end part of the koan. And Manjushri now 431, not telling.

[35:23]

431, I see. Now, in a sense, the obvious bodhisattva meta-identity to put into this koan would be Avalokiteshvara. Excuse me? The obvious bodhisattva meta-identity to put in this koan would be Avalokiteshvara. The obvious meta-identity for a bodhisattva would be... What's the name? Avalokiteshvara. Avalokiteshvara. From the Heart Sutra. From the Heart Sutra. Okay. But Avalokiteshvara is known as, if nothing else, he is the bodhisattva, she is the bodhisattva, adept at compassion. So they put Manjushri, who's the bodhisattva of wisdom, who's supposed to be pretty close to the Buddha, sticking rather close to nirvana. Yeah. So Manjushri doesn't leak much.

[36:25]

And Manjushri is the Bodhisattva that you usually put in a Zendo. You don't put the Buddha in the Zendo. Usually you put Manjushri. But there's a story about Manjushri. So once, instead of going to the monastery during the summer retreat, Or practicing, he went to the wine shops and the brothels. And Kashyapa, who was an ascetic and always practicing non-leaking and no outflows, wanted to drive him out of the community. He said, we don't need people like this in the community, out with Manjushri.

[37:43]

And when he said this and struck a gavel, a billion Manjushris appeared. So this koan makes very clear Which side it's on. The basic teaching of this koan is leaking. And the practice of leaking within the context of the larger practice of granting and gathering. So it means when you open this book and ascend the seat, when you begin to practice Buddhism by reading a koan like this, or meeting a teacher, Don't forget your own life.

[38:54]

Realize that your own life is bodhisattva leaking practice. So the teaching is you open this book, but make sure you weave your own life into the teaching. Okay, that's a quick run through of the koan. So this is trying to, also these koans are trying to develop a language which infiltrates itself into your own language. So this teaching doesn't become something that you force on yourself. Although sometimes you emphasize monastic side of practice.

[40:03]

And detachment. And sometimes you emphasize just being with your friends. Sometimes you have a face-to-face meeting, which is the kind of court of truth. And sometimes you have a face-to-face meeting with your friend, face-skin to face-skin. That is on the terms of your friend, not on the terms of your practice or your ideas. So sometimes you join your friend's world, sometimes your friends join your world. And as Dogen Zenji says, when really you have face-to-face meeting with friends or teacher, the face of Buddha is there.

[41:10]

And that's the teaching of this koan. And the teaching of our Sangha practice. And I'm very grateful to be here with you today. So let's sit for a few minutes. It won't be too long because I know you have to travel and things.

[41:34]

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