So this is the 30th teisho of the practice period, if I counted correctly. Do you have an expression to pull the rug up under your feet? Oh, yes. Oh, really? Well, today the schedule was pulled up under my feet. I was still standing in the same place but in a different part of the schedule. And what I'd like to speak about of this last test show is this sense of an edge in things. A margin or edge. A mark. A margin is also making a mark. When you bring when you bring a wisdom practice into your life, like the five dharmas or the four marks, you create an edge or a mark or a margin in your experience.

[01:42]

Then you create something like an edge or a margin Okay. And I'd like you to, I would hope you will be able to feel the edge of this practice period in your life as it goes on after the practice period. And I want to hope that you are able to feel the edge of this practice period in your life even after the practice period is over. Is the problem the word edge?

[02:47]

Well, it's a nicer word in English than it is in German. Kante in German is just this thing, but doesn't edge also mean this, all of this? Like it creates a surface or something? In German it's just this. It's not so nice. A double-edged sword is a sword with two edges. In the great translation think tanks of China. And they had thousands of monks, literally, or persons, practitioners, working over sometimes a century or two I mean, they weren't all that old.

[03:49]

They were replaced. Working on the translation of Indian sutras into Chinese and oral sutras which hadn't been transcribed. And it was a very complex process. Because much of the philosophy of Buddhism wasn't expressible in Chinese. Weil ein Großteil des Buddhismus im Chinesischen nicht ausdrückbar war. So they had to create the philosophy in the language as they made the translation. Also mussten sie die Philosophie in der Sprache schaffen, während sie an der Übersetzung gearbeitet haben.

[04:56]

But the final person who was head of the translation It was his decision whether the word was beautiful enough to be included. And for our translator, she's undecided about edge. Okay. Well, what do I mean by edge, though? Yeah, again, it's something I'm trying to find a way to say something, so I... Schwelle. Schwelle is more like threshold, but that's also a possibility. Yeah, okay. Schwelle, yeah. It's a swelle word. Swell.

[05:59]

When I say to you... bring your spine into awareness. That's an edge. Because when you bring spine into awareness, A moment ago you hadn't done it. Now you've done it. And in a moment or two you may not feel it anymore. It's a kind of edge. What would you call it in German? Yeah, I know. It's a kind of edge. I think we would use a different word in each context. So the four habitations I gave you,

[07:06]

The spine and then inhabiting the breath. Each of those are what I mean by edge. And jedes davon ist das, was ich mit Kante meine. And mind, we could have hara mind, a feel that your mind is joined to your hara, and your hara is joined to your mind. Und bei Geister könnten wir auch das Wort harageist benutzen, ein Gefühl dafür, dass dein hara mit dem Geist verschmolzen ist, und der Geist mit dem hara. And the Hara Geist also gives you a different feeling of bodily space. Suzuki Roshi says in one of his lectures on the Sandokai, is that he says at one point, each person is like a steep cliff.

[08:29]

A steep cliff that you can't climb. So he would mean that each of you, each of us, is a steep cliff. We're accessible only to ourselves and only partially to ourselves. And at the same time, we're connected. And these two things exist simultaneously. And part of a... ideally part of a practice period, is to establish simultaneously for each of us the steep cliff of us, and the space, the interconnectedness of us.

[09:45]

Yeah. And he also emphasizes that in Zen, when you use words, there's always two sides. And he used the example, which I had personal experience of, scolding one person because they're near but meaning it for someone else. And he said, you may think, oh, that poor fellow is being scolded. And he says, if you think that, you're not a Zen student.

[10:56]

A Zen student knows who's being scolded when someone else is being scolded. We don't scold so much in America and because we don't like it. Open, direct scolding, even of the person who's not at fault, is very common in Japan. Yeah, and here we can't even use the stick. It reminds people too much of war and all that. I've talked at length about a year or so ago about the word koto. And Sukershi talked about it a lot and I tried to use the word.

[12:07]

But I won't try to recapitulate that. But I'll make a distinction between two words, koto and mono. Now, why am I using Japanese words? You know, I kind of get tired of talking about Japan as a way of talking about our Western practice. But it's simply amazing to me how much the basic views of a culture inhabit all its details.

[13:09]

Okay, for example, this koromo. This koromo has a flap in the neck here, loose flap. It's sewn here, but mostly it just kind of like fans out over your shoulder. And when Western seamstresses or tailors make us robes, They usually don't put that in or they sew it down. Because it's always a nuisance. It gets stuck and it gets stuck out. And when you hang it on a hanger, it gets twisted and you have to take forever to get it straight.

[14:27]

But Japanese clothes are... designed so that you're free inside the clothes, but the clothes aren't form-fitting. They're not form-fitting like spandex would be the other end of the spectrum. And as you know, this is just the... off the loom, it comes in this width. So they respect the cloth as it comes from the loom and don't cut it up into pieces. So they try to use the cloth in ways that respects how it's loomed.

[15:32]

So anyway, the basic concept is your body should be free inside the clothes, but rather encumbered outside the clothes. And Ise Miyake, the Japanese designer, has made a life career out of noticing this distinction and then designing clothes on that basis for Westerners. Did you say he made a fortune? I said he made a career. He also probably made a fortune. Okay. If you're going to be free inside your clothes, the most... telling way in which clothes are worn is how they relate to the spine.

[17:04]

So this whole way, this is a little bit not on the neck but sits and leaves some space for the neck. Also gibt es da diese ganze Art, wie das genäht ist, dass das hier nicht direkt am Nacken dran sitzt, aber ein bisschen vom Nacken entfernt sitzt. If you lift up through the spine, the neck doesn't really touch the back of the kimono. Und wenn du dich durch deine Wirbelsäule aufrichtest, dann berührt der Nacken nicht die Rückseite vom kimono. so in order to get you to arrange your robes so they relate to the spine they put this kind of inner collar there which makes you relate to it and adjust it so if you don't relate to it it gets skewed up

[18:15]

So there's no edge to spandex, there's only stretch. But a koromo has an edge to it, and if you don't relate to the edge, you don't wear it properly. And as I will say something about this teaching staff, again, most of you have heard me say the same thing, But this teaching staff has an edge in it. And the edge is, there's the womb lotus, the embryo lotus. Und diese Kante ist, also da gibt es den Lotus embryo.

[19:36]

Where your hand goes. Das ist, wo deine Hand angelegt ist. And then from that come two stems. Und dann daraus entstehen zwei Stängel. And one stem is a bud. Und ein Stängel ist eine Knospe. And one stem is a seed pod. Und ein Stängel ist eine Samenkapsel. But what's left out? That's the edge. What's left out is the bloom. So you're looking at it, and almost every statue of Abelokiteshvara has the same thing. They leave some of the iconography out, so you have to cross that edge and create the bloom. So it makes you The bloom.

[20:41]

So you're looking at it becomes the blooming of the lotus staff of Avalokiteshvara. So all of these clothes are meant to require attention in order to wear. They design an edge requiring attention into the clothes. Okay. So... Kotoba means the edge of things. Mono means thing, the content of something. The content of this platform.

[21:42]

But koto means not the movement, and not the content of it, the condition of it, but that the movement is possible and the stability of it is possible. So koto is a word which means things are full of possibilities. So an object is a full of possibilities object. And when you think that way, you design them differently. Okay, so now back to old Kohan 46. Are any of you 46 years old?

[23:00]

So, Xinjing says, I am almost not caught by things. So, The monk says, raindrops. Well, it's a perfectly accurate response. But there's no edge in it. There's no clear edge in it. Yeah, he could mean the mind, he could mean the sound, he could mean the wetness outside. but so Xin Jing says we sentient beings are inverted we are what does he say we are

[24:12]

What? We get caught by things and chase after them? Something like that. And we chase after things. And then the monk says, what about you, teacher? And he says, I almost don't get caught by things. I almost don't follow after things. Which means he does follow after things. But it also means he knows the edge where you do or don't follow after things. So this is actually a reference for those of you who look at a koan like this closely and understand it's about the two truths.

[25:41]

This is a reference by Qin Jing to Nagarjuna's Tetralemma. Which is that things exist. Things don't exist. Things both exist and don't exist. And things neither exist nor don't exist. And the example of that would be the rope that you think is a snake. The rope that you took for a snake in the dark, that snake neither exists nor does not exist. So, Qin Jing is saying to this monk, Also sagt Qin Jing zu diesem Mönch, Find yourself at the edge where things exist and don't exist.

[27:05]

And inverted is like things exist, don't exist, etc. I almost don't get it. I almost don't follow after things, don't get caught by things. So again, it's this way of pointing out the edge where you get caught, but you notice you're getting caught, and then you don't, but then you do, etc. I, for some reason from childhood, it's a kind of nostalgic thing, love milkshakes. I used to drink gallons of milk a day.

[28:15]

I mean, I'm not exaggerating. I didn't drink water, I just drank milk. I mean, my parents would order four to six quarts a day for me, just for me. Meine Eltern haben jeden Tag vier bis sechs Liter für mich bestellt. I'm surprised I didn't grow up to be a cow. Ich bin überrascht, dass ich nicht zu einer Kuh geworden bin. But slowly I weaned myself from milk. Wean means steal. Wean is when you wean a baby when you stop nursing it. Aber so langsam habe ich mich von der Milch abgestillt. But sometimes I decide I will not have a milkshake. And then I find myself in this place and I'd say, yes, a little extra ice cream in it. Yeah, and then I think, oh, Nagarjuna's terrible tetralemma. And then I think, oh my, Nagarjuna's terrible tetralemma.

[29:25]

It existed, it didn't exist. No, but it's very good. It existed, it didn't exist, but it tastes very good when I drink it for the first time. Today I had another cream puff. And today there was another cream puff. A puff. Maybe that's where we should stop. The cream puff lectures. No, from that point of view, if you start to think that way, And you notice the edge. And it's part of the edge which makes each of us a steep cliff. Because every percept is also an edge. You notice it. You almost didn't notice it. You notice it and you inhabit it, you feel it.

[30:38]

In Japanese calligraphy, the most basic stroke is the stroke for the number one. And you're making a mark on paper. So you have the brush and you place it on the paper. So it's actually three aspects. You place it and there's a feeling of ink there. And then it gets thinner as you pull it across to the right. And you can see it's thinner and then you have to get your brush off the paper somehow.

[31:51]

And there's various teachings about it. But the one I like is you create an image of your mind of a distant mountain or space in the mist or something. And then lift the brush off like into that mist or into that distant horizon. So even in making a single mark, There's these edges, placing, duration, disappearance or dissolution. Dieter tells me in Chinese calligraphy, which I didn't know because it looks so similar to Japanese calligraphy, is you place it down and then you bring it back

[33:06]

to the opposite direction. So also every precept is an edge. And they're taught to be edges, not taught to be followed. If you just follow the precepts, it's very gross. You don't do that, and you do do this, and there's no mist, there's no gray area, there's no in-between. So when there's a precept, you, oh, I just followed a precept. Well, I just didn't follow a precept.

[34:23]

I have two milkshakes. So that if you begin to have this feeling that everything in it has two sides, For instance, I would define beauty. Beauty is when you're stopped by something. When you're moved by something and stopped in that movement. And you feel that stopness including you and the flower or the painting or whatever it is. Or the sunset, sunrise.

[35:23]

And that inclusiveness Which becomes a kind of stillness. Where things are as they are. And you feel a kind of self. But not a self-referencing self. This would be the feeling of self-referencing. Like Dogen's, when the 10,000 things come forward and authenticate and cultivate the self. And cultivate. Yes, or develop the self. And maybe we could spell that self with all capital letters.

[36:35]

And the self of the first phrase of Dogen's statement is maybe small letters. So the practice of the two truths as expressed in this koan and in Zen practice is to know this small self and this big self And to feel the edge back and forth between them. The margin, the edge. And the mark it leaves on you. And to feel that would be to practice the two truths. And the two truths which then become a single practice.

[37:58]

So it's interesting to me that this word koto and kotoba have in it the sense of stillness and beauty when you feel both sides of the edge. So I hope you can feel this edge in your practice from now on. And I'll be there looking over the edge. And you'll be looking over the edge of the thing. Hi. Thanks.

[38:41]

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