I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Okay, I guess what I'd like to emphasize in this talking together today, talking with you, is the idea of relaxation in practice. Is everyone relaxing? Let's see.

[01:04]

I've emphasized the sense of the importance of maintaining a physical continuity of concentration. In our hands or in changing the source of our inner speaking and outer speaking. Both is a way of pulling our the location of identity or continuity out of our conceptual thought stream. But more fundamental than concentration in Zen practice is a powerful idea or dynamic of relaxation. And Suzuki Roshi speaks about no gaining idea.

[02:35]

Now this is a kind of clumsy but powerful phrase. And it means many things. But one thing it means is no strategies of self-improvement. Now, Of course, I always have to say these things. You do need some kind of career and you have to improve your personality and so forth. And it's a worthwhile goal to get along with people better and so forth.

[03:37]

So how can we sort out together the difference between the usual goals we need and another idea of this no gaining ideas? So now we're talking not about the practical things like how do you get to the grocery store, but the fundamental idea of how you exist. So now what koans are trying to do, and all Zen Buddhism is trying to do, is give you a language with which you can talk to yourself and listen to the world. Now, koans are not, and when I say koans now I'm talking about the various ways that Zen Buddhism and the teachings that Zen Buddhism uses looks at the world.

[05:03]

Let me say here as an aside that I didn't know how the Koan seminar would affect the Sashin. But my sense is that I can describe to you how it seems to me it's affected the Sashin. It's made most of you more relaxed in the presence of the Sashin. I think it continued quite a bit of talkativeness and conviviality into the sashin. It means the pleasure of interactions with others. It's like Ivan Illich, one of the great theorists of our societies, present-day society, who really hates technology, loves telephones because they're very convivial.

[06:42]

So, yeah. Um... And I feel also, and I can feel it in the presence of the Sesshin sitting here and in the chanting, that all of you have more empty suitcases. And you have more of the same empty suitcases. I mean, I can feel in this room, more than any other time, a readiness to understand things or the opportunity or capacity to.

[07:44]

At the same time, I think the koan seminar made this session a little less intense. So from my point of view, it's not good, bad or anything. It's just interesting to see the differences. And I think as our practice gets more mature, we'll be able to make a shift from a koan seminar to a sesshin if we do this again more easily. Okay, koans and the teachings of Zen are not an attempt to describe the way the world is. Koans are really a kind of writing. And it's not a kind of writing that is attempting to describe the world accurately in a Kantian sense.

[09:09]

It's a kind of writing meant to get you to start writing. It leads to other writing. Or it leads to other koans or new koans. It leads to koans arising in your life. So the point of a koan is not to describe the world, perhaps, but perhaps more like to get you to stop for a moment and gaze at the world. And to gaze at the world as much as possible without language, without ideas. Or koan is a language to get you to listen to yourself or listen to others or listen to the world. It's not trying to describe it.

[10:21]

Okay. And this sense is also, this arises from this teaching of emptiness. That the world or koans are snowflakes that you see moments before they melt. Excuse me. Snowflakes that you see moments before they melt. What is the corns? The corns are like snowflakes and the world is like a snowflake that you see. So, you know, let me... Last night, did any of you hear the sirens at 2 o'clock or something?

[11:42]

Oh, good. Ulrike and I were not having a mutual hallucination. Anyway... I thought maybe Willy Brandt died. People started ringing the sirens. In any case, I didn't know what it meant, but for Ulrike, it brought up, may I say, it brought up things like stories she heard from the war of the sirens and so forth. And she woke up and said, what could it possibly be like to have to get up now and run to a bomb shelter?

[12:46]

What a world to live in. But she heard it in various ways, and I wonder if you could say, you don't have to say it in English, how you felt about the world and the feeling you had afterwards. Could you say that? On the one hand, all these stories came up about the tragedy of the war and a lot of compassion with my parents and grandparents, who had to flee into the air defense cell for years at night.

[13:52]

And on the other hand, for me personally, something has widened a lot, in the sense that Yes, I have experienced how well I set up my world and my life. For example, last night it was very important for me to go to bed early enough to have enough sleep for the last two exhausting days. Yes, and suddenly there were these sirens and I suddenly felt that there was no possibility to control my world or my environment somehow and to have control over it. And quite surprisingly for me, it triggered a great feeling of liberation. My feeling is... May I say something? My feeling is that this feeling she had that she can't really control her world and that this was a feeling of relief is available anytime.

[15:32]

And she's heard, we've all heard sirens many times. But hearing it the way she heard it and hearing it deeply and feeling relief at hearing it I think completely comes out of studying koans and studying Buddhism. So the point I'm making is that the sirens or whatever on a certain occasion for you becomes the same kind of language as is in the koans. We all know in some way that we can't control the world. But how deeply that strikes into our personality and our premises is something else. And whether we react with fear or relief is also a part of the language.

[16:58]

Okay, so obviously the point I'm making here is the world as language And you yourself learning to speak it. And this is something that goes on for your lifetime. And I think what all of you could use, including me, is not so many small ambitions. Not so many only practical ambitions. I think it would serve us and our friends well if we could have a deeper, sometimes maybe impractical ambition.

[18:04]

Like, could I... Or my friends realize enlightenment. Could our society become a place in which enlightenment is possible? And such a big ambition requires a lot of humility or realism. So this is not inflation I'm talking about, but psychological inflation. I'm talking about the basic humility and yet deep desire for our society and our friends' welfare that we can also have a big ambition.

[19:17]

I think this is a difficult point for us and for me too. And also just talking about it is difficult because it's so easy to misunderstand. For example, the other day I was talking about a feeling of connectedness with the phenomenal world and with others. And for a person who has weak ego boundaries, this could be a kind of affirmation of their own lack of ego boundaries or psychological instability. The point is, it's just when you feel most intact and all of one piece, when your boundaries are most sealed and complete, that you feel the absence of boundaries.

[20:34]

So this language in itself is important to get the nuance straight. So I'm trying to talk about approach, talking about no gaining idea and relaxation. And the idea of relaxation in Buddhism is not kind of loafing around. Do you have frays like loafing around, hanging around?

[21:53]

It's a relaxation that melts everything. I mean, you don't have to do anything about the obstacles in your... You don't have to try to overcome obstacles. Because if you can really relax, the obstacles melt. It's like Buddha nature has a principle of thawing the world. Now Buddha nature is used in Zen a lot to mean that nature which melts all natures. So it's a kind of looking at emptiness as a function. Not as just some philosophical, descriptive idea.

[23:07]

So if your experience of emptiness or recognizing at a fundamental level there's nothing to do, if the recognition that at a fundamental level there's nothing to do isn't exactly the same as doing nothing but rather functions to melt the obstacles in your mind and in your path Then this doing nothing is doing nothing that does something. But the attitude is to do nothing.

[24:14]

But you do nothing with the faith in Buddha nature. Now, here you get at some real, that's something very basic in Zen practice. A doctrinal practice is based on the idea that you can become Buddha. Zen practice is based on the idea that you are already Buddha. That's quite an act of faith and leap of imagination. But if you're not already Buddha, where is Buddha? In the past or over there in, I don't know what, South Africa? Siberia? Kyoto? Where is Buddha? Yeah. And if enlightenment is possible, it must be possible for each one of us.

[25:30]

And it's not possible somewhere else. It's not a degree you get. It's possible right here, right now. Can you have faith in that kind of right here and right now? If you think of yourself as an object that needs to be improved, you cannot have that kind of faith. So enlightenment cannot be a strategy of self-improvement. If you think, I've got to be enlightened because more people will like me a lot better. I want to be the most liked person of all.

[26:33]

This is a strategy for self-improvement. And that has no absolute faith or practical faith in enlightenment is right here and right now. And you can't think about this right here and right now in which enlightenment is possible. And you can only relax into it. Or thaw or melt into it. It requires an attitude that is, I don't know what word to use, I'm using relaxation. Relaxation may be one of the surfaces of this deep idea, deep attitude.

[27:50]

Bodhicitta, the thought of enlightenment, is this kind of melting. One form of One form of bodhicitta is to throw your lot in with others. Sink or swim, we're going down or up together. This is one form of bodhicitta. Another kind of bodhicitta is, you could say, as a radical openness to looking at the world beyond language. Using the subtle language of Buddhism to get to the point where you look without language. And in a sense, melt into that space.

[29:01]

Now, when you sit down and you can't relax, well, then it's very clear there are obstacles. Now, you can try to get rid of the obstacles. That's one approach. And I think, practically speaking, we have to do that. That's one front on which to act. But that's, you know, using constructs to affect constructs. There has to be a much deeper movement within you at the same time in order to practice Zen, which both the construct you want to improve and the technique of improvement both melt.

[30:04]

So one way of practicing, the fundamental way of practicing, is when you sit down and you can't relax. One alternative is to attempt to get rid of the obstacle that prevents you from relaxing. And the more fundamental way, the fundamental way in Zen is to deepen your ability to relax. And the deeper your ability becomes to relax, the more the obstacle starts to melt or transform. And also the more you change the situation so you can approach the obstacle in a different way. So this idea of relaxation or no gaining idea is a deep

[31:12]

a face in Buddha nature or emptiness melting the constructed world. Or the divided world melts into the undivided world. And then reappears again. But that appearance and reappearance and disappearance puts you in a very different world. That's when Ulrike felt that she couldn't control the world. She felt a relief. But when you really feel you can let go of the world, not even try to control it, completely let go of it, empty it, there's a tremendous relief.

[32:36]

And you're doing both at the same time. And you're attempting to solve your problems in the usual way and you're also attempting to just accept and relax. Without any strategies of self-improvement. Without any gaining ideas. At this very moment In this very situation, there is Buddha, there is enlightenment. Absolutely nothing has to be done. Now, if you can really feel that, then it's true. The point is, it's very difficult to feel that. So your practice is right there. What prevents you from feeling that?

[33:48]

What ideas of yourself prevent you from feeling that? What desires prevent you from feeling that? What views you have of the world prevent you from feeling that? What anxieties prevent you from feeling that? And so forth. And that process allows you to look at everything. So in this sense, if you follow my distinction between consciousness and awareness, we could say awareness is our experience of emptiness. Or awareness is consciousness at the level of the undivided world.

[35:02]

But when we call this awareness Buddha nature, it means the more you can relax into this awareness, This awareness melts all natures or all obstacles. Or so changes your relationship to obstacles that you view them another way. This is not the realm of referential joy, but of non-referential joy. The joy in the faith in emptiness. Not the faith in the pleasures that arise from the five skandhas or the pleasures that arise from self. Those pleasures exist.

[36:07]

But you have come to see the transience and inherent suffering in those pleasures. And you accept that those pleasures and sufferings cause other people suffering. Those pleasures and sufferings cause other people suffering. But still you've taken on this great ambition of not harming anything. As much as possible to live without causing harm. It's impossible and you have the sense of the tragedy of its impossibility. You can't have tragedy in outer space or the future because all alternatives are possible.

[37:25]

You can only have tragedy where all alternatives are not possible. So that you're aware that everything you do and everything your society does causes suffering. Even in the attempt of doing good, of taking care of each other and feeding each other, you cause suffering. To other human beings and to the animal and plant world. So you accept that tragedy or that suffering. At the same time you have the ideal of no harm. which doesn't contradict the acceptance of the tragedy that we are always causing suffering.

[38:38]

I've reached the end of my ability to be any clearer about this. So a kind of faith in emptiness arises. And as I said, a non-referential joy arises. And this faith and joy in emptiness is understood as being the real basis of all practice.

[39:57]

And that one expression of that face and joy in emptiness is the movement toward the bodhicitta of this very moment and this very place is, can be, is Buddha and enlightenment. This very place and this very moment is Buddha and enlightenment.

[40:58]

And in each period of zazen you relax into this feeling which is incomprehensible. This language I'm using brings you to the edge of it. But you can't do anything to step into it. Every zazen period brings you to the edge of it. And the words for entering this are inadequate. Letting go, faith, relaxation, these are inadequate words for it. But maybe faith is closest, or faith and relaxation, something like that is closest. And it certainly takes the small forms of in each moment being able to relax.

[42:11]

Just this is it. So this is the way it is. So this is the way it is. I might try to make it different, but this is also the way it is. This is not a kind of social strategy or lack of a strategy. It's really an inner movement at the depths of your being. That affects how you look at the world, how you listen to the world.

[43:12]

How you give yourself to the world. For some moments at least with no gaining ideas. I think this is the deep alchemy of real individuation and our mutually benefiting society. And it's possible. Why not? Do you have something better to do? Thank you very much. May our intention equally penetrate every... 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

[44:55]

May the Lord God bless you and your family. May the Lord God bless you and your family. Helping us to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I am bound to taste the truth of the Venerable's words. Oh dear. So I think some of you would on some level like the Sesshin to continue a little longer.

[46:00]

But probably the feeling that school's out soon is overpowering. Getting ready for school to be out soon. I remember those wonderful days when suddenly an afternoon before school was supposed to be out, they'd give you the afternoon off. So maybe we should just... I want to thank Eric for being the Tenzo again. And so thank you. And I know everyone thanks you and everyone who worked in the kitchen.

[47:06]

And I want to thank also Gerald and Gisela for coming all the way from America back to their homeland. And just sitting here like Buddhist tree stumps. Even Gerald with his bad knee. just sat here sharing their presence with us. And I suspect that Ruth is thinking she might be next and she's worried. But I also want to thank Ruth for taking on this mysterious job of being Eno.

[48:14]

No one knows quite what it is, but she's been doing it very well. And, you know, I'm... I'm pretty... I don't know what the word is. Sappy? Sappy, romantic person. Yeah, so ich bin ein ziemlicher... You translated that imaginatively.

[49:19]

And I try to hide this under my tough side sometimes. But I feel so grateful to practice with all of you. And to have discovered somehow such wonderful people here in the United States to lead my life with. I sometimes think the real reason I practice is just because it gives me such good friends. And I think each of you were very lucky to have found fellow practitioners in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Austria.

[50:21]

I didn't say America. America, yeah, good. She's becoming more American than me. It really is kind of something remarkable to find people you can practice with. This is the horizontal lineage. And we Well, let me say something else.

[51:26]

A small thing. Several people have spoken to me about this Heidelberg room idea. And some people have wondered what we would do with it in between seminars and things. And I don't know, I mean, in America people travel long distances to do something for a day, and here people tend to stay in their own location. So it might be primarily used locally. And I'm not even sure if this particular place is the right place, but at least I think it's worth exploring. But if I had a room there, what I would do is start daily zazen, so it would be zazen every day in Heidelberg. And that wouldn't mean everybody in the Heidelberg area sitting group has to come every day.

[52:44]

Just be there. Maybe I'd be by myself most mornings. My feeling would be to make it into a little Buddhist church or Buddhist temple that's just available for people at any time. It would be good if there were several of them around Germany. And let me say something about this. Eric and others are taking on these jobs within the Sashim The reason the jobs are not so defined, the real definition is not spelled out.

[53:53]

has something to do with the nature of Buddhist, at least East Asian Buddhist monastic life. Which is that it's not simple and austere. Do you know austere? I guess so. It's not simple and austere. It's simple and thorough. Because it's not, those words are somewhat inadequate, but it's not a process based on a rejection of the material in favor of the spiritual.

[55:22]

But it's a life based on the material as spiritual. It's a life based on the material as spiritual. So that... It's one of the reasons this... They have these... The example I used the other day of these two cuisines. And they're really not two cuisines. They're one cuisine. And they inform each other. The difference is one is three ingredients or... ten or fifteen ingredients made into three ingredients, three dishes.

[56:38]

And the other is maybe thirty different things you eat made in very small quantities. Using sometimes hundreds of ingredients. And in general, Japan, for instance, has more plants by a factor of hundreds than we use in our cuisine. So no one would want to eat the 30 things every meal. So it's really one cuisine, one for some occasions and one for another occasion.

[57:40]

And it's a kind of life that you can't, that if you had to buy, it becomes very expensive because it's based on infinite care and attention to detail. So my own feeling is that this Buddhist monastic way of life is an extraordinary way of life. And it's a statement about the possibilities of life. And what I feel is that we have a chance to bring this way of life in some way into our ordinary lay life and with both men and women.

[58:41]

But so much of the detail of it arises in the doing of it over time. So, you know, if we had different people coming to Sashin every time, we couldn't do what we're doing. Because the majority of return in every Sashin has allowed us to develop the practice. So these jobs, like Ino and Tenzo and others, as we develop the practice, other things we have to do, jobs appear, will appear. are developed and understood primarily through the doing of it. Everything becomes a little bit like being an artist.

[59:51]

Now, going back to what I was saying, that I feel we're very lucky to have found each other and practicing together. And when practicing together during the Koan seminar and Sashin, gives each of us, we receive from each other permission to take the practice seriously. And we receive a kind of permission to understand it in deeper and deeper ways. This was a kind of difficult point for me to realize personally.

[61:20]

Because I was, until I was in my mid-twenties, I was pretty much of a loner. One of my nicknames was El Darko. Because I always wore black and just wandered around by myself. And if I had any friends, it was mostly one. And I'd set it up so I would never participate in society, never vote, etc. I was radically an outsider. In my mind, at least. Anyway, as I've said some of this before, but the shift to when I started practicing with the sutra, The shift to recognizing how much, as independent as I was, aggressively independent, how much actually I was dependent on other people in order to practice.

[62:40]

And that insight led me not only to getting deeper into Buddhism, but also to doing the kind of life I have now. As long as each of us, as we think Buddhism is something that is, you know, serious and we should look at it seriously. I suppose it's valuable to come to this point. But as long as you are feeling that Buddhism is something that's important and you should do it, you're still outside of practice.

[63:55]

You really start practicing when you have no choice. When the issues that Buddhism raises become personal obstacles. When you begin to, I'm going to say it another way, when you begin to, you can't go on without making sense of what Buddhism is talking about. So like any obstacle, Buddhism itself can be very depressing and you can feel, oh shit, I've got to do something else, this is too much. As I said in the koan seminar, this is also, you should take this seriously, sometimes you can't turn back.

[64:56]

And practicing Buddhism is as enveloping as being a scientist or a poet or starting a business or something. But after a while, although you may be able to do many different kinds of careers and still be a Buddhist, you may not be able to stop being a Buddhist. What if there's worse things to not be able to stop? But it is a process and you get engaged in the process and you somehow have to complete it.

[66:10]

I want to talk a little bit more about this sense of relaxation I mentioned yesterday. Because it's such an elusive and important point. You know, to say that everything is interdependent The basic teaching of Buddhism is, of course, that everything changes and everything is interdependent. But to say that everything is interdependent means that everything is equally real.

[67:13]

Or equally unreal. In any case, if anything is real, then everything is equally real. And we tend to have ghosts, many ghosts in our thinking. They're philosophical ghosts, moral ghosts, and so forth. They really are like films between us and reality. When you think of language, for example, as something that should accurately represent what's being described, When language for you is a way of representing to yourself the world, then you really don't see the implications of everything is interdependent.

[68:30]

you've got to give everything its own freedom. You've got to let loose of everything. You've got to see that everything is loosely related to each other. It's not tightly tied in in some kind of vanishing point of truth. You know, the vanishing point perspective where you have a point and everything is tied into that when you represent a painting or a picture. That vanishing point is a mental construct. It's a construct of aware senses. Work from one point of view. If we want to stop a picture for a moment, we have to present it that way to make it look accurate. If you think that the point of language is to represent something,

[69:53]

Then you're always caught in the middle of between what's being represented and the truth. You're always caught between the truth of what might be represented and something elusive that you can't get hold of. It's like to think of dreams as having what's essential in a dream is the meaning of a dream. So that you're always trying to find the meaning of a dream. And yes, dreams do have some meaning that can come clear to us. And language can be used to represent the world.

[71:26]

But I'd like to, you know, we talked about this a little in the Kahn seminar, to free language from representing anything. So language becomes a reality in which we live and move. Dogen says you can eat painted cakes. What he means is painted cakes are not only a representation of real cakes. Und er meint damit, dass also gemalte Kuchen nicht nur eine Repräsentation von wirklichen Kuchen sind. Es ist nicht alles eine Repräsentation von irgendetwas. Und ihr selbst werdet euch niemals real fühlen, wenn ihr euch immer für eine Repräsentation von etwas anderem haltet. Ihr müsst eure Perspektive wechseln. In Japan, painted cakes are the menu.

[72:37]

They have out in front of all the restaurants little painted plastic or wax versions of everything that they serve. And there's actually the first appetizer. Your mouth starts to water as soon as you see them. So you immediately reach for your pocketbook and go in and spend money on these painted cakes. So for the restaurant they represent money, for you they represent your appetizer. So you can eat painted cakes. The point is to get out of feeling that everything is a representation of something else.

[73:41]

Which again leaves you always seeking some elusive meaning which you don't quite get. And realness is outside you somewhere. And part of this problem is that it's reinforced by language itself. Because we spend a great deal of time in the midst of language. thinking and reading and listening and so forth. But language, again, is not only about something else.

[74:43]

It also is something in itself. Your thoughts and language is something in which you live and move. Something in which you swim. And you can free language from the world. And then each of your sense fields is something in which you live and swim. You don't have to describe the world to yourself. You are in the world. You swim and live in the world. If thoughts come, it's as real as a leaf. If a leaf is there, it's not the name of a leaf. It doesn't have to be described for you to feel it or know. You want to stop living in the midst of descriptions. And it's very difficult to get out of it.

[75:56]

But when you do, you know it. Everything is suddenly bright, pristine, crystalline. Everything has a kind of light. And at first you think this light is coming from the objects you're looking at. And then you realize this light is coming from you. And some of you have had this experience, quite a few, that had some taste of this during this ashram. And then you immediately worry, will it come back? Und dann macht ihr euch sofort Gedanken, darüber wird es zurückkommen. How do I get hold of this?

[76:57]

Wie kann ich das also festhalten? How do I repeat this? Wie wiederhole ich das? And then you're right back and thinking everything is a representation of something else and you've got to get hold of it. Und dann seid ihr genau wieder da, dass alles eine Repräsentation von irgendetwas ist. Wie kann man das festhalten? This is a constantly refreshing awareness, a pristine awareness, constantly refreshing. Und dieses ursprüngliche Gewahrsein erfrischt uns andauernd. It's not even, I can say, everything is center. Each of you is a center. It's not even that each thing is a center. Each thing is no center and no circumference. Each thing is moving with an incomprehensible freedom. And every thing or everything moves with an indescribable freedom in which you can let yourself into and offer yourself to.

[77:59]

And when you do, everything starts speaking to you. The black earth, insects, the ducks, your own hands, each breath, yeah. This is only separated from us by this film of thinking that somehow something, there's a hierarchy of the real. That realness is somewhere else. Whatever, I mean, that's not the meaning of interdependence. Everything is equally real. There's no hierarchy. This is fundamental reality.

[79:01]

And most of you are in the, we could call, the creative stage of this practice. You're beginning to have the experiences which give you some faith in this. Let's call it pristine, ever-refreshing awareness. Sounds like an ad for Buddhism. It sounds like a Buddhist advertisement. Maybe I should work for a Buddhist advertising agency. But in this creative stage you are developing a kind of, as I've said, vocabulary of experience.

[80:41]

And although you may not be able to for sure continue this kind of awareness, The taste of it becomes part of a vocabulary and begins to transform how you understand things. And when we study koans, we're learning a language, a shared language that's been developed by the lineage about this. And by, you know, sitting together and doing the koan seminar together, you're also beginning to get some experience at speaking this verbally and non-verbally with each other.

[81:58]

We could say we also begin to feel the unstruck sound. When someone's doing the bell, you can feel the sound that's struck, but also you can feel the unstruck sound. It's a kind of non-sound, which is a certain kind of silence. So we begin to be able to communicate with this language. Which includes sounds and unstruck sounds. And the sense that each person is centered.

[82:59]

And when you just relate to another person as if they were center, you've changed their vocabulary as well as speaking to them differently. And when you speak to another person even more subtly, as if they're not even center, but a kind of zero point which has no circumference.

[83:39]

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