And often you see them, unfortunately, in relationship to pain. I'm sorry, but it's the direct method. So it's thought there are other ways. I mean, some schools use lots of visualization and other practices and identifying with other dimensions of being. But Zen thinks that sashin practice is one of or a main shortcut. You immediately see how your states of mind, your attitudes, feelings affect your states of mind. And you immediately see your relationship to pain and pleasure.

[01:07]

And it's very clear what you like better. But you also see that pain itself is a state of mind. Sometimes it's worse and sometimes it's not so bad. Sometimes you can just abandon your legs. Don't let the leg belong to someone else. Or I cut that leg off half an hour ago and it's no longer there. You can have various theories. They only work for a little while. But what's amazing is theories work at all. So you begin to see how cause affects your states of mind. You get a very direct almost like you're looking at a movie a very direct image of how a particular change of mind, attitude, feeling affects your state of mind.

[02:37]

And because you're caught in this sort of vice and very present pain-pleasure thing, You can see it very clearly because there's immediate results. The pain lessens or it gets worse. But more than this, you're really seeing how your mind functions. How karma is created. The seeds or causes that lead to karma. You can see states of mind become afflicted until you're in such a bad state of mind you want to hit the person next to you. Who's insisting on breathing too loudly to punish you. And if someone else, I don't know who it said, and then on the other side, you fall in love with the socks of the person.

[03:58]

I don't know who said that. Jack Kornfield. Oh, yeah, I think that's a good remark. You fall in love with the person's socks. On the other side, you fall in love with the person's socks. A quote from Jack Kornfield. Could I touch your sock? Can I touch your sock? To get, to see, actually get some experiential mind state knowledge of cause and karma is central to Buddhism. And he says, Yanmen, the first koan, is the pure body of reality because zazen and sishin practice is a form of purification practice.

[05:05]

And part of this purification process for us, especially as Westerners, is to really honor your process that you're going through. If you're in a totally foul mood, you stay with that foulness. I am a foul adept. I stink like an old fox. Every time I come out of that entryway and I smell in the middle of the night all that gamascio, I think there's an unwashed dog.

[06:09]

Bai Zhang is storing his dead foxes. He brings one out every five centuries to make a new story. So, sashin almost always enters you into some kind of psychological process of which at least for two or three days it's a little unpleasant. Our sort of smelly fox nature comes up. You know, there's one of the centers of fox worship in Japan is Myogonji, which is a Soto Zen temple in Japan in Aichi Prefecture.

[07:12]

So part of the problem in seeing our undivided mind or to see awareness and the activity of awareness is to purify our mind. So you more and more see karma, you see causation. You see how your mind waters get muddy and how they're clear. Just knowing, actually knowing that sometimes they can be clear is a seed of enlightenment.

[08:41]

If you don't know that, you don't have the faith to really enter practice in a way that you would be likely to realize enlightenment. I mean, the muddy can go clear like that, but first we have to see that it can be clear. Now the six don't take it in. This is a way of saying, of course he means the six senses. He also means just counting and numerating things. He means this reality, undivided world, can't be counted. But in a funny way, it can be counted on if you stop counting. Is that right now?

[09:50]

Can you make that pun in German? Okay. But I count on you to translate it. But I stop counting when I look at you. Okay. I don't know what you said, but you should. It's women's lib, I know. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. So this is Yan Men's trick to get you to think too much about the six senses.

[10:57]

But he's not really pointing out the six senses, but he's pointing past the six senses. Remember, this adept is described as, how do you see an adept who is free, has stopped words and speech and actions? Can you come to the point in your sitting where you stop words and speech? Will you stop talking to yourself? It hurts, it doesn't hurt. Just stop talking about it.

[11:59]

Then can you stop a kind of action, always wanting to take some action? This is another way of talking about ease or calmness. Or the relaxation that opens up into an experience of emptiness. Because if you can really relax, you're relaxing in between or out of the categories of likes and dislikes. And if you're out of the category of likes and dislikes, you're out of the category of the divided world. So if you're outside of likes and dislikes, you're in the territory of experiential territory of emptiness. So relaxation is a kind of door to emptiness.

[13:12]

Samadhi is another door to emptiness. A mind free of thoughts and conceptions and so forth. But what about just seeing in between the thoughts and relaxing in between? So we're not really talking about, well, big mind or the body of reality is bigger than the six senses or the source of the six senses, but rather you have to look past the six senses. And there's an anecdote in this koan sort of putting down this lecturer who talks about that Dharmakaya is like space and reaches horizontally and vertically and there's no boundaries and all.

[14:18]

Yeah, and this is the same kind of thing, the six senses or describing conceptually. What Jungmann is asking is, how do you enter it in your immediate thoughts, actions, mind? You know, two things create a space. Two people create a space. And that space is also a sacred space. It can be an ordinary space or it can be a sacred space. And it can literally be a sacrament giving you grace.

[15:31]

But also one thing is a space. One thing creates a space. A place and you are that one thing. And also no thing creates a space. No thing creates a place. So this is more the Dharmakaya in your immediate entry. Not it reaches here and reaches there, but the Dharmakaya of immediate entry. Und es erstreckt sich jetzt nicht einfach nur dahin und dorthin, sondern es ist der Dhammakaya des unmittelbaren Zugangs. The flowering hedge. Die blühende Hecke. Seeing right past the bumps in your mind that cause your states of mind to get muddy.

[16:32]

Und einfach an diesen Schwellen in eurem Mind vorbei zu sehen, die jetzt verursachen, dass euer Geist trübe wird. to see beyond or past the categories of the six senses, into the pure light and shininess of your mind itself. This is the body of reality. And knowing this is also, the more you have a taste of this, it has a practical benefit just in making responsible decisions. You know what world you live in. You know how you live in your own mind and consciousness. You've begun to have a practical and real sense of how karma works. exists in you and is caused.

[17:43]

And you can feel when someone says something to you, that little blip of karma when your mood changes and you begin to feel kind of something or other just because of what just happened. And you can feel it and then you can see it. Through Sashin practice you can see it. You kind of dip your hand in your mind water and push it a little out of the stream. You can say, okay, you can be in the storehouse consciousness, but get out of the stream. And to know our mind like this, To see into our mind like this is the practice of karma and causation and is the practice of realizing your own happiness.

[19:04]

Finding out how we exist. And little tastes make a big difference. And I hope you've all gotten little taste this week. And I hope you all continue your practice enough that the unseen taste that you don't yet know about can bear fruit. Und ich hoffe, dass ihr eure Praxis genügend fortsetzt, dass die ungesehenen, ungeschmeckten Teile davon noch Frucht tragen können. Because in many ways when you're in a Sashin, you're kind of stirring the muddy bottom of the stream. Und in gewisser Weise, wenn wir im Sashin sind, rühren wir einfach den schlammigen Grund des Flusses auf. And you get kind of muddy during Sashin.

[20:05]

But many little seeds are also stirred up. Next week and next week and next week they begin to settle. And something begins to grow in us. A flowering hedge. A beautiful person. Like you all are. Thank you very much. May our intention equally be penetrated in every being and place, with the true merit of Buddha's way. Shujo om hense kanto. One thought puts you in a state of mind.

[21:11]

One way of saving that world. Once a girl on your trail saved that world. Saved to be a sign of goodness. I vow to save them. These desires are inexhaustible, and I require you to put them together. They are the primers of boundless, and I require you to master them. They are the rudest ways to ascension possible, and I require you to continue them. Yo hayo koto katashi, warei manken onji juji suru koto etari.

[22:18]

negawa kuwa nyo rai ho shinjitsu nyo geshi tate matsuran An unsurpassed, penetrating, imperfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having yet to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Translation.

[23:33]

Very good translation, actually. I'm always honored when this saintly woman comes to visit us. Ich fühle mich immer geehrt, wenn diese heilige Frau uns zu besuchen kommt. Ich glaube, sie ist ein Gründungsmitglied oder Vorstandsmitglied von diesem Platz. Long time ago. But it's her work and vision which made this place possible and lets us practice here. So this is one of our ancient founders here. Yeah. I'd like to just ramble on about various teachers today, but maybe I should stay within the 40 or 50 or 60 minutes.

[25:04]

I think after about 40 minutes you're... your ears get stopped up by your knees. It's very hard to hear anything. When I was a kid, I liked the story because it always... I don't know why I liked it, but it was... Something, I don't know, something intriguing about it, about the tailor who I think killed seven flies or seven mosquitoes with one blow. Isn't that such a story? Yeah. So it got out around the neighborhood that this guy had killed seven with one blow.

[26:08]

I don't remember exactly, but pretty soon people said he killed seven giants with one blow. So when a giant came to town, this tailor was in trouble. Get the tailor. Mr. Schneider. But this sort of going from the small to the big, anyway, intrigued me. And I like the opposite in Buddhism, where you go from the big to the small. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you know, on a practical level, just hanging in there and doing a sashin for a week is quite helpful.

[27:42]

You'll be surprised. For those of you who are new to sashins, It actually increases the tensile strength of the ego. But at the same time, I'm always faced with... I don't want to be one of these teachers who talks about the Dharmakaya and enlightenment and so forth as if it were an unknown country on an unknown planet. If I say to you there's this beautiful garden where peach blossoms and plum trees create a path.

[28:54]

And that's in Madagascar. At least you have a chance to get there. I mean, you know that Madagascar is somewhere. It's probably as near as the nearest airport. But if I don't tell you where it is or anything, it's just the Dharmakaya. I think you're lost. So I tried to give you some practical suggestions, accessible suggestions, while at the same time not diluting the maturity and complexity of Buddhist teachings.

[30:09]

It's actually, I mean, Buddhist teachings actually are the kind of technique, both the worldview and the technique of expression is a kind of turn between simplicity and complexity. No, no. That was simple to translate. I thought so too, but still, that's the sheen. The two sides of the coin are simplicity and complexity. You improved what I say, you see. I made it simpler.

[31:13]

Yeah. But if you only see the simple, you don't have any entrance. If you only see the complexity, you're overwhelmed. So I should present both. So you have many doors, but each door is simple. Because none of us know which door will be ours. Because the doors appear in the particularities of your life. Now I like this guy, Changsha.

[32:20]

And sometimes it's nice to get to sort of just, you know, ordinary great teachers and not these huge figures like Zhaozhou and Nanchuan. They are very inspiring, but sometimes a little intimidating. Changsha was no small potato, but he only had... He had... Is that a German expression, too? Little spud. He had only two enlightened disciples. In those days, the teachers had ten or a thousand or hundreds... So one of Changsha's fellow disciples was this guy, Hui. Who I told you about last night.

[33:22]

Where he was asked... What about before Nanchuan? And he was silent. And then the monk asked, What about after Nanchuan? And he said, There could not be anything else. And he said there could be nothing else. Now, part of this is the story that we had decided he's considered a hidden disciple.

[34:27]

He didn't enter the world as a teacher and lived as a hermit or by himself. So Changsha, wondering how his fellow brother, disciple, was doing, sent a monk to him to ask him this question. And you can understand this as he was testing him or trying to encourage him to come out and teach. Because before Nanchuan you don't teach, and after Nanchuan, and he's listed in the Transmission of the Lamp, or one of those books, as an enlightened disciple. Where was it listed? In one of the, I think, the transmission of the lamp.

[35:44]

And which is a record of teachers. But no, there are no words, nothing was saved from him, except this little anecdote. So anyway, Changsha was this one guy who was quite interesting, and then there's this other guy who decided just to live by himself in the countryside somewhere. So partly his answer means, there couldn't be anything else, means I'm going to stay a monk or a hermit or not a teacher. And there's also the deeper understanding or feeling which I think you felt last night. Instead of understanding this as, you know, always as he's testing or he's trying to... Sometimes you can understand these things as just enlightened activity.

[36:57]

It has no reason. And one of the ten Oxfording... There's two famous sets of ten Oxfording pictures. Both Chinese, I believe, but one was very popular in Japan and one was popular in China. And many different Zen teachers wrote sets of ten poems to go with it. And one of the last pictures has a little stream going through it and there's a poem accompanying it. What was the word, not upheld, the other one?

[38:12]

You don't remember. Anyway, the poem says, the stream flows, no one knows where. So the stream flows, no one knows where the stream flows. The little stream flows, no one knows where. The red flowers, vividly red. For whom are they so red? Another way of translating it is the stream, literally the stream flows of its own accord, the flowers are red of their own accord. In this sense, it's not a matter of self-interest or some plan or something. Things happen of their own accord. No one knows where the stream flows to or for whom the flowers are red.

[39:36]

Now this is... This kind of statement is characteristic of the worldview, the Chinese sphere, this Chinese sphere worldview. Which includes Japan and Korea and Vietnam. And I think to some extent Tibet. And most of the schools of Buddhism we know really arise from this Chinese sphere. And each country gave its own flavor to the teaching, but at the same time there's an underlying way of doing things.

[41:03]

I want to come back to that in a minute, but first I want to illustrate it in another way with a story about Changsha. The word is behold. Behold the stream. Anyway. Changsha said, if I upheld the true Dharma in this teaching hall, The weeds would be two meters deep. It means no one would be there. So we always have to adjust teachings. So through the weeds we can see a few students, you know. If there's too many students, it's a little suspicious.

[42:23]

So he said, if I truly upheld the Dharma, the weeds would be two meters deep in this hall. But I still have to say to you, practitioners, that the eye of the practitioner is the entire cosmos. This is one of those giant statements. The eye of the practitioner is the entire cosmos. The whole body of the practitioner is the entire cosmos.

[43:24]

The light of the practitioner is the entire cosmos. The entire cosmos is within the light of the practitioner. That's a pretty big statement. But it's always, again, related to the particular. He's not like this other guy saying, oh, it's extensive, his space, and et cetera. He's saying, it's your eye. And so one of these practitioners says, What is the eye of the practitioner?

[44:46]

And Changsha says, it can never be departed from. And so this practitioner asked, what does it mean, it can never be departed from? He said, during the day, seeing the sun. At night, seeing the stars. The night is full of stars as it can be. So here you have this huge statement, not only tied to the eye and body and light of the practitioner, and that it can never be departed from, because during the day you see the sun and nighttime you see the stars.

[45:47]

Now, so I hope it's clear to you that practice begins with during the day you see the sun, and at night you see the stars. You don't have to worry too much about the whole cosmos being within your light. It's sure to give you indigestion. It's sure to give you indigestion. But how do you touch it? How do you touch the whole cosmos as the eye of the practitioner? What's against these generalizations? Are you translating something I don't understand?

[47:09]

No, I try not to. Thanks. Okay, I'll... I will... There's a funny gesture in the... that's characteristic of this Chinese sphere that's in the eating bowls, something you do when you use the eating bowls. And it's the kind of thing which I had the most trouble with when I was first starting to practice. And I'm going to try to use this as part of an example to give you a feeling for...

[48:10]

Where are this kind of Buddha statements coming from? And I thought of it because I'm watching Beate use her monk's bowls. Most of you have our version of them, but you don't have the traditional bowls, and Beate happens to have the traditional bowls. So she has the little kind of lacquered paper table that you open up and put down. And when you wipe that, you wipe it, you have your little cloth. And your big bowls are on the left. And whether it's got water on it or not, you wipe it. And our tendency, at least me, as an American, I'm not even as, you know, what they say about America.

[49:55]

What's the difference between America and yogurt? America, I mean, yogurt has a life culture. Yeah. Of course, I believe America does have a lot of culture. Anyway, but being a dumb American, you know, I think, I'm not going to wipe this bloody thing unless it's wet. But no, no. Don't make me feel like a foreigner. Anyway, so when you wipe this thing, you wipe one, two, three.

[50:57]

And if it's actually wet, you then wipe it as well as you want. And then you move the bowls to the middle. And then you have this side, which hasn't been wiped because the bowls are on it. And then, whether it's wet or not, you just make one. And the tea ceremony is full of things like that. And so you, you know, and then... And I used to think, what a meaningless gesture. And sometimes, if you live in Japanese monasteries, it can get a little... a little unnecessary.

[52:02]

Because as I said the other day, everything has its excess and corruption. Do you know how homeless people live out of garbage cans? In America, I don't know, not in Germany. Practitioners are usually called, or monks anyway, are called home leavers. This is a little joke of mine. Probably I shouldn't bother saying it, but I sometimes feel home leavers live out of the garbage cans of corrupt institutions. In other words, This is a discussion I used to have with Suzuki Roshi because Buddhism gets to be this big thing which almost has nothing to do with Buddhism.

[53:18]

And many of the good things it does have nothing to do with Buddhism, but it does do good things. But inside that, it does preserve the teaching. With how much of this is cultural nonsense or institutional nonsense and so forth, and how much is at the center something real? And so let me try to, I think all I have time to do is to try to give you a feeling of this one point. which the sense in Buddhist practice, and I think a large part of Asian culture in general, is a very strong emphasis on doing things 100%.

[54:35]

And that takes a much higher priority than doing things correctly. Of course you try to do things correctly. But it's always secondary to doing things 100%. And when it's primary, doing things correctly, it's lifeless. And this is based on a certain kind of worldview. So, for example, when you're doing the chanting, the emphasis in the chanting is really not on doing it correctly.

[55:52]

It's nice to do it correctly. But the emphasis is almost entirely, at least first of all, on doing it 100%. So if you make a lot of mistakes and hit the bells at the wrong time and chant in a weird voice and mispronounce the Japanese, as most of us do, First of all, if you still do it through all those, you know, so-called errors, 100%, everyone picks up on the 100%. And then everyone helps you. Because it awakens everyone else's 100% to kind of throw themselves in there too. At least that's the feeling.

[56:54]

And also, when you do things 100%, your mistakes are so obvious that you bring out the compassion of everyone. So everyone wants to help you with your mistakes by coming in there. And if your tendency is to do things correctly, well, then it's your show. Why should we help you? Now, where does this come from and what does it mean? Well, it does make a little different way in which, I mean, as I said to someone the other day, sometimes chanting in the West is like you put on a suit and a tie. And in Buddhism, the chanting is more like you take off your clothes and put on your jogging pants. Or maybe not even your jogging pants. You just shout and scream and chant. And that's one thing I would like to do in Creston, not chant naked, but to work with our chanting more in the mornings.

[58:40]

So... Now, one of the things I noticed when I was in Asia is that there's not the sense of what's the best restaurant. There can be extremely good restaurants, that only eight people know about in a neighborhood, practically, or they only have eight seats, you know, and there's a few people who come. But it may be as good as restaurants can get. Now, I don't know, again, if I can try to make this clear, but generalizations are just... something dead.

[59:48]

They're just more of the same. And generalizations, words like all, don't touch 100%. Only the particular touches 100%. No, we don't We don't mean... Well, let me say... So part of this comes from the Avantamsaka Sutra. Avantamsaka. Avantamsaka Sutra. Which teaches that there are many worlds present right here. And His Holiness the Dalai Lama says that mantra practice is to... is to take away our sense that we're ordinary and the world is ordinary.

[60:51]

And Sukhiroshi used to say, the world is its own magic. And the sense that the world is its own magic is what we mean by ordinary life in Zen. And the sense of the Avanthapsaka Sutra is that in this world are embedded many worlds. And there's a quality of hiddenness. Not that you are hiding something from others. But these are hidden from you. And you only touch them when you 100% do something. Dogen talks about the whole passage of being in every action. So when you go to a Buddhist monastery in Asia, you find the monks, every one of them is throwing themselves into the chanting like there's nothing else in their mind except the vibration of their body.

[62:21]

And they're not worried about whether they're doing it right or wrong. And it's because the definition of what's right or correct is 100%. It's defined in terms of your attitude, not in terms of the accomplishment or performance. And it's defined in terms of your attitude, not in terms of the accomplishment or performance. So, I mean, I don't know if it would work. You're a pianist and you concertize. Yes.

[63:23]

But from the Buddhist point of view, hitting all the notes wouldn't be as important as communicating to people that you were 100% there playing the piano. Mm-hmm. So this little wiping of the bowing of the eating mat is even if it's not wet. You still do it 100%. So it looks like a meaningless gesture. And it is a kind of like your appendix. What is it? You know, an unused organ. But maybe it will be used at some point. And because you're touching hiddenness, you don't know.

[64:32]

You don't know where the streams are flowing. And you don't know for whom the flowers are red. Hmm. So with this kind of attitude and feeling we practice, even on your breath, you feel the whole passage of being on each breath.

[65:43]

And you're not concerned with what it means or where it goes. That's all secondary or tertiary. And this comes out in how we practice compassion too. Because it's not so much how can I be compassionate and save all beings. How can I eat all candy bars. But rather in each particular moment, if you have a feeling of closeness with an object or a person, that's enough. Because from that myriad things are born. We don't know. if you're working in the kitchen and you have a feeling of closeness with the person you're washing dishes with and you don't have to turn to the person and say hey I feel really close pass that dish let's hold it together you just feel close as you're washing the dishes

[66:59]

And you don't have to worry about whether he or she feels it too. And you have your whole passage of being for a moment 100% in that feeling close. Without any recognition of it as good or bad or anything. This is enlightened activity. And if that little moment of feeling close to the dish or a person gives birth to other people in the kitchen feeling close to something, And that gives birth to something else and gives birth to something else and gives birth.

[68:16]

And we don't know where the streams will flow. And for whom these karmic acts enter the potency of our consciousness. So this is one of the things that's meant by hearing the birth of myriad things. And we don't know what will happen, but each moment something is being born. And there's a sense of hiddenness there. We don't know. There's a sense of not fully knowing, but we act 100%. It's a kind of faith. And it's the central act of practice. Thank you very much.

[69:42]

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