Do we start out that everything is basically good or basically bad, etc. ? In Buddhism, there's an idea of a kind of spontaneous moment of tanha, of greed or thirst, hunger or thirst. And it all starts, a baby's born. And then there's a spontaneous thirst. And then there's a spontaneous thirst. For not less than everything. And that's exactly where Sophia is now. Whatever it is, she pulls over the lamps, et cetera, and so on and so forth. And that spontaneous thirst is not good or bad.

[01:15]

But it's shaped. And it's very rapidly shaped into pleasant and unpleasant. We have these heaters upstairs, sort of liquid heaters that are electric. Some kind of oil or liquid in it. Also, wir haben irgendwie so elektrische Heizer, wo irgendeine Art von Öl drinnen ist. And you can make some Pretty hot, but not terribly hot. And there isn't much insulation up there, so we need to have some heat sometimes. So we considered putting the heaters up on the table. Then it's hard to have a cup of tea with this big heater. So we decided to leave them on the floor and let her burn herself.

[02:22]

And so it happened. Anyway, so there we heard the scream. And there she was holding on to the heater. And she had to make a decision to fall down or get burned. So we both looked at her and she was standing there. What should I do? Because she knew if she let go, she'd fall down. So she stayed there quite a while. So we rescued her. It wasn't hot enough to burn her, and she was all right. So she very quickly has experiences of pleasant and unpleasant. And this flow of thirst for not less than everything sort of gets modulated.

[03:26]

And then it gets turned into likes and dislikes. And that begins to generate karma and open us to karma. And then that gets shaped into greed, hate and delusion. Yeah, and the... The second foundation of mindfulness is exactly to this point. It's how to work with this shift. And the koan of dungsans, why not go where there's no Why not go where there's no hot and no cold? It's exactly also to this point. How do we shape this thirst for not less than everything? Mm-hmm. that naturally turns into pleasant and unpleasant and so forth.

[05:01]

So we're watching this now. Now again, let me go back again to this... bliss body. And it's very connected to mutuality. with her parents one or both parents bodies where I think she feels a completeness and a sufficiency and I think the sufficiency and This is just, you know, in front of me as this little kid.

[06:09]

Yeah, so this experience of completeness and sufficiency, the more I see that she has that feeling, the more I see this bliss body arise. And then she individuates and finds her separateness in the world and she has less that experience. But in zazen, if we can get past the pain, sitting with each other definitely helps. And we can get into a mind where there's no likes and dislikes. You could say you're actually kind of reversing the flow of thirst.

[07:11]

I mean, one of the ways we're free of the pain is when we really don't care. I don't care. Probably the bell will ring someday. I don't really care, but it would be nice. When we come to that place where there's neither hot nor cold it's also a door to this mutuality or the feeling that nothing's needed feeling of sufficiency and it's clear that The Sambhogakaya is born from the Dharmakaya.

[08:19]

And Dharmakaya experience is an experience of no boundaries, of extraordinary connectedness. And that intimacy of interconnectedness In practice, the philosophy of interdependence is an extraordinary feeling of intimacy. This intimacy and sufficiency opens up this bliss body and a feeling of clarity and of a an awareness of the continuum of body and mind.

[09:34]

Now, this is considered a big step in practice when all the teachings start making sense. So these various experiences we have. One here, one over there. And insights. And intention. And intent as... I mean, your posture... Yeah, I mean, in Chinese culture, which is profoundly mixed in with Buddhist culture,

[10:51]

There isn't a sense of natural. There's a sense of ritual. A baby is not through naturalness or instinct standing up. That's partly true. But in Chinese culture, the emphasis is on that you learn how to stand. Standing is a ritual. As is eating and so forth. Sophia is trying to learn the ritual of eating now. And so when we stand... through a meeting or stand at a coffee break or sit in sasen, when you increase the spaciousness of your body by lifting from the left side to the right side, when you increase the spaciousness of your body

[12:16]

And then up through your body. Or bring attention to your breathing. These are Chinese culture rituals. You embody the body through fully accomplishing each of the senses separately. That's an idea in Chinese culture. We don't have it. We think our body is natural. So here we have these various ingredients. Sitting.

[13:30]

Noticing that a small shift in your posture or a small change in your attitude and pain disappears. in the attitudes, [...] All of these ingredients in the context of practice if you continue practice as Sukershi said it's not like winding the clock it's like setting your clock and winding it. All of these things start coming together. I think they will for you, and for many of you they already are.

[14:31]

Yeah, there's more I want to go into, but maybe we won't have time tomorrow either. So we can look forward to that So können wir uns auf das freuen Thank you very much Vielen Dank Dear pilgrims, we are here to tell you that you are not allowed to go astray.

[15:46]

We are here to tell you that you are not allowed to go astray. We are not allowed to go astray. Oh.

[16:56]

is also found in the 100,000-billion-kalpas, but rarely. Therefore, it is important to remember and to learn about the history of the world of the Tartars. Speaking about impermanence and not knowing what's going to happen next, just before The Zazen period after work in the morning. Marie-Louise decided to go to the post office. And I was coming down to Zazen. And she went downstairs. I put on my okesa.

[18:54]

And the phone rang. She said I had a car accident. I said, in the parking lot? I couldn't imagine how she even was in the car yet. She said, oh no, our neighbor ran into me with his tractor. You can see it out there. Yeah. So it's right up here. He was enjoying his sunny day, I guess, up in his high tractor.

[19:55]

She said he was coming like mad out from the left. So she actually drove into the ditch to try to avoid him. She was going pretty slowly. And he went straight into her side and they But she's all right and the baby was all right. But it was strangely quick because she just went down the stairs and she was in a car accident. A tractor accident, I don't know, a car accident. Hmm. Yeah, I'm glad he wasn't coming from the right. In Germany, we've been... Yeah, so, you know, I try to feel sometimes and doksan what my lectures are making any sense.

[21:07]

And it seems that a number of you have the sense of a breath, a continuity with your breath has made sense. Now there's other parts of what I've been trying to speak about that only a couple people have have felt in their own practice. And there's always a percentage of people who come to Doksan and have nothing to say. Sometimes they are saying something by saying nothing. But I think, geez, I've been talking all week.

[22:12]

Can't you talk for five minutes? There must be something I said all week that you could comment on. Yeah. So I think what I'd like to do, because this is the last tesho, right? So the good thing to do on the last tesho is to establish a continuum. So maybe I can try to give you more. as good a feeling for that as I can. There's sasen practice. There's mindfulness practice. Developing these are the two main ingredients of practice.

[23:28]

They allow one to... become much more sensitive to the world and to oneself, and much more familiar with the world. And What was the philosopher's name you told me? Slaughterdyke. Slaughterdyke, yeah. Marie-Louise likes him, in turn. Marie-Louise likes him, in turn. Now, what was the phrase you said he said in contrast to Heidegger? Heidegger says the being is all that's in the world.

[24:35]

Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay. Can you translate that? Maybe it's better if he... He's quoting. Yeah, he's quoting him. But he has to speak more loudly then. Oh, I think he's able to. Oh, you think so? Okay. Thank you. See, that's what happens if you say anything to me in Doksan.

[25:36]

I may get you to help me give the lecture. Okay, well, something like this is very definitely... the Chinese view and the Buddhist view even to the extent as I said yesterday maybe we should close the windows it's not so hot today That's why we couldn't hear you. Even to the extent that we have to intentionally embody ourselves through each sense separately.

[26:38]

Even that is a step in... freeing yourself from habit culture. Again, there's mindfulness and zazen practice. And we become, as I said, more sensitive to and more familiar with the world. And I think we develop an interactive sense of our relationship with the world. And we actually can begin to feel in zazen how we have been formed, how we are continuously forming ourselves, first of all karmically,

[27:41]

first karmically, and then we begin to see we can form ourselves dharmically, and thus transform ourselves. Now, that's a lot, that's, you know, quite a lot of accomplishment if you get that far. It's not so hard to get that far. But you have to see it. You have to really get the possibility. If you don't get the possibility, your practice doesn't transform you. So the view or the principle comes before the practice. And that's the same as in the Eightfold Path. The first of the Eightfold Path is right views. So if you somehow Pick up an understanding of the view.

[29:08]

And if the teacher is good enough, you can pick up a feeling of the view. And you have enough clarity to... get the point and hold that view and that view becomes intent I'll miss you when I get to America same to you how will I speak without you okay then your practice goes very fast. Every Zazen period, every Sashin is a leap.

[30:13]

When you don't have the view, as Bodhidharma would say, you haven't entered through principle, It's all just scattered experiences. You know you felt better during the fourth day of Sashin. But you don't know why or how that happened. You don't know how to make that a continuous part of your life. So it's interesting, some people's practice in a few years goes very fast and others take decades. And the main difference is the clarity with which one grasps the principle, the basic principle.

[31:22]

Okay. So, one can accomplish... Much is accomplished Through zazen and mindfulness. When you enter through principle. I don't know quite how to say this, but a whole other level of practice is established or appears when you establish a continuum, when you establish a mind-body continuum. It says, you know, little Sophia's establishing, trying to establish continuity.

[32:45]

That continuity is intermittent. now and then and stronger or weaker and soon is in the service of self it takes wisdom and practice to establish that intermittent continuity into a Es braucht Weisheit und Praxis, um diese von Fall zu Fall Kontinuität in ein Kontinuum, in ein beständiges Kontinuum zu verwandeln. Ein Kontinuum, das nicht im Dienste des Selbst steht, aber im Dienste der Leerheit steht. So I'm trying to speak with you in this session about the recognizing and establishing a continuum.

[34:04]

Okay. Now, we've gone very carefully enough through the idea of a continuum established through the breath, which is really more of a a continuity than a continuum. You can feel a continuous presence of the breath. And that Again, it's very similar to feeling continuous presence of your posture. When that continuous presence of the breath like continuous presence of posture, this is easy to understand.

[35:25]

I just don't have words for it. It gets absorbed becomes the body itself. As your body is the posture itself, and simultaneously is free of posture. So your body has a kind of softness or flexibility. Supposedly, through a medium, Manjushri told Tsongkhapa You must never cling to either the appearance side or the empty side.

[36:28]

But you must give special consideration to the appearance side. Now, what does something like that mean? So what I would like to do is see if I can give you a feeling for what a statement like that means. Suzuki Roshi liked stories about a Zen master named Suigan. In fact, he used to tell the story, and I get mixed up when I first... heard him because I thought he knew this guy, Sui Gan. But he lived a long time ago and was a disciple of Ganto. Yeah. So... But he knew somebody who used to do Sui Gan's practice.

[38:01]

And he thought it was very funny because this guy was a rather poor monk, priest, and lived, I believe, alone in a temple. And he lived, I think, alone in a small temple. And he only had, I guess, one kimono. So on the days that he did his laundry, Suzuki Roshi told this story, so I'm telling you. He had a summer robe like this, right? So when he washed his kimono, he'd only wear this around the temple. But he practiced like Sui Gan did, which is to call his own name. I don't remember what his name was.

[39:05]

But what Sui Gan used to do, he'd say, Oh, Master. As if he were calling himself. Oh, Master. Are you awake? Yes. Yes. From this moment on, never be deceived by others. I won't. And then he'd go on about his day. This is the koan number 12 in the Mumonkan. Yeah, so... Ari Sukershi used to be amused by this because he said people didn't always appreciate his practice when he was, you know, dressed in his summer robes. And calling his own name. But I actually didn't get the implications of Sukershi's joke until much later when I understood the koan better.

[40:10]

Okay, so now let's go back to the sense of a continuum again. As you can establish a continuity or a continuum with your breath, As your posture or awareness of posture and breath, you can establish a continuum of impermanence. So what does that mean? You're able to hold an intent or hold a view and as you can bring attention to your breathing or attention

[41:28]

to a wisdom phrase, you can now bring attention to a wisdom view. Each thing you see, the microphone, the floor, the reflection, is impermanent. So how can we give that a little more... Make it a little more palpable. Marie-Louise and I wish the baby's cries were more impermanent. Impermanence, baby. Don't you, Marie? Okay. So that when you see something, you recognize, you feel that it changes, it can change.

[42:39]

You recognize that it's... not limited to its name. If you look at a flower, a flower is far beyond its name or its particular flower. You don't let your mind stop with the name. The names disappear. It's almost like names are little stickers and you peel them off everything. And you get in the habit of noticing things without much reference to its name.

[43:45]

And you see that things, you know that things are interdependent. but you really feel how they arise from other things yeah you just get in the habit of it it's not so easy to get in the habit of such a thing until you have some continuity established in your through your breath and body And it's not possible to do it all if your continuity is in your thinking. Thinking carries you off. Thinking has always a directionality. Yeah, not much space in it. Okay. You also have to feel, the quality is to feel things arising.

[45:06]

You feel how things appear. I mean, if only in a simple way, like you notice them. Like if I look at Carolina, she appears. I mean, she's been there for a while, I guess. But if I look at her, she's just appearing now. If I turn toward the gentleman to her left, He appears. So from my point of view, she appears and then he appears and she disappears.

[46:06]

So without talking philosophy, just what's our actual experience? If I look over here, I see Harold. Harold appears. And I suppose even to himself, Harald appears differently. Particularly during Sashin. So you begin to really feel non-permanence. As a fact of perception, but as a fact of existence. I can hold Bernd's appearance.

[47:07]

He can hold his own appearance and he can release it. Or I can have the feeling of Bernd's presence feeling my presence and a moment later that feeling is gone. So if I look at Bernd even continuously there's actually a slightly transforming presence moment after moment. So I don't have to look So I don't have to look away to have the appearance disappear. Yeah. So it holds for a moment and... Shifts or changes.

[48:18]

And disappears. And reappears. Now, if I get in the habit of that, it's a kind of habit, a dharma habit. After a while, the habit begins to change your view. Your feet in a nearly inherent feeling of permanence. And our search for continuity is a search for permanence. And as I say, when your mind keeps going back to your thoughts, it's an implicit seeking for permanence. Even if intellectually you know there's no such thing as permanence, that doesn't mean much.

[49:41]

Because most of us function through an implicit seeking for permanence. And an implicit seeking for permanence is even more delusive then a belief in permanence. Because you think you're free of permanence, because you understand intellectually impermanence, but actually you're functioning through an implicit seeking for permanence. And until you break that habit, that delusion, you really cannot establish body-mind-breath. Because a body-mind continuum is established in an awareness of impermanence.

[50:42]

So when you do establish a habit on each perception of feeling things arise and disappear and knowing you can hold them only for a moment and you feel how things arise from other things or change are not limited to their names, this habit causes things to feel much more transparent. And after a while, things start feeling shiny. You start feeling a kind of light around each perception.

[52:03]

You feel things as like More like energy. Or awareness itself. Or you feel the co-creation, the moment-by-moment interaction. So here this is not philosophy. It's rooted in understanding. But its understanding is only actualized through interaction. Aber dieses Verständnis wird nur verwirklicht durch das Praktizieren davon. Bis es eine Gewohnheit wird, die untrennbar ist von dir. Und manchmal wird das im Koan-Studium ausgedrückt. Du fängst an, ein Koan zu studieren. and you're observing the koan, and after a while the koan becomes your subjectivity, and the koan observes you, and the koan observes the world.

[53:27]

And that's, for anybody who's involved in koan study, and staying with a koan, the koan begins to open up when there's this shift in subjectivity. And now the koan is observing you. Okay. When you... Okay. So, I'm speaking about the establishment of what I'm calling a continuum of impermanence. And this, everything feels...

[54:28]

less and less permanent, not permanent at all, rather transparent, characterized by mind characterized by mind stuff itself, characterized by light, and not graspable. The habit transforms how we know the world. And this non-graspable, suddenly everything really does feel impossible. Almost any reality except what you give it at the moment. So that we can call what Manjushri supposedly taught Tsongkhapa.

[55:39]

The empty side. But Manjushri said, don't cling... It's a mistake to cling to the empty side or the apparent side. So this means you understand what I just talked about. And you have an experience of the empty side and the apparent side. But he said, but you give special reality, special consideration to the appearance side.

[56:40]

No, Zui Gan calls. Oh, Master, Zui Gan. Suigan has called. Oh, Master, Suigan. Yeah. Are you awake? You bet your life. You bet your life. Yes, I'm awake. And from this moment on, do not be deceived by others. Not me. I won't. I mean, I won't. And Mumon says, that's where Ghani buys and sells himself. So what have we got going on here? Well, there's some operative aspects here.

[57:46]

One is that he calls himself. Or he calls, oh, master. After a sui gan... died, one of his disciples was talking to another teacher. And he said, he told this man, this teacher, what Zuigan did. Und er hat diesem Lehrer, diesem Mann, gesagt, was Suigan gemacht hat. And this man said, this teacher said, can you call him now? He's dead, Suigan. Und dieser Lehrer sagte zu ihm, kannst du ihn jetzt rufen? Und Suigan ist tot. Can you call Suigan? Kannst du Suigan rufen? So who's he calling? Oh, Master. Und wen ruft er da? Oh, Master. And he's calling. Und dann ruft er. Now if I call Sophia, what does she do?

[58:47]

Wenn ich Sophia rufe, was tut sie? I say, Sophia? Ich sage, Sophia? So we have, first of all, what happens to you when you're called. So we have the physical experience, first of all. He calls himself. We have a physical experience when we're called. He says, are you awake? Are you awake? means, do you know the empty side? Are you continuously aware of the empty side? And then he says, From this moment on, do not be deceived by others. Now, is he only speaking to himself?

[59:48]

No, he's also speaking to his disciples. His disciples are around, actually. They tell the stories about this is what he did. That's how we know he did it. So Mumon says, you're buying it. That old sui gan, he buys and sells himself. He sells himself means he's showing his practice to his students. He buys himself means he's using the practice simultaneously. So he's both practicing, doing his own practice and in that teaching his disciples. Das heißt, er macht seine eigene Praxis und zeigt sie dadurch auch seinen Schülern. Now, how is this similar to the story of Dao Wu and Yun Yan?

[60:49]

Wie ist das ähnlich, diese Geschichte von Dao Wu und Yun Yan? Dao Wu was, you know, his older brother, and Yun Yan is sleeping. Wie ihr wisst, ist Dao Wu der ältere Bruder, und Yun Yan, der fegt. Yun Yan, too busy, too busy. Yun Yan looks at his brother and says, you should know there's one who's not busy. They're very similar, these koans. The one who's not busy, and are you awake? Yeah. But the koan of Yunyan and Dao is pointing to noticing... the absolute side or empty side of our existence.

[61:54]

And to be able to know it as a as a continuous presence and suggests that we should know it in the middle of our busyness. So sometimes when you are in a monastery and you sweep, whoa! I'm not telling. You take the broom and you kind of move it along your own body. And feel the broom in your backbone. Aligned. your backbone with the broom, and then you sweep.

[63:12]

And you feel the one who's not busy in your backbone, and you feel the busyness in the broom. So Zen's always trying to make this real practical. Yeah. telling you, sweep in a way, do whatever you do in a way that you become aware of the one who's not busy. So we could call this koan emphasizing giving special consideration to the empty side. But the suigan koan gives special consideration to the appearance side. Now the appearance side is not conventional reality. This is not a comparison or division between emptiness and conventional reality.

[64:25]

This is an emphasis pointing out emptiness and appearances known through emptiness. I'm sorry. Pointing out emptiness and appearances known through emptiness. For example, when I spoke about Bernd, I was giving more of an example of giving special consideration to appearances, than the empty side. For example, I was pointing out, noticing that the moment-by-moment shift in presence Ich habe herausgestrichen, dass diese Veränderung von der Gegenwart, die sich Moment für Moment ergibt, dass die immer wieder erscheint, hält für einen Moment und wieder verschwindet.

[65:42]

Und dieses Koan von Sui Gan, das betont, You know I don't like the expression here and now. It sounds smart, but it's dumb. So we could say, breaks open here and throws away now. Yeah, and it's also said, Suigan is like a dragon, as I said yesterday, a dragon playing with a jewel. And another commentary is, as I said last night too, the mountain. The bell. The temple bell. Yeah. The mountain, the temple bell.

[66:43]

You can't separate them. The doan and the doshi. The bell rising in the mountains. That kind of feeling this koan is pointing at. Yeah, so here... Sujgan is speaking to all of us. Changing our posture. Calling ourselves. Are you awake? becoming so do not from this moment at this moment do not be deceived by it so don't

[67:52]

There's all kinds of feelings in there. The student, the disciple is listening, hears him say this. He thinks the old man's getting senile, putters around talking to himself. And he says, do not be deceived by others. So the monk or practitioner might think, well, I'm not going to be deceived by you. I'm not going to be deceived by myself. I'm not going to be deceived by habit culture. It means you are enveloped by the presence of each moment. Conceptuality is cracked open.

[69:00]

You don't know where you are. There's no comparisons. Going back to the example with Bernd. There's no comparisons. There's just a kind of modulating presence. Waves of petals. that's an expression in Zen which at the time of year when the peach blossoms fall on the streams and the streams are the waves of the stream are flowing with petals Japanese teacher, I can't think of his name right now. He says, by the waves, by the petal waves, are the gills...

[70:17]

the many dried gills. Gills like of a fish? And scales. If you see that, you have no idea what it means unless you have an explanation. When you hear this, you don't know what it means. Okay, so here comes an explanation. Okay. At the time in which the same time of the year in which the petals fall on the stream is when the carp leap or A salmon leap certain falls to get to the next level to breed. And in Zen, that's sometimes called the dragon gate. And the dragon gate means whether you make the leap transforming leap of practice or not.

[71:42]

And turn from a fish into a dragon. So, I'm sorry, I couldn't resist this image. So you have the petals on the waves and a lot of dried scales and gills from the fish who didn't make the leap. So this story of of Sui-Gan. dragon gate, you make the leap into this moment-by-moment continuum without knowing or usual conceptuality of the person.

[72:42]

You feel the presence the fluctuating presence of each moment that arises through establishing a continuum of impermanence. Yes, so I used the Zuigan story, to show you again how Zen tries to take a very ordinary situation. There's just this guy, this doddering old guy. Looks like he's trying to know himself. Or remind himself to practice.

[73:47]

It's actually showing us the dragon gate. At this moment, don't be fooled by others. That means really, don't have a mind of comparisons and conceptuality. Yeah, I'm sorry, I talked too much again. Thank you for being so patient.

[74:11]

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