That's like in that poem, the broken torso of Apollo. Hello, Paul. so the world looks at you with many eyes so this resonated very much what you said in the lecture but in this middle way the world looks at you and so then she read the Koran again and then ran into the sentence the thousand-year-old shadowless tree and then the eyes were there again and it was outside so the tree looked at her and just she's really trembling with fear she's very fearful scary and this it came up at the moment when I was eating and this bit of vegetable fall from my fork and I picked it up again and it fall again and in this moment

[01:13]

Everything came together. This fear and at the same time sort of love. I think there's a line in Rilke, at least in English, which is, those stars, these thousand years are dead. Right, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Would you repeat the seven stages of examining yourself? Could you write it down? The path? Yeah. I can't, but it's certain. Not so important. It's simple. The shape, the collection. Not in. You're not inside the parts. The parts are not inside you. You're not the same as the parts and you're not different than the parts.

[02:31]

It's not so important, these lists. It's really the feeling of it. It's important to explore yourself with the feeling of it. This? I felt a sort of anger and resistance and I felt gripped through Gai Shan and Yang Shan Grabbed. Grabbed, yeah. And my question is, on which ground does Liangzhan planting his hoe? Because there must be a ground if he's planting a hoe. And I suppose he's planting it on the teacher's ground. And for me, it means dependency from the teacher. And I think this is... From the teacher. on the teacher and who meets then not the real true relationship between teacher and student.

[03:39]

Question. Because my question is also where he planted his branches, on what ground he planted them. And if he planted them on the ground of the teacher, then for me the question is, if there is a separation between teacher and student, then it is not a real relationship for me. Because then a student will be always a student or sort of devotee. I think this is not real. Yeah, I agree with what you say. I won't forget when I talk about the koan, I'll speak about that. Yes In me a process on two different levels is going on In my body I feel quite light

[04:51]

like all the molecules are playing a game, and they feel quite good. And that also, I don't, I'm not so much interested in going into it today. And on the other hand, we had a little discussion among two people. And this is a process going on more in my mind. The question, how can we learn it? How can we really be able to enter this way of communicating? Because I realize I come here, come from the fields, and then I'm here and it's very nice and I like it. I think I I would very much like to learn more about it.

[06:24]

But I know when I'm going back and three months later, I'm a different person. So the old question, yes, what is rooted in everyday life? What is with the things I learn? Or can I learn it if it's so difficult? Can I really learn it so that I don't forget them? There are two processes on different levels. In the body I feel very light and very comfortable. It's as if I want to play the molecules together and it feels very good. And it's also the case that I'm not interested in the text today, but I didn't even want to look into it. So that the text would become unimportant.

[07:26]

And the other thing is more in the head. And I also spoke to others about it. It's just about how we can really learn to communicate in such a way. Because I come from here and I want to learn. And when I'm here, it's just beautiful. And I know that when I go back in two or three months, then I'm a different person. And that's why the old question, can I learn it like that, is not forgotten. What do you mean you are a different person? I didn't understand the connection. You can answer in German because I know what you mean. This is for me.

[08:29]

So when I now enter this practical situation, it is as if worlds were opening up, it is as if you can talk about things that you would never think of outside. And that allows you to perceive things that you have not yet perceived. And the problem is, as soon as you leave this practical situation, there is no one who confirms it, who allows you to keep these perceptions alive. It's not about three months, it's just about a while, a while it works, yes, you can maybe with yourself, or after a certain time. Maybe I should say something now. I don't have to. I love listening. But I'll continue listening.

[09:36]

Yes, Suzanne? I would like to read a little verse that I wrote. Okay. which came up while walking yesterday with some people. I don't know. I'll read it to you first. I don't know. [...] Jhāngsāng planks his hack into the ground. No bridge, no river. From the walkway back, I clean my groundless shoes. I'm afraid I'll have them on the floor again.

[10:40]

Yes. Standing at the shore, no way to the other side. The narrow path. Meeting Yishan and Yangshan at the bridge. Yangshan plants his home. No bridge, no river. Back from the walk, I clean my bottomless shoes. Okay, if that's okay, I would like to say something about this morning's talk a little more. Try to put what I said into another perspective. Let me say, in some ways, you know, I'm putting it in another perspective to make it more understandable.

[11:53]

But also I'm talking about it more to continue the field here, which is allowing Yangshan and Guishan to be present with us. Because there's not only vertical lineage, there's also horizontal lineage. And vertical lineage means, obviously, my relationship to my teacher and your relationship to me and so forth. And also, you know, Guishan and others coming through the lineage with Suzuki Roshi to us.

[12:54]

And together we mature seeds that have been planted in the lineage and can only bear fruit when they find the right ground. But also horizontal lineage means that we all have a capacity for realization. And that can pass sideways among us. And I would say something from Yangshan and Guishan has rolled into this room and is moving among us to various degrees.

[13:56]

And we don't all know exactly what it is, but there's a strong enough practice among us to let it happen to various degrees. And each of our own genuine experience can suddenly be present in another person. So that kind of feeling is an experience that you can see is also called the horizontal lineage So to try to relate to what I said this morning a bit more

[14:57]

We talk about not thinking. But we really have to look at what this means. In practice, of course, it means noticing that you're distracted when you're sitting, trying to be more concentrated, less distracted, and so forth. And that's moving into thinking from the midst of thinking. And in some ways it's like trying to push water away, keeps coming back. Now another and much more fundamental approach in practice is to get underneath and behind thinking.

[16:27]

So there's a substrate to thinking. Straight? Substrate, substrata. Or there's a... Now I'm just trying to talk this out with you. There's a... prior context for thinking before thinking occurred. And that thinking is like... and this is not thinking but the conditions that turn everything into thinking. Das ist nicht denken, aber das sind die Bedingungen, die alles in denken verwandeln.

[17:40]

In certain ways we can call this an assumed continuity to the world. Und in gewisser Weise können wir das eine angenommene Kontinuität für die Welt sehen. An assumed permanence. Eine von uns angenommene Beständigkeit der Welt. A habit of substantiation. Eine Angewohnheit der Verdienlichung. It's more than just a habit, it's a context of substantiation. A habit of naming and giving... giving substantiation to those names. Okay. So as long as that context, pre-thinking context or substrate that is there, all sense impressions and associations turn into thoughts.

[18:53]

It's like there's no possibility of reacting to a sense impression without it becoming a thought. So you can't hold yourself in samadhi by some kind of effort of pushing the water of thoughts away. They keep coming back in. So using the word samadhi in a big sense, you can hold yourself in samadhi or rest in samadhi. If you can somehow get behind the substrate of thinking.

[20:08]

So a practice like this, not finding yourself, and noticing that you don't find the table, the table is something that you designate as a table on the basis of its parts. You can see, you know, when you see fire, you're not seeing fire, you're seeing color and shape. The eyes are about color and shape. If you want to know fire, you close your eyes and lean toward it. Leaning into its heat. But when you see fire, you immediately will jump.

[21:12]

as if you could be burned if it was dangerous. So seeing fire, which has nothing to do with fire, you're only seeing color and shape, immediately brings all the associations of danger, heat, and so forth into it. I'm using this as maybe not too good an example, but just to attempt to show how quick our perceptions are in bringing associations and all kinds of information together when the eyes actually don't see fire, they see color and shape. Now, it's possible to work on this substrate, and there's various ways it can be done. And one way is this practice of not being able to find yourself.

[22:42]

Because if you do practice that enough or you begin to taste it, you do find yourself in a place where you feel very connected with things because that process of mind which hardens them into objects is held in abeyance. So the tree is reaching out and tickling you with its leaves and there's no idea of tree or anything, it's just... a series of sensations which aren't turned into thoughts. So if you really then you can think about things, of course, but you rest in, or you're able to hold yourself in the samadhi before thoughts, or the substrate of thoughts, prior to the substrate of thoughts.

[24:18]

Now you can understand better what Guishan said to Yangshan when he said, turn even no thought back to its source. So you've been able now to be in the samadhi of no thought. And even that you turn inward to the light. So this is a whole sense of being prior to your being Peter or something else. Doesn't mean that Peter's any less.

[25:19]

In fact, Peter may be more. And you're very free to be Peter because it's something you do as a joyful exercise. But you are not always Peter. Sometimes you're prior to any names or thinking. Now one meaning of the word enlightenment is to get pushed into or to feel that experience, to know that. You have an experience of being prior to all experiences. Distinctions of outside, inside and so forth disappear.

[26:27]

Now there's also enlightenment of the body. Sometimes the body can be quite free and un-embedded in patterns, but your mind can be completely screwed up. But it's understood in Buddhism that these people cutting thatch and spinning and so forth, really just as the leaves move, we see the leaves move because of the silence of the mind. These people can really spin and cut thatch and so forth because of enlightenment. And that enlightenment, although can't be observed by those people, through practice you can observe it and open it up and awaken it.

[27:40]

But I want to point out that this experience, say, of practicing the middle way between substantiation and nihilism, through meditation and teachings, come to the point that you don't act always from the substrate of thinking. The fundamental pattern that turns everything into thoughts. That practice and achieving that has virtually nothing to do with enlightenment. You could have a very big enlightenment experience and never know this.

[28:48]

You could have a teeny enlightenment experience and know this. Probably some kind of enlightenment and really all of us have that much. It's necessary to have the insight or courage to practice this. But this craft side of practice is quite independent, really, of enlightenment itself. Nor is it to be considered gradual enlightenment. But it can be considered a maturing of enlightenment. Opening yourself to enlightenment. or creating more accident-prone people.

[30:04]

And I say this recognizing that I'm also saying much of the Zen emphasis on enlightenment is, I think, kind of mistaken and somewhat nonsensical, or Zen people being taken in by the press releases. There's no way an individual or the world is going to be instantly changed and perfectly improved by any experience. That's some kind of belief in God.

[31:07]

Which is okay, but if you want to do it, that would... But certainly enlightenment does happen, and sometimes it's a big and life-changing experience, and sometimes it's a nuance which you open up later. But maturing that realization, whatever it is, is central to Buddhist practice, adept Buddhist practice. Coming back to another definition for you of enlightenment, I think one of the traditional definitions, which is quite accurate, which is it's a turning around at the basis.

[32:19]

And it's often characterized by a feeling of tremendous ease, relief, or weeping, or clarity. But that kind of experience and one of the points of Guishan and Yangshan's work is to create a language and mode of being that makes us less likely to fall away from this experience. as we've had it and more likely to notice it and open it up if we have had it. Okay, so let's look at the khan together, if it's all right with you, for a little bit. Yes. What I understood is that each thing has, so to say, a wider context, something called a pre-context.

[33:47]

Is this pre-context existing before, let's say, the table exists in a dimension of time? For example, when I invent something that doesn't exist before, is it actually an invention, or is it just somehow an ability of reading something, what is existing already? Or is it putting something together that doesn't exist before? Well, this is a powerful idea in Western culture, and it's usually linked to Plato. Ideal forms being that the table, this is an imperfect replica of an ideal table somewhere. Buddhism is just the opposite. The table is perfect. Your perception of it is imperfect. In Buddhism it is quite different from Neo-Platonism. It is seen that this table is an incomplete copy of an ideal form.

[34:58]

In Buddhism it is quite different. Buddhism says that nothing is wrong with the table. Our perception of this table is what is not ideal. I suppose that from a point of view of creativity, Buddhism would understand it more like there's an infinite, virtually infinite and chaotic flow of possibilities. And you're a form-producing machine. That's what human beings are. And you're producing forms all the time, immense numbers, from yourself and from your associations with others, which sometimes bring something into existence. And in a limited sense, certainly its possibility existed before.

[35:59]

In a limited sense, certainly its possibility existed before. Otherwise there wouldn't be a particular flavor to historical periods, everyone doing Jugendstil or something. But to say in the largest sense it was already there, from a Buddhist point of view, has no meaning because all possibilities are there in the larger sense. Okay. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just saying, you know, I'm being Buddhist here. Okay. This is my own feeling. Okay, I'd like to just go through it a little bit. Yangshan plants his hoe. You want us to read it in English, or what do you want to do?

[37:12]

Well, if you think you should say it in German, fine, or people can follow it in German. Okay, knowing before speech is called silent discourse. And at some point I may ask you to translate it. Spontaneous revelation without clarification is called hidden activity. Saluting in front of the gate, walking down the hallway, this has a reason. What about dancing in the garden and wagging the head out the back door? Guishan asked Yangshan, where are you coming from? Yangshan said, from the fields. Guishan said, how many people are there in the fields? Yangshan planted his hoe, clasped his hands, and stood there. He did three things. Guishan said, on South Mountain, there are a lot of people cutting thatch.

[38:14]

Yangshan took up his hoe and went. Okay, now if we just take the Diamond Sutra, the Diamond Sutra says, I will bring beings to the other shore, bring living beings to the other shore. In truth, there is not a single living being that the Sāgata can bring to the other shore. Now the second sentence relates to the first. How many people are there? How many people are there? In truth, there is not a single living being that Tathagata or anyone else can bring to the ocean. Knowing that Yangshan plants his hoe in the ground, clasps his hands and stood there.

[39:17]

Buddhism patriarchs disappear, and so did Guaishan. Here there's no teacher. He's establishing himself in original mind before the context, the substrate of thought. So knowing that, As it says in the next page, Buddhas and patriarchs or Buddhas and ancestors disappear, but the mind of Buddhas and ancestors appears. And that mind is all of our mind.

[40:17]

So now people come in in a different way. And Guishan says to his, of so much love to his disciple, yes, on the South there are many people at South Mountain cutting thatch. He entered Guishan's mind and he entered our human mind. Guishan entered Guishan's mind? Yangshan entered Guishan's mind by planting the hoe. And all of our minds. So that refers to, on South Mountain, refers to, we will bring, this is our practice, to bring living beings to the other shore. So the other shore begins, and he demonstrates the other shore, where our mind is horizontal lineage.

[41:43]

He demonstrates that by putting the hoe in the ground. And since Guishan completely recognized this, nothing more needs to be said. And Yangshan took up his hoe and went. Now this can be understood as like kicking over the pitcher. returned to emptiness, he returned function to the body. He returned the movement of the leaves to the silence of the mind. That's perfectly legitimate, but I really think he just went away. He went away to do the work of the world.

[42:45]

To join the folks on South Mountain. It doesn't matter, Mitch, which way you want to look at it. But the overall flavor of this case is compassion, not emptiness. A joining of ways. But the koan plays it both ways. So we can go on and it says teacher and apprentice join ways. Father and son complement each other's actions. Family style way in Yang is a guide for a thousand years. Well, more.

[43:46]

Let's see. They were in the beginning of the 8th century, so it's around the 1200 years, and they're still guiding us, I think. Ages. Ages, not years. Guishan asked Yangshan, where are you coming from? Could Guishan not have known Yangshan had come from the fields? He was just using this question to have a meeting with Yangshan. Yangshan didn't turn away from the question put to him, simply saying this, from the field. Okay. Now he says, now tell me, is there any Buddhist principle here or not? So immediately... You know, we have to, this commentary is making us look at this. Who knows what they, they may have just said, I'm from the field, you know, the field is full of manure and I'm going to go and take a shower, you know.

[44:51]

But it's been turned into a story where there's a Buddhist principle. How many people are there in the fields? And we've looked at this in two ways. moving into a different kind of consciousness, borrowed or whatever we want to call it, and not only just out of immediate consciousness, but out of original mind or deep mind before thought. And the whole question of how do we help people, how do we practice, why did Bodhidharma come from the West, what are we doing here? So, if any Buddhist in Guishan went into the tiger's cave, that means if you mess around with somebody who's quite free, it's a little dangerous. How many people are there and Yangshan plants his hoe, etc.?

[45:58]

Okay, in the next page, at least to the next line, Xuanzha, Gensha in Japanese, Xuanzha said, If I had seen him then, I would have kicked over the hoe for him. Now, Xuanzhe was part of a group of people around Seppo or Shui Fung. He started practicing. He was a boatman, actually, a ferryman, a fisherman or something. He gave up his fishing and all around, I think, in his 40s or something, began practicing.

[47:01]

And so sometimes he was called the latecomer, like most of us. And so sometimes he was called the latecomer, like most of us. And other times he was called Ascetic Pei, his name had to be Pei, because he just sat comfortably all day and everybody was quite amazed at how comfortably he sat. So someone asked him, why don't you visit other teachers? Why don't you just sit here and happily with Shrevan? He said something quite famous at that point.

[48:04]

It wasn't famous when he said it. He said, Bodhidharma didn't come to China. And the second patriarch didn't go to India. That's half true. And then later he was out for a walk or something and stumbled, I think he stumbled, stubbed his toe. And he shouted, and he had an enlightenment experience. And he said, and he changed what he said.

[49:08]

This time he said, the Bodhidharma didn't come over. The second patriarch didn't receive transmission. And then later, he read the Suram Gama Sutra and deeply entered into the practice. So here we can already see several kinds of enlightenment. His initial enlightenment, which is the basis for all, he decided to stop being a fisherman. Okay, I'm going to devote my life completely to what satisfies me. Then he was ordained and he also had various enlightenment experiences.

[50:16]

And a kind of enlightenment where he said Bodhidharma didn't come to China and the second patriarch who actually didn't go to India. Bodhidharma didn't come to China. Didn't go to India. And I have a scroll, actually, that was given to me from Joshin San and Sawaki Kota Roshi, which has a picture of a nyohe. That's the stick you carry like that is a nyohe. And then it says Bodhidharma didn't come to China, second patriot didn't go to India. And then the second one was when he... You want to translate that?

[51:24]

Sometimes I hang up the scroll, it's quite nice. And then a different kind of enlightenment occurred. physical kind of light when he stubbed his toe, and he changed this. The same insight came out, but changed. And I just want to read to you what it says about these guys. All of these guys were close friends. One of them included Yan Men, or Um Man, who started the Yan Men school. And they were close friends, and they are all said to have constantly discussed together the many problems relating to koans. And this, just like us, and this early interchange of views and experiences between these people who were to become leading Zen masters

[52:26]

have much to do with the form which koans and the methods of studying koans took from that time until now. I'm just pointing this out because this is not the Bible, it's not a revealed teaching. We can sit around here and discuss this and develop the way koans will be studied in the West. Okay, now Xuanzhi was a contemporary of Yangzhan and Yangshan and Guishan. So he says, if I had seen him, I would have kicked Oprah the hoe for him.

[53:45]

No, what's the difference if he'd done that? I would like to ask a question before because it says he had done it for him It's done it instead of Gishan's on the next question Well, it says... If I had seen him then I would have kicked over the hoe for him. But who is him?

[54:48]

Who is him in this sentence? Oh, I see. Because is it... Would he have kicked the hoe for Yangshan? For Yangshan. Or for Guishan? Well, for Yangshan, I don't mean. Oh. I understand. Well, you can understand either way. So I thought that he answered. We had it in the group. I thought that if I had seen him, to him in the sentence. If I'd been there, I would have kicked over the whole forum. And you could say it's for Guishan, and you could say it's for Yangshan, and just to get him free of this kind of original mind stuff, right? But stay in the same way. Yeah, well, if he did this, it would emphasize emptiness rather than compassion.

[55:50]

Yeah. And that would change the whole flavor of the story. But of course... he wouldn't have done anything like that. Who is he? Xuanzhe. Xuanzhe was adding to the case. He's not really saying what he would have done at the time. We don't know what he would have done at the time, and probably he would have just been in the same mind as Xuanzhe, as Guishan and Yangshan. Can you talk with this? I'm sorry, yes. And I didn't quite understand now what you're saying. Okay, I'm sorry. Um... Schwanza saying this is really not about going back and being there or being there at that time. He's putting it that way, but it's really just a way of adding to the case. Mm-hmm. And so the commentator here says he can't control his zeal.

[57:05]

And here where it says Schwanscha kicking it over to avoid letting the blue, yellow, green deepen with spring. And that means not letting... The blue-yellow-green means compassion, living with people, joining the spinning and the thatch work and so forth. But then they turn the koan and say, but if the grass is withered, the hawk's eye is swift. In Japan, late in the fall, the frogs and the mice are very visible as the rice is cut in the grasses and the hawks are always kind of... They're over the fields all the time.

[58:07]

So, in this sense, when there is emptiness, though, when you take everything away, you see very clearly. If you take emptiness away, you take even emptiness away. Now, there's this first one in here, just to show you how koans are put together. The first, kicked over the hoe, of course, refers back to Yang Kuaishan kicking over the jug. So it makes clear that Yangshan and Guishan are capable of kicking over. That's in their lineage. But here they decide not to kick over. They decide to enter the spring on the south mountain.

[59:10]

So I'm going to stop in a moment. I think with a thousand-foot cold pine as a metonymy for enlightenment of emptiness, It's a good place to sort of stop. Now the bridge, having come across the bridge, he walks on the shore for the first time realizing his whole body is muddy and wet. Which is a reference to the bridge having broken, he didn't even know it. So you're immersed, and that's a reference to a story which I will read to you. Where do you come from?

[60:23]

Jan Chan asked a monk. Page 140. The monk said, from Yu province. So Janšan asked one of these questions again, like, where do you come from or the people? I'd like to hear news of you, province. What is the price of the rice there? Mok said, well, I did happen to go right to the marketplace, but I broke the bridge as I walked over it. Now I think you're beginning to understand the Zen talk of talking on different levels. He's not going to get involved in the price of rice or in the number of people in the marketplace.

[61:24]

Although out of the corner of his eye on the side of the market he noticed an old Indian man with castaneda. Now, down at the bottom of this page is the last thing I want to present to you. 141. Because it's... It's one of the reasons I brought in this whole business about the substrate of thought in this koan and tried to talk about it this morning. Jan Schan talks about a meditation experience he had in front of the monk's hall in the middle of the night.

[62:41]

And he told it to Guishan the next day. And Guishan said, I had the same experience when I was with Baizhang. And they quote the Heroic March Sutra scripture at this point. When stirring thoughts end and floating ideas vanish, what this really means is when thoughts, when the substrate no longer stirs things into thoughts, And the constant floating of ideas about vanish. This is really removing the hindrances, the glaciers, the defilements from the mind of awareness, of radiance.

[63:54]

And he says some other things. He says, when you look into the basis, dissolving illusory conceptions is the fundamental. So this is the key to, or the style, or what's emphasized in these stories about Guishan and Yanshan. Is the dissolving or melting away of the substrate of thought and finding a meeting of minds with each other and with the world looking at you through this practice.

[65:23]

So here it says, here we also see Gui and Yang and everybody at the Kawan Seminar at the House Tastila wondrously according with the Buddha's mind. Okay I'm being more realistic than romantic Thank you very much Our intention Equally Penetrate The brilliant Anyways With Literature Merit Of Godess Oh, God. Ware man ken mo shijuji suru goto atari Megawa kuwa nyorai yo shinjutsu nyo keshitate heimatsu ran

[67:08]

An unsurpassed, penetrating, and perfect Dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million tapas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. I sometimes wish you could have known Suzuki Roshi.

[68:47]

You know, coming out of myself personally out of a university and out of a family background, both of which emphasized a critical, suspicious view of things like Buddhism and almost everything, in fact. I found myself interested in Buddhism before I met Suzuki Roshi. But if I hadn't met him, I would have, I'm quite sure, dismissed or ignored most aspects of Buddhism that did not seem immediately accessible or familiar to me, or possible.

[70:07]

Once meeting him, how can I put it? recognized that what they're talking about in Zen Buddhism must be true. And I saw a whole, a whole intact, extremely gentle and extremely strong person So it gave me confidence that the practice was possible. I can't say that I abandoned my

[71:10]

suspicion or skepticism about many aspects of practice. And of course this is supported in general by Zen because Zen in some way is an anti-Mahayana movement. Mahayana was becoming more and more cosmic and deals with supernatural powers and so forth and Zen kind of undercut that and the Zen dialogues in the koans are meant to bring Buddhist practice back to your personal life and personal situation. And it, at least for Zen practitioners, rather toppled the sutras from their position at the top of Buddhism, establishing the truth for Buddhism.

[73:02]

I mean, the sutras never were a revealed teaching by the creator or by the cosmos itself presenting the teachings. But they took a very special quality as the teachings of the Buddha in a very big sense. And after the development of Zen in China, the scriptures, the sutras, especially for Zen, became just instead of dialogues between Kuaishan and Yangshan, they became dialogues between Buddha and somebody else. And when Zen developed in China, the sutras now became simply dialogues, similar to the dialogue between Guishan and Yangshan, they were simply conversations between Buddha and someone else.

[74:33]

So the basic attitude, particularly of the koans, is an attitude in most of the teaching of Zen, is a skepticism about anything outside your immediate and ordinary even experience. But As Sukhya used to say, your teacher is just like you, but really, ideally anyway, there's still some difference. And with Suzuki Roshi, that difference was clear, like meeting a friend who helps, who widens your life and changes things.

[75:39]

He was my teacher, but really he was a great friend. Now, as I started to say, it doesn't mean I dropped my And it was reinforced by knowing that Dogen, for instance, said... things like in the sutras, this can't be the way it is, it must be this way, and he would reinterpret it. And modern scholarship has shown that sometimes he was right, that if you go back far enough, he was correct and the extrapolations were wrong.

[76:55]

So I want to emphasize here is that you keep testing practice in your own experience. And you have to take in practice and in your life good care of yourself. I believe in early Greek Classical times, the phrase to know yourself actually meant something close to to take care of yourself. And I think in Zen, certainly the feeling is to know yourself well enough to take care of yourself.

[78:02]

So zazen practice and mindfulness practice become really a way to take care of yourself. So although I could act on and bring into my actions and way of thinking about myself and the world only what I tested in my own experience. Knowing Suzuki Roshi also gave me the willingness to keep open to many things, saying, well, I don't know, but maybe. Now when I'm working on koans with you and practicing with you,

[79:29]

And not presenting something just to a kind of general audience, I'm really practicing with you in a way and working with how to discover something. So this koan brings up how to describe what's characteristic of Kwechon and Yongsan's lineage. This, well, we could call to make it perplexing, returning no thought to its source. As a phrase, it makes no sense in language. And I think it makes a great deal of sense, but there isn't language there to describe it very well. Now in Zen practice, almost everything, all the practices are in addition to what you already know.

[81:08]

They don't exclude what you already know and need. So this practice of unfindability doesn't change your sense of who you are or finding the world alive and interesting. In fact, my experience is it makes the world more immediately and consistently alive. My experience is that through this the world becomes much more direct, more alive and consistent.

[82:27]

And Banke was one of the teachers who found a special way to speak to a large audience of lay people. try to find some way to capture all of the teaching in a single phrase or gesture or something. And the phrase Banke used was the unborn. And this unborn is also to point at seeing things before you give them form. And in a way we could say it would be like residing in the form skandha of the five skandhas.

[83:50]

But even before the form skandha, to be able to hold your mind in the unborn, Almost as if when sense impressions come in, as I said yesterday, when they come into you, they don't turn immediately into thoughts. Seeing fire, it remains color and light. Leaning into heat, you know heat. And you can shift between thinking and not thinking about these things. And at least the main tradition in Zen Buddhism would say, occasionally and if possible, a good part of the time, to rest your identity in the unborn opens you to things and changes things in a very deep way.

[85:24]

It doesn't mean you don't still take joy and associations and thoughts about things and so forth. It just means your mind is resting a step earlier in the process. So it's less likely to be disturbed and caught up in thoughts because it's resting before the thoughts appear. And this practice of... Well, Togen for one point says, you know, there's a tradition in Buddhism that each of us has a Buddha nature. And at one point he said, there's no possessor.

[86:41]

We are Buddha nature. And as someone said to me, when they were young, they recognized they didn't have a body, they are a body. That's another example of this unfindability. You can't find the one who owns the body. You are the body. Now, the teaching of Buddhism is... Hmm? It's a pun in German.

[87:44]

Oh. I think... Okay. So... She's uncontrollable. So... The teaching in Buddhism is that noticing something like that you say you have a body, but you are the body. The recognition of that is important, but also the application of that to everything is also important. till you recognize you can't find the assumed findability of anything. And in that sense, when you see a tree, you see the unborn, the unique tree.

[88:55]

It's so unique, it's not yet taking the form of anything. This is another way of looking past. First you see the leaves moving and then you see the mind that allows the leaves to move this way and that. And through that mind, the silence of that mind, you see the unborn. Now, this is as much poetry as science. It's attempting to give you some language help in coming into something that we can't get to with ordinary thinking.

[90:02]

Now to go to the koan for a moment. There's a discussion in this koan about compassion and emptiness. But the emphasis in the koan overall is these are two positions in a larger field of just entering the world. Dogen quotes Shakyamuni Buddha in a sutra supposedly saying, is that a person who has cataracts sees flowers in the sky.

[91:27]

Cataracts? But when the cataracts, when the affliction disappears, the flowers in the sky disappear. Can you say the whole thing once more? The Shakyamuni Buddha supposedly said that when a person has cataracts, they see flowers in the sky. But when you get rid of the affliction of the cataracts, the flowers disappear. And Dogen, in his way, goes really into this and says, don't think that we should get rid of the cataracts. Or that there's any reason to get rid of the flowers in the sky. The flowers in the sky are empty. Die Blumen am Himmel sind leer.

[92:37]

And the cataracts are empty. Und der Star ist leer. So it's not so much a thing of getting rid of the cataracts, but to see the unborn in everything. Und so soll man nicht die Katarakte loswerden, sondern das Ungeborene in allem sehen. So it's, on the one hand we have the cataracts and we try to solve them, or the problems we have. At the same time you see through the problems as empty as emptiness itself. And this emptiness isn't just again a philosophical idea, but it's an experience come to in various ways and it's a various kinds of experiences. And this lineage and this koan is emphasizing that ability to dissolve the, not the self, but the habits that turn everything into thoughts. It doesn't mean you're dissolving your ego or yourself or anything.

[94:08]

It just means you're changing the way your relationship to sense impressions and associations works. And that does not mean that you dissolve your ego, but you dissolve what always turns the impressions of the senses into something else. There's also a pun here because in this flowers in the sky, because the Chinese word, Sino-Japanese word for sky is also the same word for emptiness. So they could also be called emptiness flowers as well as sky flowers. And Dogen says, if flowers bloom in the sky, if plants bloom in the sky, the sky also has to be a plant.

[95:11]

And the flower also has to be the sky.

[95:12]

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