It was very nice to sit with you all last evening. With Jack functioning as our guardian angel, filling our wine glasses, making sure the fire was firing. All you did is had to hold out your hand and ask why. And somehow over the last a lot of years, We've created, I think, a Sangha, what we would call in Buddhism, a Sangha has been created. A Sangha is those who share a similar view and vision of the world.

[01:03]

And who are committed to articulating this and evolving this vision. Yeah, so it's... And that exists in addition to... also separate from my part in this evolution. So it's an interesting question of how can the Sangha dimension which has been created with and through each of you.

[02:16]

Perhaps be continued. And perhaps find a way to continue the evolution. And I was told by a couple of people yesterday that you have made a decision to meet again next year and to include the Zen presence of Nicole. It's your new role you're stuck with. Okay. She said it differently. No, no, I said it to say.

[03:34]

Oh. And yesterday was very reflective and... Yeah. Yesterday was a reflective day. Revealing for me. Because I had the feeling that although I'm have in the tradition been transmitted and accepted a particular way of meeting our experience and our... Yeah? In a way, I have evolved

[04:37]

Through my own experience and through the experience of others like yourself. And through trying to transform the paradigms of the West and the language of the syntax and Yeah, something like that, of the languages of English. Still, it's what I've noticed over the years, and it seems that there are realms of experience and concerns of you and others I practice with But my way of expressing the practice doesn't necessarily reach...

[05:58]

And as I said to a few of you last night, I think that has to be the case, and to the extent that it is the case, I think you will have to fill in the gaps or develop the answers. And I think Nicole on her own will have to find her own way of meeting this challenge, actually. You know, the word for transmission, the Japanese word for transmission is menjuu. And the NJU.

[07:28]

Romanized. And it means simply face-to-face. And it means the actual meeting face-to-face of two existences. And an absorption of the similarities and differences. And through that meeting of face-to-face meeting of two existences. How to transmit the chemistry of that to others. It's sometimes likened to the bamboo waiting for the song of the wind.

[08:40]

In other words, a bamboo is just waiting, but the wind makes it sing. So I've spoken during this seminar about Samantabhadra and Manjushri. Samantabhadra represents this way-seeking mind, maybe it's weight-seeking mind. Samantabhadra represents the aspect of always waiting, always ready, always just present. Samantabhadra representiert diesen Aspekt des immer wartens, immer bereit seins und immer gegenwärtig seins.

[09:56]

Accepting and transforming what happens. Das, was geschieht, akzeptierend, annehmend und verwandelnd. And Manjushri sitting on a lion, Samantabhadra is on an elephant, Manjushri sitting on a lion. And Manjushri, who sits on a lion, Samantabhadra sits on an elephant, Manjushri on a lion, represents the proactive relationship to meeting, which the motto might be something like, always now, always now, never later. And these two exist side by side, even inside each other. So in traditional Zen altars, often the historical Buddha is in the center, Shakyamuni. Or a glorified Buddha.

[10:59]

And Manjushri and Samantabhadra are on either side. Now, what I thought of doing this morning, at least, is to give you more example of processive practice, practice which is the process itself and not going in you, not progressive, but processive. Yeah, because... The koans are kind of a ceremony.

[12:22]

And if you relate to the ceremonial aspects, in Zen, particularly in Soto Zen, ceremonies are quite conceived of tantrically. So the ceremony has numbers of beginnings, but one beginning is when the person leading the ceremony enters the room. Just enters the room, maybe from a far door, but that's the beginning. But how does entering the room begin to change the experience into our many futures and paths folded into one experience.

[13:47]

Yeah. We can use the word deploy. Deploy means to unfold. How is it deployed? Um... Unfold. Okay, ja. Okay, und wir können das Wort im Englischen deploy benutzen. Also, wie wird das entfaltet? So it's a question of how is the ceremony step by step unfolded and each unfolding making possible the next unfold. Also ist dann die Frage, wie wird diese Zeremonie Schritt für Schritt entfaltet, und wie sorgt ein Entfaltungsschritt dafür, dass der nächste Entfaltungsschritt folgen kann? And so, I think when we get that, we can see that, I mean, some people come to seminars and things like that, and then they come to Yanisov, and there's all this bowing and stuff like that, and it's not apparent that the

[14:57]

that the surface represents various unfoldings of something, a realisational space. And then when we understand that, then we can see and that is not obvious for many people who maybe, let's say, come to seminars and then come to the Johannishof at some point and then see all these many deviations and so on in the Johannishof. There is on the surface. And lay people like to come to the center because they feel something. And sometimes they don't like to because what is all this stuff about? But if you do a sashin after the third or fourth day, you don't have any choice.

[16:08]

You're just stuck there. So you either start disappearing and do it, or you leave. And then the unfoldings become recognizable. And so, you know, it's maybe this institution or technique or yogic tool of the sashin is almost necessary before you can make sense of the experience of practice-centered life, semi-monastic life. I'm mentioning this because I'm trying to say that there's actually one Whatever your life is, wherever it is, and whatever your job and profession and family, et cetera, there is a dimension, I would say a constellated dimension that's ceremonial.

[17:33]

Und der Grund, warum ich das sage, ist, weil ich glaube, dass ganz egal, was euer Leben ist, euer Familienleben oder euer Berufsleben, dass es auch in eurem Leben so etwas gibt, was sich eine aufgestellte zeremonielle Dimension nennen würde. It's like when you say, I love you to your spouse as you leave the house or come back. Das ist so, wie wenn du zu deiner Partnerin sagst, ich liebe dich. It's not the same I love you you said when you got married or first recognized you were in love. But it's a ceremony which calls forth that first time you said it. So because again, there's no outside, there's only this.

[18:45]

This is a continual starting point. And to some extent, we could use the word performance. You perform the starting point. Maybe we could say emptiness is performance. Performance is emptiness. Because emptiness performs itself as form. Okay. It is also a conceptual mistake to say form and emptiness. It's form, emptiness, emptiness, form.

[19:45]

That was so good the way you did that. Just jump on the train, that's you. Tuk-tuk. Tuk-tuk. I'm sorry. I should have sang last night, but I... I did. Okay. Okay. So because... Let's now try to use the word performance. Okay. There's different ways, there's different kinds of performance.

[21:01]

Yeah. So the koan is written, generationally written. It's not by one person. It's a generational creation. And it's written as a performance, which is parallel to the performance of walking into this room, sitting down together, quite bad. So if we look at this particular koan, which I have been mentioning directly and indirectly for the last days, because I think it keeps taking reintroduction, resorbing, in order to really enter into the performance of a koan.

[22:25]

Now, It's funny. You know, I have a relationship to this book. One is, I designed it. No, Shambhala, but it was originally... what we call it, something pressed and became Shambhala and was sold to Shambhala by somebody else. And I had the San Francisco Sensenich support clearly while he was translating this book. So I've quite a history with this book, but at the same time, when I opened it, I said, whoa, jeez, what's going on here?

[23:38]

So somebody... began one of the people I practice with, and Creston has been working on this koan for two or three years, and has been my Anja, and so every now and then, as Anja, she mentions, Anja is the personal assistant of the abbot, And one thing that distinguishes in Rinzai, it's teacher-defined practice. In Soto, it's more Sangha-defined practice.

[24:47]

Which means the teacher rarely gives a koan to somebody. But the teacher presents a koan in a lecture or in having tea with someone, and then you see who picks up on the koan. And then you present the koan maybe in its entirety or just in parts or just a phrase or just a suggestion, and you see some people pick up on it and some people don't, just the way it is. So it's defined from the sangha's side. And so, And so it's then also responded to not simply in duksan, sanzen, but it's responded to just in the context of having tea together or walking through the hall or something.

[26:02]

So, again, I've had quite a relationship with this koan because this woman who's been the Anja for a long time, for several years, has kept referencing the koan to me as she does something. Brings me breakfast because I've missed breakfast or something. And she might say as giving me breakfast, she might say, what is the seal outside the elbow? So because of this woman repeatedly bringing this up to me, I said, okay, I'd better look at it with more attention. I haven't looked at it in years. Okay, so the first phrase is, the beginning.

[27:18]

Those who have wisdom. So you only read that much. And you think. Do I have wisdom? It's like the person coming in the door over there. What is meant by wisdom? Does those who have wisdom make me feel not included or does it make me feel included? So just by reading that phrase, you're beginning to develop your relationship to, is there such a thing as wisdom? And then the next phrase helps you define what wisdom is. And the next phrase is, those who have wisdom can understand by means of metaphors.

[28:35]

And I think one has to read a poem the same way, you know, a Pessoa's poem or something like that. Again, we're going back to how do you make a koan the site of knowing? I get so tired of much of contemporary scholarship. And science. They're always telling you that this was all motivated by self-interest. Well, this lineage was made up in competition to another school and made up a different lineage.

[29:48]

So tiresome. There may be a degree of truth to this, but it's not the dynamic of why this book was written. This book was compiled and put together under extraordinary circumstances in wartime, and it was the life work of somebody who thought, this is worth my time to do this during wartime. Dieses Buch wurde zusammengestellt und geschrieben in außergewöhnlichen Bemühungen während Kriegszeiten und über Generationen hinweg. Es ist das Gefühl von jemandem, der sein Leben dem gewidmet hat, zu sagen, dieses Buch ist es wert, dass ich meine Zeit im Kriege damit verwende.

[30:54]

And then it's, again, a multi-generational creation, just like actually what we're doing is multi-generational. Based on Tang Dynasty protagonists, but put together as stories in the Song Dynasty, hundreds of years later. And they tried to put it together ahistorically. And by that I mean they tried to put it together thinking future generations will read this. We can't have it just tied to Tang Dynasty life or some dynasty life. In anderen Worten, sie haben das mit dem Gedanken zusammengestellt, dass zukünftige Generationen das lesen werden und dass wir es nicht nur an die Epoche der Tang-Dynastie oder der Song-Dynastie binden können.

[32:00]

Deren gesamte Lebendigkeit wollte, dass wir das haben. And when you practice this, these people become your ancestors. Okay, so we haven't gotten very far. We're still in the first line. It takes time. I mean, if you read one of these well, everything, much of the rest starts falling into place. Okay, those who have wisdom can understand by means of metaphors. So again, as I said the other day, you start thinking what to mean by metaphors. And you start thinking, do I think in metaphors?

[33:04]

So you explore your relationship to metaphors. If you don't do that, you can't go on to the next sentence. And then the next sentence is, but... But what happens, I mean, in other words, the concept that we can understand by means of metaphor means you can't understand by language. It requires something that goes beyond language and changes language into feeling because metaphors are a feeling for experience. But if you come to, but, what when there's, so first of all, okay, language isn't sufficient, thinking isn't efficient, feeling through metaphors may get us closer to wisdom. But what if you come to where there's no comparison and no similitude?

[34:28]

How can you show the teaching to anyone? So then you stop there. Yeah, what about when there's no comparison, no way to think or think something? So this is saying, you've got to be ready to face the wall and just stay in front of the wall until it changes. In other words, we're in this immense, vast, undivided activity, field of undivided activity.

[35:29]

that we can't understand. But can we access it? Is there some way to... We are it. How do we participate in it with attention? Yeah, so you stay, you don't give up. You stay with it. I can't understand, but I'll be here till I have some kind of resolution. Now, maybe that's enough. Give you a sense of reading a koan. That's time for a break.

[36:54]

So maybe afterwards we can have whatever discussion we want, or maybe I can continue with the text up to at least the seal outside the elbow. Let's see what happens after the break. Thank you very much.

[37:08]

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