Sky also has to be a plant. And the flower also has to be the sky. And this way of thinking is characteristic of this emphasis on the unborn. And... All of this relates to Buddhism as the Buddha holding up the flower which Mahakashapa saw but no one else really saw. And that flower that continues to bloom in practice today. Now all of this was in some ways a little introduction to my talking a little bit more about this stick.

[01:06]

I know it looks kind of funny to carry this big thing around and bow with it and all. But somehow I find these things quite interesting. Partly because they're so hard to use. If you're wearing these robes and you've got your bowing cloth and you've got all this stuff and This is supposed to line up with this, and this is supposed to line up with this. And then you have this big stick in your hands. It's really quite complicated. And then when I bow, I have to turn it one way. When I get back up, I have to turn it the other way. So it's a kind of sculpture. meant to be handled.

[02:15]

And they put the lotus embryo just in the palm of your hand. So that also in all the Buddha statues, when you have a flower blooming here, often if you follow the stem, it reaches down to a hand somewhere, although it just looks like part of the robes. And it's also made so that if it's in your lap, your hands fit there quite comfortably. And also all nyois, or most nyois, are the shape of the backbone. So this also represents your backbone and this chakra in your face.

[03:25]

So it always amuses me how they include so much in the stick, you know, in something like this, this kind of handable sculpture. And yet at the same time, they leave the main point invisible. A sky flower. And the habit, as you begin to have the habit of resting in unfindability, every act then is finding something. And you can feel yourself giving the finding to things. It's like at that moment, all of the world comes together and you come together to give findability to each thing.

[04:47]

So knowing the unborn is also to know the birth of each thing on each moment. Now Kweishan is also the person, when we talked about the water buffalo, maybe last year in the Koan seminar, I don't remember, but we've talked about it before. Kweishan is the person who said, when I die, I will become a water buffalo at the foot of the mountain. And he said, and on the left side of the water buffalo will be inscribed the five characters saying, Kwe Shan Monk Ling Yu. And on the left side of the water buffalo, the five letters for Kweishan, Monk Lingui, will be engraved.

[05:58]

Lingui was his personal name and Kweishan is his name from the mountain. So when you see this water buffalo after I die, with its name, my name on it, you can call it Kweishan if you'd like. But it'll still be the water buffalo. And you can call it water buffalo if you like, but it'll still be Kweishan. And then he said, what is my true name? And in good Zen fashion, he perished shortly after that. So, is there a flower here or a water buffalo? What is unborn or born? And what world are you going to give yourself? What world are you always giving yourself?

[07:17]

And can you get to the root of that giving the world to yourself? This is the teaching of Kweishan and Yangshan. May our intention equally penetrate every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Shuddho muhen segandho om manmukhin segandhan Send to me Zarnapolis. I do want to save him. The guitar and the riffs are beginning to last a while.

[08:37]

I have a problem to keep for the night as well. I have a problem to keep for the night as well. Ujo jenjen mimyo no wa yakusen no no ni o ayo koto katashi wārei manken no shi tsubuji suru koto etari negawa kuwa nyorai yo shenjitsu yo geshi itate matsuran

[09:47]

An unsurpassed penetrating and perfect 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. How are you?

[11:03]

Everyone okay? I'm very glad to be back with you today. Someone said to me yesterday that maybe I shouldn't say so often I don't know what I'm doing. Maybe you all give up and say, oh, it's horrible. Maybe that's good. What I mean when I say that is that I'm trying to existentially put us both, all of us, into the situation where there's a creative edge of things where we don't know what we're doing. This is a sense of time that is not continuity but is endlessly beginning.

[12:07]

There's a little poem that was quite important to me in my 20s when I was practicing. This morning that hornet This is a different poem. That hornet buzzing around made me think of Emily Dickinson's line. A fly buzzed on the day I died. That always amused me because she wrote it years before she died. Occasionally I try to improve it. But as certain, in any case, the improvement probably wouldn't have stuck in my mind.

[13:35]

So something that stuck in my mind in a sort of similar way was the haiku, sitting quietly, doing nothing. Spring comes. Grass grows by itself. And this echoes probably intentionally Bodhidharma's famous statement. A flower opens. A flower blooms, five petals open. The fruit ripens of its own accord.

[14:41]

Now the teaching in this is, and the emphasis in Zen again, especially, is of a certain kind of teaching and transmission and view of history and time. And I think we need to share that view if the koans are going to really work in us. Now in this view, the passing of the teaching has nothing to do with karma or reincarnation. These individual teachers, Yangshan and Guishan, are not reincarnate bodhisattvas.

[15:45]

The importance of the presentation in these stories is that these are individual people who have to practice, struggle, be confused, and so forth. And in that personal effort to have some insight and relaxation. And there's always the good chance that it will go wrong. Or nothing will happen. Or even nothing happening will be seen as boring. So, These are not, again, reincarnate bodhisattvas, they're individuals just like us.

[17:10]

And the importance of these dialogues is the emphasis that this could be you. But given the right conditions and effort, this practice is available to each of us. It doesn't depend on any of us having any special karma or something like that. Now the word for this kind of dialogue in Japanese is ki and mondo. And the ki part means something like the right moment in time. The causal occasion.

[18:30]

And it also has the sense of the deep workings of something, a deep working of a loom embedded in us. Dogen in one of his fascicles, Zenki, uses the key in Zenki to mean the dynamic functioning or dynamic working of the immediate present. And Dogen benutzt in einem seiner Schriften den Ausdruck von Ki, ja, das dynamische Arbeiten der unmittelbaren Gegenwart. And in Koan finden wir das wieder in dem Ausdruck der bodenlose Schuh der Gegenwart. So this sense of key also has in it almost like a machine.

[19:37]

Key can mean machine. That there's a dynamic working of the lineage and the teaching that comes together with the right moment in time. Dass es ein dynamisches Zusammenwirken, Zusammenarbeiten gibt von der Lehre und der Übertragungslinie in der Zeit. And the key N, K-I-E-N, the E-N part. Und der Teil key N. The E-N part means entanglements. Also der E-N Teil dieses Wortes bedeutet Verwicklungen. Or interdependence. oder gegenseitige Wechselwirkung, Interdependenz. Aber ganz besonders sind damit Verwicklungen gemeint, die uns von Verwicklungen befreien. Wie sieht man Verwicklungen, wie arbeitet man mit ihnen, dass sie einen befreien?

[20:39]

As the cataracts which cause you to see the empty flowers in the sky. And seeing through those, seeing those flowers as empty allows you to see the cataracts, the entanglements as empty. Maybe I could tell a little anecdote here. One time I was staying at the top of Russian Hill with a friend in the 61 or so. Once I was standing on the hill of Russian Hill with a friend. It must have been 1961. And there was a beautiful old wooden house that was replaced by a residential building. And suddenly I had a kind of, I don't know, I woke up in the middle of the night kind of crazy and murderous and compulsive and weird feeling.

[22:09]

And I'd been practicing meditation by that time for six months or so, so I was familiar with Buddhism. And this, in some senses, came out of such intensity, came out of nowhere. And I think there was a certain freedom to have this feeling through practice, actually. And, you know, I could have looked at it and at the time did look at my life psychotherapeutically. How did this arise and what were the causal factors in my life that led to this?

[23:15]

But I was completely gripped and frighteningly gripped by the feeling. And I looked, I was in this room with this window looking out over the San Francisco from pretty high up and into the sky. And I had just a kind of relief or attempt to relieve myself from this feeling. I kept just looking at the sky to distract myself. And suddenly the sky didn't care.

[24:37]

Whatever I felt was immaterial to the sky. It's like suddenly my feelings were empty flowers in the sky. And I felt that so strongly that my mind actually shifted and identified with the sky. And that shift, at that moment, then I looked directly into the feelings I was in the grip of. And the grip relaxed completely. And the feelings were there, but they were now immaterial one way or the other. And really from that moment, I've never again had feelings which bedeviled me or were compulsive.

[25:56]

So I can say from my own experience, you can see the empty flowers in the sky and the cataracts, your relationship to the entanglements is different. If you really see that. So the N part of Khyen has this sense of entanglements which free you from entanglements. And the mondo means response and answer. Question and answer. But it really means the manifestation and activity of an encounter. So here is the sense of a particular occasion where a deep working is possible that manifests in a relationship.

[27:09]

Now, the sense that this fruit ripens of its own accord In Bodhidharma's, the flower opens with five petals. Now, presuming that Bodhidharma might have said something like this, sure he might have, the five petals clearly probably comes afterwards or is given a meaning afterwards. Of the five great early founding ancestral teachers. Or the five schools. So the sense here is the flower with the right causal condition blooms

[28:10]

And the teaching or lineage is present. And the fruit then ripens of its own accord. And ripening of its own accord again has the sense not of karma but of the causal conditions that are necessary. And here is the sense that this moment is unique and incomprehensible. And we don't know what happens. From the one point there's continuity, but actually in each moment an airplane could crash through the roof.

[29:38]

So one side of our mind is always giving continuity to the moment and it's predictable. And although we know it's also unpredictable, we don't know that in our present memory. So a practice like this dissolving the context of mind that turns everything into thought. Brings us into contact with the beginner's mind of each moment. To the bottomless shoe of the present. Or if I have a book in front of me and the designation book is given by me based on its parts and my reading it and so forth.

[31:13]

If it's not a book till I use it as a book, or until I feel myself designating it as a book, when you assume a continuity, When you assume this is a book, that's a microphone. That's a rug. This is a pillow. That assumption puts a film of separation over everything. When you don't or when you participate with designating it as a rug or as a microphone. And until you do it, it's just a kind of thing standing there.

[32:16]

The film of separation is peeled off and everything has a kind of power. More intimacy or lack of separation. So this sense of each moment of time having the possibilities of time beginning, Just as we count time from the coming of Christ, this is a moment in history where history is different before and after. In this practice and in your life, there's moments where your history is different before and after.

[33:21]

And those moments which are most marked are built up through a layered causality. So it isn't just the sense that, well, anytime this practice is my practice, anytime I can practice fully. No, there's only particular times when you can do it. You're not timeless. You're not always the same. You can't say, well, if I don't have time this year, next year is fine. We don't know.

[34:35]

There may be no next year. Or you may be so different next year. Who knows? But it's more than that. Well, it's exemplified when Yangshan walks from east to west, from west to east in the room for speaking to Guishan. By the way, it was Yangshan who cut off his fingers, poor guy. But in any case, this guy whose friend of mine has lost a finger and he tells children the tip of it is waiting for him in heaven. So poor, partially mutilated Yangshan walks from west to east.

[35:35]

To say, I am responsible for my own causal conditions. I am my own teacher, my own owner, in the sense that I participate in developing the layered of causal conditions which embed me or free me in time. embed me or free me in time. So again, these are not about karma. or about reincarnation, but about developing your own layered causal conditions.

[36:50]

And to have the intuition to know how to develop it and how to stay in it, and not just say, oh well, tomorrow's okay, or next week, or something. Time can pass us by. Buddhism can pass us by. Our life can pass us by. So what's needed is something like a combination of factors. The right moment in time. Not all moments will serve. Some moments serve. The layer of causal conditions and causal nexus that comes together with that moment.

[37:52]

And this causal nexus is something you yourself intuitively develop. Through practice, through taking care of your life, through taking care of your health. Through your job, which enhances or hinders your mind. Through your friendships. And entanglements also mean the entanglements of social relations and friends. And your ability to see through these entanglements, to see the empty flowers. So this intuitive, aware embeddedness in your own causal nexus is the second one in my list here.

[39:11]

And third is chance. We don't know. Just accidents, chance. That's always part of it. As Randy mentioned yesterday. And then there's in the lineage, ancestral lineage teachings, There are two more factors. The interactions with fellow practitioners. Teachers, senior Dharma, siblings, younger friends, etc.,

[40:13]

Lehrer, ältere Schüler, ältere Dame, Geschwister, Freunde und so weiter. Talking about your practice with your skeptical aunt. This occasion of an interaction with practitioners and others. Diese Gelegenheit der Interaktion zwischen Praktizierenden the chance person you meet at the tea shop. It sometimes occurs in the koans too. And finally, the fifth in my little list here, is that crucial contact with a teacher or adept practitioner. we're like a little enfolded ball, or an immense dream in a one-minute nap. commitment or awareness or enlightenment is passed to you usually unbeknownst.

[41:47]

But it works in you. And you either mature it and unpack it, open it up or not. And it becomes part of the vertical lineage and horizontal lineage. And part of the layered causal conditions that you find yourself embedded in and opening yourself in. And the chance and the arousal of particular moments in time. Now part of these causal conditions, this causal nexus, is understanding and working with memory.

[43:00]

And in this sense, an altar is a memory palace. And as we talked this morning, part of it is offering. The incense and the candle and the flowers are offering. And offering is to bring yourself back into this memory palace of the altar. One time I hiked for several, some months, I don't remember how many months, but quite a few months, I lived out of a backpack walking in California. Sometimes sleeping out and sometimes staying at friends' houses and sometimes staying in motels and things. And before I left, I went and got from... someone sort of bought, took me years to pay for them, two small statues made by an old Tibetan sculptor.

[44:32]

And one was Manjushri and one was Avalokiteshvara. Which are the two most common bodhisattvas to sit on either side of the Buddha. Das sind die wohl bekanntesten Bodhisattvas, die jeweils auf den beiden Seiten Buddhas sitzen. So I carried these two fellows in my backpack. Und da habe ich diese beiden in meinem Rucksack mitgetragen. And I'd set them up at night, and every morning when I did Zazen, I'd set them up. Und ich habe sie jeden Abend aufgestellt, und jeden Morgen, wenn ich Zazen gemacht habe. And this is one of them. I still usually carry one or the other. Last year it was Manjushri, this year it's Avalokiteshvara.

[45:41]

Now traditionally if the statue is really in the Buddhist lineage, inside here there's the ashes of previous owners. So if these were to be passed on to my disciples, this bottom should be taken out and a little of me should be poured in there. You can say, where's Richard, though? I can't remember. So, and also the lineage of knowing something about the sculptor and the man who gave it to me and who knew I had no money for some years and let me pay over about three years. So I set them up on either side of the imperfect Buddha being me. When you are as imperfect as me, you need all the help you can get.

[46:42]

So these are little memory palaces too. The chakras are all noted by... These are little memory palaces too. The chakras are all noted by jewelry or the way the robes are or something. And other key points are pointed out. And the flower here, stem is in the left of two arms. A little jewel ball of compressed time and space is held in the hands.

[48:03]

And overall the posture has that clarity where sometimes in your own posture you feel you've tuned into something that's transparent and effortless. So I would take these two fellows, two androgynous, charming folks out. And allow my body to be remembered through their body. And they would become my offering to my campsite. And I would make offerings to them, mainly offering my imperfect meditation.

[49:13]

So this layering of the causal nexus is also through working with memory, embedded in physical objects. As also like this staff has the memory of these four stages of the embryo, the source, the root of the lotus. The lotus in the mud of our entanglements, our imperfections. The bloom of the bud. And the late bloom of the

[50:15]

And the teaching of how we give reality to everything with the flower that's present. Reminding us of Bodhidharma's flower. And the Buddha's and Mahakashapa's flower. And Bodhidharma's flower which opens five petals. And the fruit that ripens of its own accord. Of our own accord. This again is the teaching of Yangshan and Guishan.

[51:39]

The beginner's mind of this time which is always beginning. Simultaneously a timelessness where we meet an ancient friend. And where actually I believe we're all waiting for each other. I hope you're waiting for me. I'm waiting for you. Okay, thank you very much. May our intention equally penetrate every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way.

[52:49]

Oh, oh, [...] oh. Sent to be a Daughter of the Lost, I vow to save her. Be the light of our impossible, I vow to put an end to them. Brother Daughter of the Lost, I vow to master them. It's about this time of seminar or week or whatever it is that I feel like talking about what I'm talking about and what we're doing.

[54:20]

This is not really by any stretch of the imagination, it's a shame. Although it does for me have a kind of a similar rhythm. The first, for me, the first day of Sishin or for the seminar is kind of like slowly walking into that lake out there.

[55:31]

For me, the first day of Sishin or a seminar is like slowly walking into that lake out there. And this is North Germany. So the water is not that warm. In other words, it's a kind of a slow, sobering shock. Even though I come from a kind of strange modern monk life or something. Still for me, whenever and wherever we do, we actually get together and do a practice thing Like a session or a seminar.

[56:46]

I feel this kind of shock, this slow shock. And then my body adjusts to the water temperature a little bit and, you know, I feel a little better. And then maybe after a while it's even sort of fun splashing around. And this strange, harsh screeching in the night, I don't know if you've noticed during Zazen or coming out of Zazen, this incredibly harsh screech was coming out from the water.

[58:09]

The first time it happened was the night before last. And I was sitting there and I heard this And I thought, something just died. Something just gave its last cry. But I heard the same sound last night. And then I realized it was herons or cranes. I don't know what kind.

[59:10]

Flying around over the water in the dark. So anyway, don't you think it's a little strange what we're doing? And then again, I don't mean strange is bad.

[60:13]

I think I've had the experience ever since I can remember of if you sit somewhere or look at something long enough, it gets a little strange. Strange in the sense that the poet Tennyson had something that he did. He would, I think when he was a child, he found that if he repeated his name, over and over again.

[61:31]

Something happened to him. He wasn't his name. And when that happened, the world looked different. Which reminds me of a story. I mean, we're fortunate that we have a vast supply of stories in this tradition. And of course some monk came to some teacher and said something to the effect, What do we do about the world?

[62:52]

This is a religious question. This is a profound existential question. and other guys, teacher probably, said, what do you call the world? So it's that kind of feeling when something screeches out in the wet, dark night. It's just this kind of, again, a shock that passes, what the fuck was that?

[63:55]

Now, I am in no way accustomed to sitting in a chair and giving some kind of talk. The surprising thing is that I actually like it. But I can't help but feel that it's not a good position to be in. We're all literally sitting in the same chairs.

[65:28]

And every single person has some news, something to report. And that was confirmed for me in Roshi's talk today. When he said that these stories are about people like us. Now of course this is a nice thing to say and that's what we would hope to hear. It's a kind, generous, comforting maybe thing to say.

[66:33]

But it also may be true. In fact, I think it is true. And I think of from our little meeting yesterday, a lot of good stuff came out And I think at this moment of Christina when you said the old question is How do we continue or how do we practice when in three months we'll be different people?

[68:04]

We forgot this thing. How do we practice when in three months we'll be... And I think of our conversation yesterday at the Strudelsee. When you spoke about, when you said, but there are false ways. teachers, eminent teachers have pointed out that there are false ways and I think if Susanna's report that

[69:08]

she's being mindful and then she's gone. So it's like, who's minding the store when that happens? and the this mixes with the feeling that I got from Roshi's talk this morning that It's funny that he should mention that poem.

[70:29]

Because it was also a little jewel for me when I first encountered Zen. It's pretty well known. I think it probably, I probably read it in a book of Alan Watts or something. Sitting quietly, doing nothing. Spring comes. Grass grows by itself. That's a beauty. And there are lots of them like that, those little ones.

[71:32]

And yet there's a lot of fear. There's a strange feeling sometimes when, as you said, a piece of food falls from your fork. And something falls away, something shifts. One of the many lists in Buddhism is the five fears.

[72:58]

There's the fear of death. That would be number one. There's the fear of loss of livelihood. People you work with who haven't had work for five years and they You're trying to teach them that they can hold their head up. I mean, this is a devastating fear. The fear of loss of reputation. We almost enjoy watching politicians lose their reputations, at least our favorite villains.

[74:34]

But this is really about how you appear to people in the world and are you respected or are you a fool? Then there's the fear of as we spoke yesterday a little bit, of unfamiliar or unusual states of mind.

[75:36]

Gudrun, you spoke of a certain experience you had and I said that's an unusual state of mind. But what is a usual state of mind? I mean, what is a state of mind? And then last but not least, there's the fear of speaking before an assembly. And that has to do, of course, with how you appear to people and do you have anything to say? How do you compare with others? So I don't know if the five fears covers all fear but certainly covers a lot.

[77:16]

So what are we doing, if anything? I never really heard your question today at the table. But I didn't need to, in a way. Watching you engage with all of the other people It didn't matter what the content of the question was because you were one big question which made me think of the old peasants coming home after gathering firewood, urging their wives to spin through the night.

[78:48]

Why did it remind me? No, it reminded me, because when you ask them, doubt and confusion arise. To Guishan or Yangshan, looking from the edge of the fields, It's just busy Buddhas gathering firewood and spinning.

[79:54]

But when you ask them by whom or by what are you empowered? There's doubt and fear and confusion. And it's that way with me. I walk around these grounds and sit in the zendo and eat and so forth and sometimes I feel pretty good and sometimes I feel a little weird

[80:56]

Am I practicing? Because there is some problem in a way. And often I ask myself as a kind of turning word, what is the problem? And I look for it. I look for the problem. This reminds me of when I was in the seventh grade That's like 13. I came home from school and I felt very uneasy.

[82:18]

And I went to my room and I put down my books And this feeling had been going on for some time. I don't know when it started that day. I assumed it had something to do with school. It probably did. was some test that I'd forgotten, coming up. Or some assignment that was due that I'd forgotten.

[83:20]

So I, in my mind, I went through the possibilities of what could be wrong. Subject by subject, class by class, what was the source of this discomfort? And I was in my room and I was being as thorough as I could be. And for the life of me, I couldn't locate it. I mean, I was absorbed in looking for it.

[84:47]

And it changed. And it was like, I don't know, it's just a moment before, I could not shake it. I could not get out from under it. A moment later, I could not even bring it back in my imagination. I could not bring back the feeling. The feeling changed utterly in a flash. It had nothing to do with my efforts to find a solution.

[85:55]

It was a kind of accident. I don't know what it was, but It has stayed, I mean, I can see that dark blue sociology book or whatever it was, I mean, I can see it. And just, you know, I didn't fight it. That's great, it's gone. I didn't fight it, it just went away. That's great. So this endeavor, this practice, I don't know how you do it.

[87:17]

Really? As Roshi said, these guys are just fooling around Now, they may be fooling around but they're, if I could say so, they're deadly serious I remind myself that I'm certainly going to die. That's a kind of basic fact that we all carry. Which is not a matter of being morbid.

[88:21]

It's just a kind of, well, it's just a fact that sobers me up. And I remind myself of that perversely, I guess, when things are going very well. So that's about enough. You know the root of the Koan tradition is in sound.

[89:45]

So we could work a little on them. But actually the chanting has been pretty good in the Zenda. So this is the last time in this seminar we can go through the koan. So I'd like to do that. But first I'd like to be open to anything that we want to share together. It comes from any of each of you, all of you. Yes? And this is the last time we have the opportunity to work on the quorum. Is there anything we should talk about first? Some of you haven't said anything. Some of you haven't said anything. Should I point at you?

[91:12]

Yes. Maybe I... Should I leave? Come on then, have somebody say something. Don't depend on me. Yes? One point we didn't talk about too much is this saying about South Mountain in the West, which was engraved on the bones and scrapped on the skin, and together equating the blessing. What is the blessing and what is the saying? Well, the whole column turns on that line, really. Is that still written in German? Yes, what I would be interested in, which has not yet been discussed, is the statement about the southern mountain, which is carved into the bells, which you have written on the head, and where the blessing is shared with each other.

[92:26]

And I would like to know something about the blessing, perhaps, and what comes with this statement about the southern mountain. So we'll, you know, when we look at the whole koan, we'll look at that line, I think. I would like to add to that, and although there is a requirement of blessings, there is also a good feeling. So... I would like you to talk a little bit about that. Okay. How are your group meetings today? Pretty good? Any reports from them or anything you want? I wish I could, you know, get my German ears in each group.

[93:27]

Yes, how were the group meetings? Maybe a few short reports. I would like to hear the German ears of every group meeting. Yes, I'll start. In our group, one of my wishes has been fulfilled today. They dealt with a wish of hers, so she's very happy with her work. I was very touched by the story with the little Bodhisattva and with the donkey and with the story that Roshi is waiting for us and we are waiting for him. It touched me very much and tears are falling down. Yeah, I was very touched with your story with these two little statues you schlepped around and that your ashes will be put into them and that you will wait for us and that you also hope that we wait for you and she was very touched and it made her cry.

[94:50]

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