Yeah, thank you for interrupting your afternoon and joining me in speaking about the Dharma. And letting Marie-Louise practice for Sashin. And it's an opportunity for me to speak a bit about what we're doing here. For this is the first, I believe, tea show I've ever given at Johanneshof, which wasn't part of a seminar or session. I asked Gerald going over the schedule everybody worked on for seven days to create an ideal week.

[01:06]

But Gerov says there's only how many ideal weeks a year? Four. Well, that's kind of fun. Still, I would like to have our main schedule be the ideal week, which is more ideal than real. Someday that will be our regular week. So it can be what we aim for. And then we'll have lots of days that are modified in various ways. As four and nine day is a type of modification that everyone knows. What's a four and nine day?

[02:28]

So maybe we'll have day A, day B, and we have a week of day B's or day C's or something. So I give this lecture with the feeling that the schedule should allow, ideally, me to do this two or three times a week. And I speak with the feeling that that will be eventually the case. But it's a challenge to know how to keep practice here and in Crestone going. A challenge for me and a challenge for all of us. Someone I know I've practiced with a long time for years Someone I know, who I spoke to on the phone the other night.

[03:46]

Since I've left San Francisco, they sometimes practice at another center. And she said it's in a way easier than practicing at Zen Center as it was when I was there or here. Because there it's been more Americanized. Because there it is made more American. And it's easier to sit on a chair. Here you can sit on a chair, but you feel sort of like you're a failure if you sit on a chair. So you have to be strong enough to be a failure. But what she wants is a practice that she can fit into her life occasionally.

[05:03]

If she comes here or to Crestown, she feels challenged to bring her whole life to practice. And she doesn't want to disturb her life that much. I understand that. And there should be practices which let you, places which let you practice that way. But I want us to develop a practice that is good for each of you, that will help you develop, help you survive this life, but also a practice that will survive many generations. And there's such pressure now on centers to westernize, Americanize.

[06:20]

To stop wearing robes. to bring in a lot of psychology, Carl Rogers or Jung, something. But there's always been these pressures. In China there were pressures to bring in Confucian thinking and Taoist practices. And to make them practice more civil and more civil society and more literary. Civil like society, not civilized society. Yes, civil society means ordinary social society.

[07:36]

Is civil and easier? Civil society and more literate society. Literature has contributed so much to Zen, it's hard to separate it. In fact, it's the early effort to translate the sutras into Chinese. From which much of the science of phonetics and rhyme developed in China. And one of the famous early grammars was called sculpting the sacred dragon in the midst of language. I like that.

[08:57]

I wish our grammars were called sculpting the sacred dragon in the midst of language. It was the sense that language doesn't have to just be information about things, but within language you could develop a subtlety beyond language. That developed a subtlety beyond language. But also the way in which literature draws you into ordinary life resulted in, like when I was in Japan, you weren't supposed to study literature because it drew you into ordinary life.

[10:12]

And I think it's more of a challenge here at Johanneshoff than Crestone. Because we have the village and nearby cities and so forth. And while this building has been very good to us we could move in right away and start practicing. And it's a friendly building. It builds Sangha in some way. But the architecture doesn't support practice as well as, say, Creston. I mean, just a small thing, watching in Creston when you hit the Han, when people hit the Han, They stand out on the deck somewhat like Sabine was just standing out in the doorway in the wind and so forth.

[11:42]

You stand out on the Roka or deck doing a kind of standing zazen. One person said that the Han and the striker took her over. And she just began, it was like the stick drew her into the Han. So it's a kind of standing Zazen for 15 or 20 minutes. But here over the years I've seen people, they maybe in between hits go and talk to someone or they have a cup of coffee and so forth. It's like the feeling nobody here has ever been to Crestone.

[12:57]

If a Dohan did that in Crestone, they'd be fired. But if I was the Dohan in this building, I'd probably do the same thing. I'd have my cappuccino. And I would talk to everyone that went by and make jokes. Although I remember once I told you before that Zendo in San Francisco had two doors. One went into Sukershi's office and one went into the hall. Sukhiroshi gave me the first seat way up in the far corner. So I was the last to come out, to go through the line to greet him as he went out through his office.

[14:23]

But sometimes I'd have to speak to somebody before they left, because they were all ahead of me in line. And so I would sometimes cut out to the side door, speak to the person and go back into the Zen door and stand in line again. Yeah. So one time when I did that, Sukhiroshi came out of his office where he was greeting everyone Literally grabbed me by the scruff of the neck like he picked up a cat. And he was about this big and I was about this big. So gross meat hood. And he threw me down. Literally started beating me. It's hollering, you should understand under my anger.

[15:44]

Yeah, so I know I'm not suggesting I will do that at the Han in the morning. But really in this building it's different. It doesn't support practice in the same way. The way the Zendo and the buildings are configured in Crestone. And there too there are many challenges. Nobody nearby, no village nearby, so that helps. And only one person in the practice period goes out to shop or do anything. You should make the person who goes to shop at Crestone wear robes.

[16:53]

Yes, I would really feel funny sitting down in the restaurants, you know, at lunchtime in Alamosa. That's what Sukhiroshi did. The first year I was ordained, he insisted, asked me to wear robes in all circumstances. And in In the 1960s in cowboy Salinas, California, it was pretty funny to wear robes. So I don't know. I'm really confronted with the challenge of... How to continue this practice?

[18:09]

Perhaps if we did it in the ideal way, the way it can best be continued, there would be no one here to continue it. So we somehow have to make a practice that works, that somehow joins our ordinary sensibility in life. sensibility, and at the same time has the depth to be continued. There's somebody named Yuan An asked Chieshan What about when the morning sun rises?

[19:30]

And the night moon does not appear. And Cha Shan said, the dragon hides the pearl in his mouth. And Cha Chan said, the dragon hides the pearl in his mouth. And does not pay attention to the jumping fish. Jumping fish. Jumping, sporting? Sporting, yes. Fish are just enjoying themselves. I mean the dragon doesn't care if anybody knows it has the pearl. You have to look at the dragon to understand the pearl. Yeah, another similar, you wouldn't think it's similar, but similar.

[20:44]

Misprision is a word which means to change literature or a line of poetry into another meaning. It is to misuse a line of poetry for another purpose. And one example is the bracelet on her arm is three sizes too big. And yet she says she's not in love. This is similar to the dragon and the pearl. But if we look at what kind of Buddhism survived in China, even political persecutions, it was the original mind practiced.

[21:59]

small sanghas with good teachers. It wasn't the Confucian Zen. I mean, Confucian and Taoist thinking definitely influenced Zen. But the Zen that survived was the Zen that absorbed Confucian and Taoist thinking and didn't lose its own integrity. It absorbed an integrity but maintained Zen's own integrity. So, I mean, none of you would want to practice some kind of Confucian Zen. And I think nobody in a hundred years wants to practice Jungian Zen.

[23:19]

Or westernized Zen. So original mind Zen, the whole sense of it is that it's free of acculturation, quite free of acculturation, even of Chinese acculturation. So I would like to sculpt the sacred dragon in the midst of Western culture. And if I speak with you, I think so often you understand what I say in your eyes and ears. Yeah, hearing and seeing.

[24:23]

Sensing and feeling. But to understand practice, we have to hold the teachings that reach us. Sorry. hold the teachings that reach us in our attention, in an inward turning away from the senses. An inward turning away from the senses, then it unfolds and it permeates us. You can understand Chia Shan's statement this way. So, Yuan Wu asking, what about when the morning sun rises and the night moon does not appear?

[25:39]

This can mean, what about when you've realized enlightenment and brought that into the world? Or it can mean, what about when the bright light of your society hides the moon of the teachings? In either case, Chashan, we can understand, says, the dragon hides the pearl of wisdom in its mouth. And pays no attention to the sporting fish. meaning it's part of our society but also quite free from being defined through our society.

[26:58]

And the same is true of this way they use this line from the love poem. Their bracelet is two or three sizes too big. Yet she says she's not in love. In this sense, when we use it in this line in Zen, it means being in love is pretty much free of acculturation. How you're married, that's cultural. And how husband and wife treat each other, that's pretty much cultural. Different in each culture.

[28:02]

But I think we'd all agree that probably falling in love is pretty much the same in every culture. So here original mind or falling in love is something more fundamental than culture. more fundamental than cultural. And yet you wear a bracelet. So in Chinese poetry, the custom is you really enact the lines. So a person reading that line would imagine what it's like to have a bracelet so big on the arm.

[29:07]

And it would keep falling off unless you held your hand a certain way. And there's all that space between the arm and the bracelet, and you wonder what happens in that space. So the feeling is, how do you maintain a feeling of, maintain, how does a person in love maintain that feeling and yet go about their life? Go about your life and yet maintain that feeling. And the bracelet can also be seen as like handcuffs. It ties you to your lover and it ties you to your culture.

[30:12]

There is an ambiguity here. It both represents freedom and its opposite. So how do we, in the midst of our daily life, keep the bracelet of practice on when it doesn't quite fit us? When through practice we've fallen in love with the world, And fallen in love with the possibility of realization we see in each person. And fallen in love with the possibility of realization we see in each person. So maybe we should pass out large bracelets to each of you.

[31:33]

When people say, where are you wearing that big bracelet? Oh, they're given to us up at the Buddhist Studium Zentrum. And somebody says, well, what's written inside the bracelet? And you say, I'll never show you. Only the dragon knows. Thank you very much.

[32:00]

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