and not the same every full moon may make us feel one entire being present. Okay, so one of these single points This one practice samadhi that Zen emphasizes is like this phrase, this very mind is Buddha. So Ju Ching says, this cloud, this cloud, this cloud. This very cloud. This very cloud. And here the moon mind Here.

[01:21]

Just as when you practice with circles, you begin to experience circles. I experience a circle in this room. If I feel it as a circle, I can pull the circle into a center. So in this way of minding, which is characteristic of Dogen, everything is in a, let's call it an event. Not an object. For example, if I Look out at the garden. And I don't think about it when I look out. But I actively look. What do I see? I see what maybe we could say a presence. I see a presence of the garden. and if I look at a person without thinking I begin to feel their presence and here this is also the sense that every moment is an event as the Genjo Koan says completing what appears

[02:54]

knowing that everything is particular in a sphere of all at onceness. So that simple phrase of the Genjo koan, which is just the title of one of the fascicles, It's one of these distilled phrases. Maybe Dogen even hides it a little bit as the title of the fascicle. But it's the way to enter virtually all of Dogen's teaching into And it's a phrase that if you enact it it's a magic pill.

[04:13]

You have to know how to take the magic pill but it's a magic pill. You know, we don't have a Plato pill and a Wittgenstein pill. Kant pill and so forth. Yeah, but we do have a Yogacara pill, a Majamaka pill and so forth. And here is a pill that brings Majamaka, Yogacara and Hua Yen together. Complete what appears in the frame or in the mind knowing that everything is simultaneously particular in a sphere of all-at-once-ness. This is a vision.

[05:34]

Can you bring this vision into your life? Just beginning to see things as events and not objects. So if you begin to practice, let's call it now objectless mindfulness. So we've had mindfulness as a way of thinking and one-pointed mindfulness. And now I'm speaking about objectless mindful attention. Where you actively, with your whole body, look but don't think.

[06:37]

This is the basic posture of Zen. So I'm giving you a kind of inventory of mindfulness practices. Ich gebe euch hier eine Art Inventar von den Achtsamkeitsübungen, die euch erlauben, mit so einem Satz anzufangen zu praktizieren, dass ihr diesen Satz in eure Achtsamkeit hinein auflösen könnt. If you practice this objectless mindfulness, it dissolves the object into an event, recognizing the object as an event in which the mind forms it.

[07:44]

Formed by your senses. And then if you're doing Dharma practice, arising, formed and completed. So everything that appears is not an object but a Dharma event now. And that folds into a presence. It opens into a presence. The object is no longer an object, but a presence. And that begins to make you less an object and more of a presence yourself.

[09:07]

This is another way of looking at non-duality. of practicing non-duality, of actually doing the Huayen teaching, of objects occupying the same space and not interfering with each other, And there's a pace and tuning I can find, we can find. Where I almost feel I'm standing within, walking within the same space you're standing in and walking within. As if we were all joined at the stomach or something like that.

[10:17]

So the 10,000 grasses become a single grass. Die zehntausend Gräser werden zu einem Grashalm. Sie werden zu einer ganzen Welt. And with this feeling we come much closer to the phrase, this very mind is Buddha. So practice this. What I'm saying now, one of the way, a very good way to take this magic pill, this distillation of many of the teachings of Buddhism, This defining moment of life which can come into your own power is to practice the phrase this very mind is Buddha in the mind that arises through objectless meditation, objectless mindfulness.

[11:32]

This very mind is Buddha and the presence, entire being of the world begin to talk to each other. The whole world the entire being, the world as entire being begin to talk to each other. Yeah. We reached the edge of what can be talked about. You can enact this magic pill.

[12:50]

I try to bring you to this door, this gate. Here's the magic pill. This very mind is Buddha. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[13:51]

Thank you. million, one hundred thousand, millions, millions, millions, Ken-hon-chi-ju-ji-su-go-ko-to-e-ta-ri Negawa-ku-wa-no-rai-wo Shin-jitsu-mi-yo-keshi-ta-te-ma-tsu-wan

[16:07]

I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. I feel this has been a good Sashin. And a good Sashin for most of you. Of course, I don't know what a good Sashin is, but still, somehow, it feels like that.

[17:11]

What I mean by good is that I feel the teachings, the practice implanted in you. Or I could say I feel the practice has become your own. And I feel, you know, some confidence that this, what I call the Sukhiroshi Dung Shan lineage, will survive. Yeah, maybe it's not so important that it survives. Yeah, I mean, there's enough Buddhism going on in the West now that various lineages will continue.

[18:13]

But each lineage should make its biggest effort to survive. If each lineage makes its biggest effort, then some will survive, I hope. So seeing your practice, you give me that kind of confidence. I can die happy. I'm not planning to die right away. You're getting me started. You know, and I love it that we take care of this Buddha here.

[19:17]

It's about, no, 500 years old. We pretty much know that. That's pretty old. But it's only, I mean, give me another 10 years and then we could say it's only five times as long as I've been practicing, 10 times as long as I've been practicing. Yeah, so it's not so old. At the same time, think of all the people who've offered incense over 500 years. But we can now also imagine all the people who sacrificed themselves to the smoke stick over the years.

[20:34]

taken care of it for 500 years, so we have it today, here in this unlikely place. And Buddhism itself is only about five times as old as this Buddha. So this is a relatively new teaching we're practicing here. Only five times older than our Buddha. Yeah. So now we have to continue this lineage for at least 500 years. As Buddha said when he came, I only arrived here because, you know, I expect to be taken care of for another 500 years. So again, as I said yes to you, you notice we've been talking about this phrase, this very mind is Buddha.

[21:46]

So, wie ich gestern gesagt habe, es wird euch schon aufgefallen sein, dass wir über diesen Satz gesprochen haben, genau dieser Geist ist Buddha. And practicing with the phrase. Und das Praktizieren mit diesem Satz. Maybe at this last day I shouldn't speak too much. Vielleicht sollte ich an diesem letzten Tag nicht allzu viel sprechen. We ought to wind down. Wir müssen es wieder etwas zurückschrauben. Mm-hmm. So we don't get the bends. The bends? No, that's what a diver comes up too quickly. So we don't get the bends going back into the usual world. I'd hate to have anybody have an attack on the ICA, a Buddha attack. What's happened to him?

[23:01]

He's entered the objectless continuum. We can't even get a ticket from him. But the problem and process of practicing with the phrase It was illustrated by what one person said to me in Dokusan. Now I'm simplifying this somewhat from what he told me. But something like, he noticed that the repeating of a wisdom phrase, he used a wisdom phrase to try to escape from his situation, to try to make his situation better or different or something.

[24:14]

If I did it, then I've done that. I would think, boy, this is horrible sitting here. I don't know why my legs are hurting. They didn't used to, but yeah, etc. I know it can disappear. So I say a wisdom phrase to see what happens. Nothing happens. Thanks a lot, wisdom. So then this person noticed that they were trying to escape, right? So then they noticed that, oh, if I'm I find I'm willing to be born in this moment.

[25:26]

If the wisdom phrase helped me, I'd be happy to be reborn into it. I'm willing. He recognized I'm willing to be born in this moment. And I'm not willing to die in this moment. So he immediately, I hope I got it right, shifted to the feeling of being willing to die in this moment. And acceptance came. And there was no longer an attempt to escape. Somehow the feeling of being willing to die allowed him to stop trying to escape.

[26:41]

And this act of acceptance started to actually transform his situation. But even if it didn't transform, it still accepted. This is some magic, this practice of deeper and deeper accepting. Just as it is, just as it is. Hmm. Now, this is not something I could have, you know, I'm telling you now about this. But most, this kind of distinction has to be found in your own continuum.

[27:44]

Language and definition go along in the mind. Blood consciousness flows through pipes or something like that made of definitions and views and so forth, attitudes. And for each of you it's different, of course, somewhat different. So, you know, if you put your finger in a stream and the water goes around the finger, you divert the flow. Yeah, okay. So, sometimes you have to actually notice an attitude and shift it a little and you divert the flow of the mind.

[28:54]

You divert the flow and then suddenly you actually start to accept. It's not just an idea anymore of accepting. So we have this subtle shift that's not so easy to notice. It takes a certain matured mindfulness or lucky, desperate insight in the midst of pain. That, oh, I'm willing to be born in this moment, but I'm not willing to die in this moment.

[30:14]

This is, you know, each of us has to look at our own flow of continuity. And discontinuity. And this person also in effect discovered two phrases you could use. Willing to be born in this moment. That's quite good. This is a new phrase we can work with. I received it recently. I give it back to you. Willing to be born in this moment. And then also willing to die in this moment. Mind is not Buddha. This mind is Buddha.

[31:31]

And so almost everyone, and certainly I have in my practice, how do we deal with this idea of Buddhism doesn't make sense if we can't imagine a Buddha in this world and in ourselves, as ourselves. But it's very hard to do. I guess it's maybe because of the big emphasis on God in our culture. I mean, you don't go around saying, I'm God, unless you want some trouble. Even thinking it privately is probably not so good. But I've never questioned an Asian Buddhist about it.

[32:53]

I've never questioned an Asian Buddhist about what I'm going to say. But I think they're able to hold, without contradiction, two different ideas of Buddha. One is the cosmic Buddha, an all-present, all-knowing eminence. Eminence means an insideness that's everywhere present. and at the same time imagine a person down the street being Buddha or better having the qualities of Buddha now remember I said what is Buddha and I said swimming

[33:57]

What is Zen, swimming? Getting in the water, staying afloat. Being able to go in a straight line for a while. But it's some kind of process. So if we start thinking of Buddha as an event, Now Matsu's phrase asks us to define Buddha to ourselves through the dissonance of the phrase. What is it? How can this be? Etc. You know, we speak about the sky of spring. It's a term in Zen meaning what makes spring possible.

[35:38]

So you can say the sky of spring is spring. But when you see a flower, when you first come out and you see flowers or... First flowers in spring. You feel, ah, spring is here. And there's not a contradiction between the flower and the sky of spring. So maybe it's sort of like that. Cosmic Buddha and flowers of Buddha. Vielleicht ist das so etwas wie dieser kosmische Buddha und die Blume von Buddha. Yeah, we need a looser mind, not that ties things down. Wir brauchen eine Art lockerer Geist, der nicht die Dinge so festnagelt. Der nicht versucht, die Dinge zu festzuhalten.

[36:42]

So here I'm in the Sesshin, I see all these flowers of Buddha. Und hier bin ich in dem Sesshin und sehe alle diese Blumen Buddhas. So one of the things we need to do is Change our definition of a Buddha into something that seems possible. Not to reduce it to something pedestrian, but still something that seems possible. Something we can touch. Yeah, so that's in a way what I'm trying to speak about today and also yesterday I did. When we are doing zazen, And say some of you have the experience of your boundaries disappearing.

[37:57]

And as I say, often say even for beginners, they can't find their thumbs. And actually sometimes you can't find your whole body. You don't know where your boundaries are. But if someone else across the room opens their eyes, they shouldn't. Your eyes can be a little open, but they're not supposed to be looking around. Let's say some bad Zen student opened his or her eyes. And wondering if the bell was going to ring soon.

[39:04]

Looked around and saw the person across the way. Yeah, they're there, they're the same old shape. In fact, it seems to be, you know, a moving around shape. It seems to be a moving around shape. Yeah. But the person sitting feels there's no boundaries. So what's the difference? When the person looking across the Zendo sees a person, we could say something like the person appears in their object street. Let's call it an object-bearing continuum. That's what I said some years ago, a phrase I tried to use some years ago.

[40:07]

And coming back to it today. So, the person seeing you, seeing the one sitting, is seeing you, shall we say you, in their object-bearing continuum. And you whose boundaries have disappeared or lessened, what can we say you're experiencing? Let's call it maybe an object-less continuum.

[41:19]

Less like no. Because the object of your body is no longer in your continuum. Denn das Objekt eures Körpers ist nicht länger in eurem Kontinuum. Objektloses Kontinuum. Dieses Objekt tragende Kontinuum wurde unterbrochen. Was ist das jetzt? Das ist eine Qualität des Buddha. Das ist dort wo der Buddha schwimmt. So, now I'm defining the Buddha. I'm defining the quality of the Buddha. This is related to the Buddha being, and emphasizes the Tathagata rather than the awakened one.

[42:25]

And the idea of Buddha almost being replaced by the idea of emptiness. So now we're looking at what are the qualities of a swimmer? They're in the water, they're staying afloat. Now, what are the qualities of a Buddha? Well, I'm going to tell you one of them where the tradition is, and I think we can accept it as part of our practice. Let's try out one of the qualities of a Buddha. It's an objectless continuum. Now Heidegger speaks about something like letting the world lie before us.

[43:41]

And letting it come into presence. Now, I bring that up only to say that I think Western philosophy, and I've said this many times, has come very close to Buddhism's views. It's like they got to the door, but they don't know practice to go through the door. So they notice some things Buddhism would say are true views, but they haven't seen what happens when you practice these views. And that's what we're doing here.

[44:55]

So as I say, it's in many ways Western philosophy and also poetry and art which have brought you here, not an interest in Asia. Okay. So I said yesterday to think maybe we could say presence thinking rather than object thinking. Now, I wish I had a word for... to be fully present, actively present without thinking.

[46:04]

If I'm actively present to an object, then a presence arises. It's not the same as when you do analytical or calculative thinking. Or comparative thinking. Okay, so what we're trying to do here is establish something like an objectless continuum. And you can switch back and forth. But your baseline becomes more and more this objectless continuum.

[47:05]

Your baseline means the default position. We don't have our regular machine anymore. No, it doesn't record what I mean. Oh. It's here. Again, I'm trying to feel my way into some words that you can catch. Let's call it presence thinking. Or knowing through the presence of things. And as I said, presence thinking knowing tends to overlap.

[48:26]

If I have a feeling for, say, Christian's presence, I'm not Christian so much as a separate, specific person. But just the presence I feel is sitting nearby. It actually merges with Frank's presence and Gerald's presence. Now, don't ask me to explain this more than this. I mean, someone that a while ago asked me, oh, in Münster said this is an aura. Something like this, an aura. But that's an attempt to turn it into a thing.

[49:33]

I'm just using the words not to turn this into a thing, but to direct your attention toward a certain feeling. I knew I shouldn't say. I was only going to speak for a short time. It's already longer than usual when I looked at my... It seems like a short time to me. So let's have a little objectless time here. And let it flow and overlap into... So if I have a sense of the presence of each of you, or of any one of you, it tends to flow into all of you.

[50:36]

So it becomes quite easy to shift from one of you to the feeling of all of you at once. And that flows into the feeling of the garden and the receding day. So what quality do we have here? A quality of an overlapping field of knowing. And an all-at-once-ness as well. In each moment it's somewhat different.

[52:00]

And yet it's quite inclusive of the oranging trees. The autumn colors which are spreading through the Schwarzwald, And you'll see tomorrow it's changed a lot since you arrived. So all of it, if it flows together like this, we can say it's some kind of... wide field of presence. Inclusive. And always unique. What is this like? The Dharmakaya again.

[53:25]

So again we're moving in just by such a thing as presence thinking or knowing into a quality of the Buddha. So the Dharmakaya, Sambhavakaya, Nirmanakaya are ways of defining the Buddha, transforming the historical Buddha into the cosmic Buddha, and transforming the cosmic Buddha into something we can experience. It's already part of our experience when we begin to notice it. You can think of the precepts as the banks of a river.

[54:47]

Sides of a river. Knowing the precepts, there's a certain flow. Trying to create some sort of image here. If you practice the six paramitas. Practice the four paramitas and the last two paramitas. You can think of that as a kind of I don't know if you can say it these days after Nixon, Watergate. That's a wrong feeling. I can say floodgate, but that's kind of too big. A kind of water door.

[55:48]

that allows the qualities of a Buddha to flow into you. The six paramitas are also the quality of a Buddha. When you, swimming from zero, can float into another person's, swim into another person's realm, from zero, you can swim into another person's realm, to this blind turtle. And then give form to the paramitas, You open yourself and the other person to the qualities of a Buddha. And I think the conception is like this.

[57:05]

It's like all of you contain enlightenment. So the thought of enlightenment is the thought of the enlightenment of everyone. And through the paramitas you open this kind of gate for the water of Buddha qualities. The gate of the Buddha qualities. The Buddha qualities. The water. The gate. Yeah, okay. Like that. To flow into you and to flow from you. So again, this is a way to be, to come into a continuum of Buddha qualities. So it's strange, but the more you have these small flows, small tastes,

[58:19]

In a way, you kind of surface with the Dharmakaya, I mean, interface with the Dharmakaya. And with the Sambhogakaya. The Tibetans, I believe, translate Sam as to complete with. So there's this kind of completion which occurs, so it's this blissful, easeful body. I mean, as someone said again in Doksan, they suddenly realized they haven't given themselves permission to feel okay.

[59:51]

They thought it was a reward of hard work. Sie dachten, das sei ein Ergebnis, was eintritt durch harte Arbeit. And that very idea, it makes one unhappy. Und allein diese Vorstellung macht einen schon unglücklich. Just being alive is the gift of blissfulness. Einfach nur am Leben sein ist schon das Geschenk von dieser Glückseligkeit. Haven't you discovered that yet? Habt ihr das noch nicht entdeckt? Just being alive. Einfach nur am Leben sein. Just being at ease and alive. The dignity of your own energy, your own power.

[60:51]

Which we have to come into through Sashin to survive. And then into this easeful acceptance. The joy, the first noble truth is suffering. But the first inner noble truth is bliss. So let's all practice the first inner noble truth. Peaceful, blissful, aliveness. This is a quality of Buddha. This is the mind of Buddha.

[61:56]

Well, I could probably say more. But why not make this enough? Thank you very much.

[62:00]

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