Because the phenomenal world are like banks of a stream and carry the continuity of self. They carry the flow of self or the continuity of self. It's mostly non-conscious. It's not even unconscious. So the embedded or embanked self and the narrative or meaning we draw from the phenomenal world, is where the self is most stuck and where it most can be transformed. And this is the practice of washing oneself in the particularity of the world, which is the territory where it's most easy to transform ourselves in.

[01:31]

And so you have the, again, kind of like at the end of the 51st koan in the Blue Cliff Records, It says, together in the deep of the night. together in the deep of the night. Looking at the snow, the snow-covered thousand crags or peaks. This is being embedded in the wide world which is together our self. This is something like being embedded in the world, in its vastness.

[02:33]

This is our Our wide self. How we are together. So, Shredo says, let's return home together. Let's all return home together. The home. home where we find the whole world as home. I'm sorry, I went on for a moment. May our intentions be the same, and may every person and every place strive with the noble merit of the Buddha's rule, Shoo-shoo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo

[03:43]

As-salaamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi [...] I'll sing a song for you.

[06:04]

I'll sing a song for you. I'll sing a song for you. I'll sing a song for you. Yerarā, Urānyo, Vānyo, Shinjutsu, Hīyō, Hītate, Matsu, Rā, Aibun, Uvatrofen, Shingenwa, and Velkomen Adama. Now that I can see, hear, accept and preserve it, I try to find out the truth of the Tartagata. I'd like to hear a little bit of what you have to say. Yes, hello.

[07:25]

A slightly different position. What I like about Zen is the instructions on how easy it is to practice. It is of course also a philosophy, and philosophy is sometimes not so easy and also often runs into the infinite, so to speak. But the instructions in Zen are totally simple, the basic instructions, and also easy to practice. And it is also quite surprising how Zen, i.e. the teaching, brings order into things or arranges things a little bit and how a teaching or an instruction to practice arises from it.

[08:33]

And if you look at it you can see fundamentally how, from such basic, simple instructions, Buddhas emerged, lines emerged, and how Buddhism has maintained itself over so many years. And I'll just give a few examples now. For example, there is the instruction simply to go to breath with the consciousness. Or there is an instruction that says there are four body positions, either we sit, or we stand, or we lie, or we walk. Certainly variations of this, but these are the four basic body positions. And then there is the instruction to practice, and this is really real, to practice you can always be aware of your body position.

[09:36]

Or there is an instruction to practice sitting straight, sitting still and not scratching yourself. And everyone can determine how easy it is basically to follow such instructions or to practice them. There is nothing big about it. But everyone can also notice how quickly our thinking mind manages to take us out of this attention and lead us somewhere in the thoughts, and how long Sometimes it takes until we even remember that there is also something like a practice of mindfulness, or there was something, yes.

[10:42]

But everyone can also determine for themselves, if you succeed, and that doesn't have to be for so long, what such a practice of changes in the present here-being or in the present feeling brings with it. And today I want to talk about an even more fundamental instruction, namely the instruction, the practical instruction to look inside. And even more fundamental simply because basically all mindfulness exercises, regardless of whether you observe the breath or whether you observe the posture of the body or whether you accept, observe and accept whatever happens there, whatever feelings and emotions are there, but fundamentally

[11:58]

is to always look this step inward. And last week we received the recommendation that we should focus more on our awareness, in working with the skandhas, in the perceptions, on listening. And I want to start with the fact that I look this step inward, especially on hearing and on seeing. When you say, I hear, or when I tell you, look at the altar, what a beautiful flower bed there is. Or when I say to you, look out or listen to the outside and listen to the water.

[13:07]

In which direction does the attention go? Some time ago, or years ago, Roshi compared it to the arrow direction. Where does the arrow point when I say, I hear, or when I tell you, look at the Buddha on the altar, and you say, yes, I see the Buddha, or I see the flowers. Where does the arrow go? Where does the attention go? Is it a look inside or is it a look outside? And what comes next or in connection with the I? Where is this I? Is this I inside and looking out?

[14:10]

Is it the feeling that when I say I look out into the garden, that I sit in here and see the trees outside? Or that I may be sitting here somewhere in my skull or something that I call myself and look out and see you? It's the question again, where does the arrow go? When we are in our normal seeing and hearing, as we are used to, And we have in the last week, no, since the beginning of the month of practice, we have a text from There are three different kinds of spirit. There is the different spirit, the spirit of trees and grasses, and there is the spirit of truth. And not in the seminar yesterday, but in the seminar before, where we talked again in a small group about this text, we happily remained attached to the different spirit.

[15:35]

And I found that to be a huge step forward in our seminars, that we did not read the whole Dogen text within half an hour and somehow understood it and then said, okay, the next text but we are somehow stuck with a different spirit. And today I want to try to bring us closer to this spirit of grasses and trees, or maybe get an idea of what Dogen means when he says there is the spirit of grasses and trees. The existence of the manifold Dhamma If the existence of the manifold dharma is experienced through using the self, then it is illusion.

[16:50]

When the multidimensional Dhamma is experienced by the Self, or when I use the Self, that's exactly how it is, when I use the Self to experience the multidimensional Dhamma, then it is an illusion. And in the second part of the sentence it says, if I experience the self through the coming of the manifold dharmas, that's satori. So when I experience the self through the durch das hereinkommen der vielfältigen Dharmas, dann ist das Satori. Bleiben wir mal beim ersten Teil. Da heißt es, wenn ich die vielfältigen Dharmas erfahre oder wenn ich das selbst benutze,

[18:10]

um die vielfältigen Dharmas zu erfahren, dann ist das Verblendung, delusion. Worum geht es hier ja? Vielfältigen Dharmas, ich mache das noch einfacher, um auch wieder eine Brücke zu haben zu diesem Geist der Bäume und Gräser. Also wenn ich die Bäume und Gräser erfahre, indem ich das selbst benutze, dann ist das Verblendung. It's also about this arrow direction in which I experience. It's about a self and it's about a self that says, yes, I experience or something like I see. It's about a self that says, yes, I want to know what's going on out there and that's why I look or that's why I hear or I smell or I taste. And it's about the direction of the arrow, it's about one's self in here, that's what the diverse Dharmas learn, that's what the trees learn, and that's what the grasses learn.

[19:26]

And in this sentence it is also about a separation and outside. It is also about I in here, or I, or the idea of my I, whatever I imagine under it. sitting somewhere in here, and this I wants to experience the Dhamma, and that's why we are somehow all here, and that's why we look out and think, now we are experiencing the Dhamma, or now we are experiencing the tree, or we simply say, I see the tree, or I hear the water, or I see the grasses, and when we see it like this, Dogen says, this is blinding. Das ist eine Illusion oder das ist Delusion. Und jetzt heißt es im weiteren Satz, wenn ich aber das selbst erfahre, durch the coming of the dharmas, durch das hereinkommen der dharmas, dann ist das Satori.

[20:54]

It's even easier if I experience it myself through the coming in of the trees and the grasses and the sound of the water, for example. If I can experience it myself in this way, then it's Satori. What has changed now? What has changed here is again the direction of the arrow. It goes now, or Dogen says now, through the coming Dhammas, to experience it yourself. That means now I experience the Dhammas, the tree, the cranes, in the direction in which the flow of information actually runs, namely it comes to me.

[22:05]

The paradox is actually that when we have the feeling that we send our eyes out to see what is out there, or we send our ears out to hear what is going on, then we have the feeling that the arrow is going out, but the flow of information is always going inwards. There are the sound waves and they hit my trombone. And then it goes on through such small bones, the hammer, emboss, step, and then it goes into the liquid snail and then electrical impulses are triggered and the electrical impulses run through the ear nerve to the... Boris remembers again. They run through the ear nerve... into the hearing centre, somewhere in the brain, and now the hearing becomes what it was, now I can hear. That means the flow of information is reversed, but still I have something like the idea that I send my ears out or I send my eyes out, the arrow points out when I hear or when I see.

[23:20]

And that is delusion. But on the other hand, the I experience with the coming in of the many dharmas, of which Dogen says, that is Satori. That means I use the many things that come in, what I see, what I hear, what I smell, and basically leave these things to the Self, that these things show up to the Self. And here it is called experiencing the Self. It does not mean experiencing the Dhammas, but experiencing the Self and using the Dhammas, the trees that come in. So you could also say it in very simple words, you could also say follow the flow of information and then ask at the end who hears or what hears or what sees.

[24:30]

Or you could also say turn the light around and illuminate it with the coming of things. And we don't have to talk about dazzling and about Satori right away, but I think it is important that you feel this feeling also physically, in which direction the arrow points, to go back to this very basic instruction, which means looking inward. And it occurred to me that sometimes we sit here in the morning and somewhere in the house the children wake up.

[25:36]

And you can imagine, because it also happens to you, like the mothers, so to speak, what's going on there, or which child is waking up, or a child is screaming, is it mine, or do I have to do something now? So you can imagine how the ears are really sent out, how the arrow points out. And conversely, you can certainly also you can certainly also feel the change in the body when you sit down here in peace and can, so to speak, follow the water or the sound of the water in such a way that the water practically splashes into your own mind or over these ears, over this whole canal,

[26:40]

into your own mind and then shows up in your own spirit. And this is nothing more than a turning of the direction of perception. The ears send out in excitement, what's going on there? And it probably won't calm the mothers down when we say, Dogen says, this is all delusion, so you can stay calm if a child screams like at the spit somewhere. But it's certainly an experience when you can sit here and you can follow the water or practically let the water splash on your own mind. and then ask themselves, who or what, what does the water hear?

[27:44]

In the first week, someone was standing in the kitchen, quite lost, I don't know who it was, it doesn't matter, and asked me, can you tell me what I'm doing here? And I can imagine that this also happens to some of you, or at least I know that, and I don't think there's anyone who hasn't asked this question yet, when you bend over the toilet bowl and then shrug and ask, what's the point of all this here? And that's certainly a good question, and maybe this question follows us as long as we practice again and again. But you can also continue to follow the whole thing and you can say, why did I actually come here? What was actually my motivation to practice?

[28:56]

Maybe someone said, try this, it helps or something like that. But at some point everyone of us must have made up their own decision and must have said to themselves, I will now try this with meditation. And those who are new or maybe for the first time here, then it may not be so long ago that you said to yourselves, now I will try this with meditation. And I have asked myself this question many times and I try to answer it. It's been a while since I made this decision. Dogen says, by the way, This decision or this first decision that one makes is already an enlightenment experience.

[29:57]

He is quite generous with enlightenment experiences. I can definitely no longer remember that. But maybe someone who made the decision of you only 14 days ago and then quickly booked himself here can still remember this enlightenment experience. But I can, if I follow it back so much, that it goes back a long way and I can, I think, or a basic I think I can trace back the motivation quite far back. And it was this motivation, or it was the longing, I think, the connection with nature. I grew up in a pretty nice area in the Eifel and there were lakes and all sorts of things and trees and forests.

[31:02]

And I noticed pretty quickly that maybe not even that I wanted to be connected to it. But I noticed when I was on the road so much that I was missing something somehow. So I wanted, I wanted more. I wanted to make another contact. And I think this need was what brought me to the pillow over the course of the years. We once read in school about Büchner Lenz. I think Lenz is the one who was a bit crazy and hiked around the mountains. And it was called, somehow Lenz wandered through the mountains and he would have preferred to walk on his head or he would have made a headstand.

[32:03]

As students, we didn't know how to start at all. And the teacher interpreted it in such a way that he said, yes, that is the longing, with the sensory organs, which are all in the head, to be even closer to nature, the longing for connection. And then I noticed for the first time, it may not have been so stupid, this Lenz, but there is a longing that I could also comprehend. And then it took a few more years and my first teacher said to me, when I met him for the very first time, that was in India, in Pune, Back when he was still called Aquan, he later called himself Osho. And then he said to me, when he looked at me like that, I was very excited and, so you should meditate, something like that, all in English.

[33:10]

You should sit still and do nothing and the grass grows on its own. And that was another step where I realized that something was attracting me. So that was another push, so to speak, in the direction of kissing. Although in Pune, at least in the time when I was in Pune, no one sat still at all. So that was exactly the opposite. There was dance meditation and everything else that required a lot of movement. But I was pushed in this direction. And now we have Dogen and the spirit of trees and grasses. And there we have the grasses again. That means, it's like this... The need to be connected, Dogen says, with the thousands, with the diverse dharmas, the mystics call it mysticism or the mystery, and Oshi already calls it the world of phenomena.

[34:40]

And how can I create a connection with that? When I sit on the edge of the forest and It's like yesterday evening, a spectacular sunset with a really red sky. There is certainly something mystical about it when it gets dark and the first bats appear or the moon can be seen. But how can I create this connection with this mystery? And there is again this idea when I sit up there and when I have the idea of an I and this I says, yes, I want to be connected to the things out there, even if the I says I want to be connected to it, it is still the case that there is a separation.

[35:43]

And then it can be even more spectacular, as long as an I says, yes, I see that back there, or you say, do you see that there, how great and how beautiful? That means, we have to ask the question like this, or how can we ask the question, so that we are not separated from the... of the world of phenomena and of the mystery out there, or of the diverse dimensions, or simply only of the trees and grasses, but that we are part of it. And this is again this basic instruction So not this feeling, I'm sitting here now and I want to know and also participate in the diverse damas out there or in the mystery out there.

[36:52]

And I want to study that. I want to know what that is. It's more about letting the Dhammas or the Mysterium or the trees and grasses look at us. We turn the arrow around and then we ask ourselves who sees, what sees, what hears. It is definitely a turning around from the direction of the arrow. And at that moment we are not separated from it, but we are part of it. But this looking out and sending the arrow out, that is somehow pretty, pretty firmly anchored. It just occurred to me when I thought about it again, what do I actually want to tell down here? And then it occurred to me, sorry, that I have to take the mothers into account again.

[37:58]

There is also such a saying that one says, I have to go away here, can you take a look at the children? I mean, it is completely clear, I mean, in itself it is already a stupid saying, somehow. So he takes such an eye and throws it at the children or something like that. But it clearly shows how this is anchored in the language, that this seeing and hearing, this arrow direction goes out. And how can I turn that around, so that I ask the question in such a way that I am not separated from the mystery, but that I am part of this mystery. Fernando Pessoa says this in a very ingenious way.

[39:02]

Basically, it is also about this topic. He says, the mystery knows that I am another. The mystery knows that I am another. And then again he turns this arrow direction around. Not I want to know what's going on out there. And when I see it that way, then I have this firm idea of an I who wants to know and participate and wants this and that and imagines this and that. But Pessoa says that the mystery out there, if you let it into you, so to speak, if you don't put the mystery in your skull and want to study the tree out there, but if you give the tree the opportunity to study you,

[40:13]

then the mystery knows and then the mystery finds you in a different way. And the mystery already knows that you are a different beast. It is similar to Dogen, only that Pessoa somehow had no practice instruction, i.e. no meditation instruction. But from the sense of it he is always quite close to Dogen. And then one last step. There it is written in English. Let's see if I can get it together. If there is only the reflecting mind If there are only the things that the mind reflects, then there is... Now I can't get it together.

[41:38]

One moment. If there is only the reflection of the mind, then there are not the things that the mind reflects, but it is only the reflection of the mind. Of course, our conceptual thinking immediately switches on and says, this is all good and nice, but of course I know that the tree is out there and not just somewhere in my mind. I've touched it a hundred times. And I know that the source is there in the pond. So there is also the thing out there and not just the reflection in my mind.

[42:40]

But if you can keep that, then we also have Dogen's mind of grasses and trees. That is simply the reflection in the spirit. There is only what comes in, there is only the arrow pointing inwards, and the spirit reflects it like a mirror, and there is not the I that switches on with some concept and says, yes, now I see or now I hear. There is simply only the spirit that reflects it. And we can always practice this wonderfully here in the Sendo, because we really have a source that glides out unceasingly and we can use this sound, at least in sitting here, when the Inu gives us enough air and opens the windows,

[43:58]

we can, without interruption, pursue it as if the water in our mind is splashing and that there is only the mind that reflects it. And we can then pursue, if only the spirit is there reflecting, how the conceptual thinking naturally switches on again and says, yes, I hear, and how the separation is again at that moment, and at that moment there is again a concept of me in here and the water out there. But the water goes on and we can then immediately cling to the noise again and can let the water splash back into the mind. And we still have a few days of opportunity for that, yes.

[45:01]

Okay, maybe that was a bit short today, but I have nothing more to say. I thank you for listening. Mögen unsere Absichten gleichermaßen jedes Wesen und jeden Ort durchdringen.

[45:20]

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