I started yesterday with what is the conceptual structure of this case. So we have the Buddha and Indra planting a blade of grass. Then we have the Buddha and Dipankara planting a marker where he spread his hair. And if we take it up into the our past, but a future, anyway, way after this supposedly happened.

[01:03]

Keizan, Zenji, we chant in the morning. There's Dogen and Eijo and Tetsugikai and Keizan. Eijo. And Tetsugikai and Keizan. Keizan Jokendai. We chanted him every morning. But he went when he was going to found a temple. And he went to the site and slept there. Spread his hair in his sleeping bag.

[02:05]

And during the night he had dreams about the site. And in the morning when he got up, there were things that occurred in the dream that were part of the sight. So the thinking and observing and recognizing that went on in the dreaming confirmed his choice of the sight more than his thinking. And we may have similar experiences. You gather lots of information about something.

[03:07]

You don't know, but then there's a sense, a feeling, or you dream the solution. And I often use horizontal lineage, vertical lineage, and so forth. And Bernard Four uses that to describe dreams, vertical dreams and horizontal dreams. Who does that? Bernard Four, F-A-U-R-E. And I think it's a useful distinction. We have dreams that are really about our immediate situation. And then we have more predictive dreams that arise from our experience, our deep time perhaps. And you may notice sometimes that you have what I call teaching dreams.

[04:23]

It's literally in a dream. You're taught how to do something. Not just that you may just be shown something that's true. But sometimes it's actually a kind of detailed teaching. So we can have some ability, this is a yogic skill again, to kind of have more vertical dreams or more horizontal dreams or, you know, whatever happens. Also können wir eine Fähigkeit haben, und das ist auch eine yogische Fähigkeit, dass wir eher horizontale Träume haben oder vertikale Träume. There's always whatever happens, but at the same time within that we sometimes can influence our dreams to be vertical or horizontal. Es ist immer eben das, was einfach geschieht, aber innerhalb dessen können wir manchmal beeinflussen, ob unsere Träume eher vertikal oder eher horizontal sind.

[05:46]

And in effect... Keizan was doing what this koan's about. He went to the site and planted a blade of grass to establish a sanctuary, to find a way to continue the lineage. And Keizan, perhaps more than Dogen, who was a kind of purist Zen practitioner, And Kezan was more into shamanism and magic and so forth. And he actually created the popular base for the Soto school.

[06:53]

But when you come here to a seminar, you come here to the winter branches, you're planting a winter branch? You're planting a blade of grass. And the many people who make a monthly pledge are every month planting a blade of grass. When you try to bring the actively, intensely bring the practice into the red dust of your life, You're planting a blade of grass. So that level of this koan is also its teaching. Now we could call, I could call what I'd like to say today, let the lotus bloom. Ich könnte das, was ich heute sagen möchte, nennen Lasse den Lotus blühen.

[08:12]

Yeah, no. This is, you know, not only my schmaltzy poetic side. Das ist jetzt nicht nur meine kitschige oder poetische Seite. Yeah, okay. Kitsch is catch can. Okay. Kitsch is catch can. No, no. It's just Anyway, go ahead. Forget what I said. Anyway, so I'm actually speaking about this staff. As most of you are familiar with it. The iconography is there's the lotus embryo. Which is in my hand. And here's the bud. Here's the seed pod. So what's also there, or what's missing, as you know, is the bloom.

[09:22]

So the iconography anticipates the bloom, but it's your paying attention to the elements that lets it bloom in you. So as a teaching staff, as a staff for a teacher, it means my holding it. And here you see the spine, the backbone again. And you see the relationship to the chakras. My relationship to it as a teaching staff is that it asks me to let the lotus bloom in our conversation. So let the lotus bloom. Ja, er hat den Anfang bekommen und hat das Ende mit eingeschlossen.

[10:39]

Also nochmal, was ist das, den Anfang zu bekommen? Okay, so since it seems to have been a useful image for many of you yesterday, the basket and the basket weaving, let me go back and explore that. Okay, now a basic approach in advanced Buddhism. is after you have developed sufficient meditative and mindfulness skills, you're able to have a feel for, an experiential feel for the teaching. Now, how do you, sometimes just an intuition, this seems true.

[11:50]

Now, how do you bring this intuition or this understanding, this experiential feel for, How do you bring it into your daily life? Okay, we have again the host within the dust. And the guest outside of creation. Okay, so what's that telling us? Basically, he's telling us, let the lotus bloom. Okay, so that you can... This is a kind of abbreviated telegraphic way of presenting the teaching. So presumably the modestly adept practitioner knows the terms host and guest.

[12:51]

Yeah, and has an experiential feel for it. And again, as I said yesterday, the simple example of don't invite your thoughts to tea. Okay, so the host is the one who's in charge. Well, at least the host should be in charge if you're a practitioner. You can decide whether to invite your discursive thoughts to tea or not. This is a big point in practice. Can you decide whether to invite your discursive thoughts to tea or not? And there's a lot of discussion of this in Majamaka and Yogacara Buddhist teaching. Are you excluding? Are you eliminating? Are you just putting to the side?

[14:33]

What does it mean to say, just not invite your thoughts to tea? What is that sword? It doesn't invite the thoughts to tea. Manjushri's sword of wisdom. So we have Avalokiteshvara's compassionate lotus and we have Manjushri's sword of wisdom. I think a rather simplistic view is you... eliminate conceptual thinking.

[15:34]

The image I find, the only one I've discovered recently to express this, is say you come out in the morning. And your front yard, let's imagine you're in America in the 1930s. Barbecue doesn't exist yet in a normal front yard. And the front yard is covered with snow. And the driveway is, and you can't get the car out of the garage. So do you melt the snow with a blowtorch? Yeah. Or do you just go and shovel some aside until the driveway is clear?

[16:42]

Okay, so what happens when you clear the mental driveway? In a sense, you have the skill now to put the thoughts to the side. Then if we use this metaphor, Many other aspects of this appear in the metaphor. The snow you put to the side, discursive thoughts, desires, whatever, melts. But it's still there. Now it's under the driveway and it's all soggy. Or maybe it's just clear water now that you can see through and drive through.

[17:49]

So this metaphor allows you to explore what happens when the host asks discursive thoughts to, hey, don't come in right now. Okay, so now the host within the dust. This is also, you know, the five ranks. Okay, so the host within the dust is not the host which is excluded discursive thoughts. This is the host which can be in the midst of discursive thoughts and still be the host. Basically, this is rooted in the teaching of emptiness of self and emptiness of phenomena. Which, you know, this is a kind of important point.

[19:09]

In Buddhism, the early Buddhism emphasized the emphasis of self, emptiness of self, person. And later Buddhism emphasized also the emptiness of phenomena. Now, you can ponder for a while if you want why this distinction, which seems fairly obvious, was historically so important. But here you can see there's a big difference between the host discovering its hostness by being able to exclude discursive thoughts. And that's a really important part of beginning practice.

[20:11]

More and more space around your thoughts within your mental formations. Okay, but that's a rather limited, in the end, state of mind. How can the host be the host and still invite the thoughts to tea? Okay, and that's expressed in host within the dust. Okay, so now what's the guest outside of creation? Okay. This is about how you turn the snow into water. Okay. Now, if you want to understand the guest outside of creation, you have to make clear, you can't think these things, you have to feel these things.

[21:40]

I mean, if you try to think them, you get to step three and it's all kind of dissolving and you can't hold anything in mind. Even if your intention, your effort is to try to understand it, this is wrong. It's better not to try to understand it. It's better to try to feel it. And then let the feeling take you where it takes you. And it often ends up taking you where you thought you wanted to understand. Und dann leitet es dich oft dahin, wo du dachtest, dass du verstehen wolltest. So you get a feeling for it, and it sometimes takes two or three days a week to really just locate yourself in the difference, the experiential difference between host and guest.

[22:50]

Also du versuchst dafür ein Gefühl zu entwickeln, und manchmal dauert es zwei oder drei Tage oder eine Woche, um wirklich ein erfahrenes Gefühl für diesen Gastgeber und den Gast zu bekommen. The mind that arises through discursive thoughts And the mind that arises through not inviting your thoughts to tea. It's like the mind that can go to sleep and not get caught in consciousness. It's like the mind that can go into zazen and not care if the bell ever rings. Okay, so we know that difference. So now you bring that difference into a host within the dust. Then, okay, so now if we can get a feeling for the host within the dust, conceptually and then experientially, you then shift to say, okay, it must be related to the guest, to discursive thoughts.

[24:05]

Okay, what are discursive thoughts outside of creation? Discursive thoughts before creation. Discursive thoughts before appearance. Okay, now this is what I call zero mind. You know, like 1, 0, 2, 0, etc. Okay, so host mind is zero mind. Okay, now I use the example of the service yesterday. To do the service out of feeling and not out of conscious intention. And to have a feeling of, even though you know what you're going to do next, to have a mind which doesn't quite know what you're going to do next.

[25:15]

A mind that, as Sukhyoshi would say, is always ready for anything. Now I found that the word aperception is very well used by psychologists especially and some philosophers. And Kant did use it in several ways. And so did Gebser. And there's even a TAT, a thematic aperceptive test, which is used in psychology. William James said, well, the way they present aperception, it's a shuck.

[26:18]

I'm testing her English. Let's see if I can do that. William James said that the way they use app perception, is that what you said? The test. The test. No, they use the idea of apperception for teachers, that they understand it as a shuck. A shuck means to fool somebody. Implying it's something mysterious. And he says, it's as simple as A, B, C. He said, if I say to you A, B, C, you immediately think D, E, F. And he says, that's a perception. Because you bring associations immediately to whatever is presented.

[27:26]

Now, that view of apperception is very close to samskara in Buddhism. To see the world primarily through your associations nämlich die Welt hauptsächlich durch seine Assoziationen hindurch zu sehen. Okay, so now we have a related but somewhat more subtle problem. Und jetzt haben wir ein verwandtes, aber etwas subtileres Problem. Okay, if we can rest in host mind, wenn wir im Gastgebergeist ruhen können, how can we rest in host mind and... not only not invite discursive thoughts to tea, how can we not invite associations, all the associations, not to tea?

[28:33]

Wie können wir auch nicht all die Assoziationen zum Tee einladen? Okay, now I don't know if we're going to have time enough to do that. Okay, thank you for translating. You're welcome. I'm not stopping yet, though. Ich höre trotzdem noch nicht auf. I'm just wondering, you know, when you come to a fork in the road, take it. Ich frage mich jetzt einfach nur gerade, wie ihr das kennt, wenn ihr auf eine Gabel in der Straße trefft, dann nehmt sie einfach. There's at least five forks right now, and I'm about to take them. Yeah, a fumpf location. What? Like bi-location, this is fumpf location. Okay. So if I go back to the example of the circus, And what I'm doing in the service is applicable all the time, not just service.

[29:49]

Service just gives you a chance to practice it. And this is all about realizing the world as Dharma. And you're not going to physically, you're not going to know the world as Dharma. Unless you can physically actualize the world as Dharma. This isn't just a mental game. You need to physically actualize it. And if you can physically actualize it, Then you can feel it. Then you can feel into thinking and thinking progresses much more deeply and fully. Okay, so what happens if with every action

[30:52]

In the service, I try to return to zero. Zero mind. Yeah, where I don't know what's going to happen next. Yeah, nowhere to go and nothing to do. It's a version of that. You're ready for anything. And it's relaxing. It's such a relief. Associations are gone. Then you take the step. Or then you let a thought appear. That's the guest outside of creation. Because the zero is like outside of creation. It's the mind before the world appears. This is the ultimate yogic vacation.

[32:06]

Really? Yeah. It's like that. Before creation. Before appearance. now if you have this feeling it's a kind of punctuation yeah even grammar yeah because you find when there's an opportunity to come into zero mind And this physical practice becomes more and more subtle. And you can keep finding yourself in zero mind.

[33:08]

And this becomes a physical definition of dharma. And more and more lets the world appear. Let the lotus bloom. Now let's go back to the basket. So, you're the basket weaver. How do you start this weaving? Now you want to use this operative image. Operative. Du willst dieses operationale Bild benutzen. You want to let it operate. Du willst, dass das arbeitet. Now, this is again a way to bring a conceptual or philosophical understanding of how we exist into the midst of your activity.

[34:10]

Da geht es nochmal darum, ein konzeptuelles oder ein philosophisches Verständnis dafür, wie wir existieren, Bring wisdom into the dust or bring the host into the dust. And by being able to hold the image in your activity, you begin to experience it. That right there is the skill of all later Buddhism. I was surprised when we had the wonderful lay initiation ceremony, ordination ceremony last week. And when was it? Just recently. Somewhere in that timeless realm.

[35:13]

Where we took the precepts. And Otmar pointed out to me that it's very hard to translate the word precept into German. And... And it's very little different than vow. So you have the problem. Well, a vow is very different than a precept. Precept is what you hold before you act. It describes a state of mind, not an intention.

[36:24]

Not a direction. A vow is, I'm going to do this. A precept is, I hold this teaching or this wisdom and then I see what happens. Okay. And, you know, it's intent or intention means to stretch toward. To stretch toward. I'm trying to distinguish intent and intention. Also, ich sag jetzt mal, Absicht, bitte? Zweck? Now, Castaneda uses very provocatively and astutely the word intent. Now, I can't, you probably can't translate much of what I'm going to say now.

[37:42]

Because it's all dependent on English words. Okay. Now, he uses the word intent, which... I try not to, when somebody like Castaneda has developed the use of a word, I try not to use it in a too similar way. Because even when there's a big overlap, There are differences. So sometimes I use the word E-N-T-E-N, which is a more archaic use of the word intent. I spell it that way. You don't have to do anything but describe it.

[38:43]

Part of my exploration. Now, a synonym of percept is not vow. But tenet, T-E-N-E-T. And a tenet is something you hold in mind and stretch toward. And a teacher, so now tenet and not teaching, such a tenet is something, a teaching sentence actually. It's something you keep in mind and where you extend yourself to. Okay. So sometimes I use, I've made up a word in tenet instead of intent. So I have this word in tenet, a combination of intention and teaching sentence developed, yes, instead of intent.

[39:48]

Now, why I explore this may not be so clear to you right here in this short tesha. But it's really important from a Buddhist point of view. is what mind is present in the dust. And the present, what mind is present in the dust, maybe we could say is the water of the melted snow. Or we could say not discursive thoughts, but intents or intentions. Yeah, okay. Okay. So, back to the basket and then we'll finish. This basket will never be done, of course. Because you're weaving it at every moment.

[40:56]

So you have to start with something to make the image operative. Okay, so you kind of develop, as I say, initial mind and so forth. You develop the feeling that whatever you notice first, whatever appears first, Du entwickelst das Gefühl, dass was auch immer du als erstes bemerkst, was auch immer als erstes auftaucht. You make the first strand of the basket. Dass das die erste Faser des Korbes wird. Okay. Now, if that first strand of the basket brings up associations, wenn jetzt diese erste Faser des Korbes Assoziationen hervorbringt, you end up with D-E-F. you end up with associations. Okay.

[42:11]

Now the basket is suddenly being woven into the future. Because you know D-E-F from the past, it leads into A-B-C-D-E-F, G-H-I. When I learned the alphabet first as a kid, and it was A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and then L, M, N, O, P. And I always wondered, what the hell is L, M, N, O, P? Yeah. You don't have to translate that. Okay, so now you've got a basket that's not rooted in the present immediacy. It's not anchored anywhere, really.

[43:13]

It's identified with your associations. And your associations are 99% self. So the basket kind of falls apart and gets stretched over past, present and future, mostly past and future, and it doesn't hold anything. It just makes the experience of associations and self your experience of continuity. There's no zero mind here. Okay, so then instead of that, let's say the first thing that's noticed is the first strand of the basket. Now you hold the mind in space.

[44:35]

You hold the mind in the field of mind. You don't let associations come in. You let them go to the side of the mind way. They may be present as atmosphere. But the mind way, the drive way is mostly clear. And other strands of the basket begin to appear. And depending on a number of factors, you have a rather simple basket or you have a highly detailed basket. hast du dann entweder einen recht einfachen Korb oder einen hochgradig detaillierten Korb.

[45:43]

But in any case, it carries the present. Aber in jedem Fall hält er die Gegenwart. It isn't immediately unwoven to become associations in some sort of imagined future. Der wird nicht sofort wieder entflechtet, um zu Assoziationen zu werden und zu... some sort of imagined future. So, the more you can just stay present in the immediacy, in the space of mind and not the time of mind, the basket is woven from immediacy primarily and not associations. wird der Korb hauptsächlich aus der Unmittelbarkeit geflechtet und nicht aus den Assoziationen. Now that mind, which allows the basket to be woven within immediacy, is obviously more receptive to immediacy, to how...

[46:43]

everything exists. And that would be a different understanding of the word aperception. In other words, the emphasis doesn't become the associations. The emphasis becomes the content minus associations. Okay, so now you have a basket which fills with the present and fills in a different way and more fully with your experience. is filled more fully with your experience. In other words, it's not just one strand which calls forth associations. A whole detailed basket calls forth associations. And past and present flow together much more fully.

[48:12]

And thus your actions plant a blade of grass. In immediacy, not in your association. And this not only feels safer, It makes the world safer. It begins to create a world for you and for others where we can rest. Where we can feel safe. And where we can let the lotus bloom. Thank you.

[49:07]

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