Okay, how can you use this koan? I guess you can't. I'm impatient. Yes. Yes. How I can use it, I'm not quite sure, but I usually start with the beginning, with the introduction to the koan. and that I study closely.

[01:17]

So that is one level. Then, like many others said, But then certain phrases come up and they are like images and they come up and they stay with me. There are many of these images within me and they are unanswered. And I appreciate very much that Rashi says something that also appears in another koan.

[02:41]

To point out something that appears in another koan? You sometimes make references to other cultures. Like no grass. Like no grass. American high school. I don't remember pointing it out I don't remember pointing it out I don't remember pointing it out Would I use a cohort in a certain way when I'm at home?

[03:56]

So when I'm back home I do use koans in a certain way. I study the koan and then I can suddenly write a few lines. and I often don't notice it at all, and suddenly I see, hey, this is totally this sentence here, I don't have to write this sentence, but the structure, what I then experience, is influenced by the core, or through the sound I hear. And what I experience is kind of penetrated with what's in the koan.

[05:14]

And I notice that when I read what I've written. Okay, good. You can go on if you want. Someone else. Yes. I try an attempt. So before in the small group I did not quite manage to express what koans mean to me. And try now to come from a different angle.

[06:17]

To open something. There is a song. von einem Kabarettisten, der heißt Hans-Dieter Hüscher, den mag ich sehr. By a cabaret... What is a cabaret? By a songwriter. He was a poet. A poet, Hans-Dieter Hüscher, and I like him very much. Das begleitet mich seit einigen Tagen. At least some companies have been accompanying me for several days. And the mantra is? We are afraid and have to be courageous. That's very close to the location.

[07:20]

Where there is being afraid, there also is true courage. Where there is fragility, there is strength and trust. There also is power and trust. And there is a tree. And its roots go deep into the earth to the center of nucleus. And its branches go beyond the sky. And a small butterfly lands.

[08:40]

But there is no difference between the tree and the butterfly. And just the word koan, its sound, And then I walk on the grass, for example. And look at the leaves on the ground and they turn yellow. And then I go on and I reach the big gate. And there it is, this steppe. and there is this fence with the radical slats and one can look through the fence and when the gate opens one can enter the threshold

[10:02]

and is surrounded by their hinges. And there is the pond. And an ocean. And all rivers flow backwards. deep into the mountains and they become clouds and there the mountains truly are the mothers of the clouds and they sweep the sky And there is the moon and the crane. And the crane sees everything. And he flies away.

[11:14]

And there is nothing anymore in the oceans. And everything falls. I never say falls. And one can feel that it just falls down without falling onto anything. And when one returns to the threshold and looks at the world, that it looks different, although it is the same world.

[12:21]

The quaking continues. Thank you. It's a, I don't know if a writer or a poet, but it sounds like an enlightenment poem. How many more poems like that do you have? That was amazing. You know all that. Thanks for sharing and telling us, reading, saying. Thank you for sharing it with us. Yes, no poem, but I have what you were inspired by in this poem.

[13:42]

What you want to say now? I was inspired by that. I decided to discover what I have deeply felt. It just reminds me of a sadness that I have felt very often. I deeply felt a deep sadness I have often felt. And that brings me back to this core insofar as and that brings me back to the koan because this koan is a great encouragement for me to go into the undefined uncertain

[14:45]

like the confrontation with this uncertain that it triggered sadness in me before And this is exactly what I experienced so strongly here in this week that a light lights up and encourages to go on the way that's from my feeling and in addition your teishos that you have drawn so many paths clearer than they were until now

[16:22]

that you showed many ways more clearly, much more clearly than before, how one can enter this. and for me besides zazen or in addition to zazen it's the practice with turning words which can bring into the everyday these undefined moments To be kind of tied back to this undefined, uncertain, and they make a kind of perforation in the day.

[17:42]

Okay. Perforation in the day. Okay. Thanks. Yeah? Now in the meantime I'm very grateful for the Quran, although at the beginning when I first got it via email I could not really do anything with it. Before I registered for this week, there was hesitation whether I should do it. And out of the hesitation has come the question whether I really belong here.

[19:01]

In this winter branches process. What the winter branches were formed I felt I wanted to do that and I felt an inner commitment to comply with the rules. One sashin, one winter branches week, and one winter branches weekend per year. When I first joined the winter branches, I did all that.

[20:08]

But then it happened that my everyday life, But then my everyday life became more complex and more difficult. I don't want to tell all the details I'm the one parent bringing up two young men by now and really difficult situations happened. And especially when I went away either to Johanneshof or someplace else, always when I went away for a few days or a week, things and problems happened at home.

[21:18]

Oh, I'm sorry. And for example, my younger son, who was here at some point, and some of you know him, he was in a very big traffic accident. And so I decided to be a father to my sons and to stay with them and be there for them.

[22:19]

And that's why I've not been here for over a year. So I brought with me the question whether I really or actually belong here. And then Joshi gives his first teisho. I'd say that this koan has been important in our lineage in that it was important for the young Shunryu in the question about his teacher. And as I understood it, it was also an important koan for Dogen in relation to his teaching. And so I thought, oh, with my question, I'm right with the right koan, right there with the right koan.

[23:31]

And what appeals to me is this topic, ascending the seat. It also includes me as the listener because it doesn't make any sense for anybody ascending the seat when there is no one listening. Various things went or go through my head at one of them. The question is, how do I practice? What is my practice? In this year I have been sitting zazen only intermittently.

[24:33]

Basically only when someone asked me to sit with me. Or when I felt like it, but not in any way regular. But I can say that every day, very often, my attention is on my breath. Especially in these difficult situations in which I was. Have I done that? I did that. So it has helped me a great deal, and it was not that I consciously decided to bring my attention to the breath, but it just happened.

[25:56]

And I found it helpful or kind of confirmation that Rashi used this as example of an enactment ritual. or are there things like taking things with both hands which I do in my everyday life? So in this week the practice which I had thought had gone far away has come closer again because I feel that I am practicing even though I do not sit zazen regularly

[27:23]

Speaking while being silent and being silent while speaking. That is the sentence that appeals most to me. Now the question arises, how can one enter the silence? And Roshi several times mentioned meeting or encounter.

[28:52]

How do I meet the silence of all things? How do I meet the silence of the myriad forms? This morning, when I listened to Russia, I thought, oh, it's very simple. On the other hand, everything is very complex and complicated. And last night I had a kind of waking moment and the sentence appeared in my mind, 40 degrees below and 40 degrees heat, it's all the same.

[30:26]

I had to laugh in my sleep, I could hear myself laughing. although this sentence is a total riddle to me shows it to me the two contrasts light and heavy An experience I had here through being here and through Roshi's teaching was in meditation to have a feeling of emptiness.

[31:48]

So maybe emptiness sounds like a very big thing. It was just that breathing could flow freely and no thinking came up. Now I think maybe this would be a way So I think maybe this could be the way to meet the silence of the myriad forms. Yes? The question was The question was how we use or work with the koan, and I'm a bit unsure whether maybe it's not the other way around that the koan works with me.

[33:20]

I feel totally shaken today like I was in a rickshaw. When I look back on the koan work during the last winter branches weeks, to pause for the particular. I remember that maybe one and a half or two years ago we were sitting here in this room discussing how to translate the phrase to pause for the particular into German.

[34:20]

And at that time it was new for me and it was very difficult for me. and now and also through the kind of being shaken that this has become part of my life and has flowed into my life. and in the meantime I realize how this pausing stops the current of my consciousness from the self-directed thinking and I notice and realize that this pausing stops self-referential thinking and stops conditionings and how it becomes possible through these pauses to let life come towards me.

[35:29]

Yes, doctor Last time when I was here we were working on the koan number six When this koan I remember very well poison working as a medicine and through this horn we are coming to the same point but this time not as a mental platform the gate is not a mental platform but we use the word by showing the two doors I realize we can have

[36:49]

Doors of seeing, hearing, smelling I cannot make And the question arises So, that's the question So if from Sandokai, seeing the known world is not the perfect enlightenment. Can you repeat that please? I couldn't quite understand. The verse from Sandokai, seeing the principle, seeing the principle is not the final enlightenment. I was in the group of Pauls.

[38:41]

I was in Paul's group. And Paul asked us how we enter the koan. And I said, when I read it, it wasn't the case. I was in Paul's group and Paul asked us how we enter the koan. So first I said the case itself I didn't find so interesting. But the verse, Clouds sweep the eternal sky, Nesting in the moon the crane, The cold clarity gets into his bones, He can't go to sleep. He has a great resonance in me. But this verse resonated very much with me. And when I read this at home, and it moves me very much, So when I read this verse, I thought how nice it would be if Hans Dieter Hirsch, the poet Simon recited or named, could hear or read this poem or verse, because he was a good friend of mine.

[40:18]

And when I heard your poem, I thought, it would have been great if you had experienced it. It would have been great. And if Hans Dieter Hüsch could have listened to Simon, he would have liked it very much. Yes, and... So during the last days I've been working with this verse or sentence to see what happens within me. I'm very happy about this. accidental metering. I would like to go on, but I think I should probably say a little something about the koan.

[42:31]

And about the winter branches. And of course, winter's branches is something we've created together. And we started out with the Abhidharma. And by your choice, we mostly continued with koans. That can continue or change as we wish. The good thing about the koans is that we can make use of them as practice But we can also use them as teaching in the sense that much of the Abhidharma, if you look at the koans carefully, you can also study the Abhidharma through the koans.

[44:10]

Yeah, for example. And I made the, we made the rules of participation in the winter branches a little bit demanding. Two one-week commitments, a sashin and a winter branches week and a weekend. In America, nobody could come because people's full vacation is two weeks, even if you've been with a company for years. or a school.

[45:15]

So I thought almost nobody could come and we can work with a small group of people, eight or ten people. Now we have several groups of eight or ten all at the same time. But also we become somehow like a family. And we can't exclude people from a family just because they have family problems. After what you've said, I'm right now worrying about your boys. Okay. And... So I think, as Akbar and I discuss, someone like you can't come for a while or something else, and what should we do?

[46:22]

And generally, because we can't exclude someone in the family, we try to make it happen, allow it to happen. As long as we can somehow keep the sense of the gel, the connectedness that makes it work and practice together. Yeah, so I don't have anything more to say about it than that but it's a kind of open-ended situation how we continue and how You know, make exceptions but make as few exceptions as possible because exceptions become precedents and so on.

[47:42]

We have to decide that together, not somehow. Peter? Peter? No, I'm just saying he wants to speak to you. Okay. Now, looking at koans is... One thing we can do looking at koans, and sort of why I put the lineage chart up there in the wall, is because they give us an opportunity, a koan like this one particularly, to study our lineage.

[48:50]

Now, what does that mean, to me at least? You know, there's these cows next door in Holgerner's barn, and in the field are making their moans and moos. And they have nearly the same DNA as we do. But they don't have a lineage. I think this is quite amazing actually.

[50:07]

So they have a genetic identity of some sort. And I think their Sambhogakaya mind is probably more often active than ours. But they don't establish a lineage. They go from cow to hamburger and then... Well, it's the buffalo burgers which are saving American bison. Yeah, see, one's looking at me like... Well, I mean, until people started eating buffalo burgers, the bison were disappearing in America.

[51:17]

Now people like Ted Turner who founded CNN. And others have, now there's millions of buffalo because there's people eating buffalo. Okay. Anyway, but it's very explicit in Taoism, which is late Taoism, not the Taoism of Lao Tzu, that your identity, you have sort of three identities. a biological genetic identity, a cultural identity, and a lineage identity.

[52:19]

And the lineage identity is considered to kind of be a path that includes the genetic identity and the cultural identity but weaves something unique. And in the Taoist lineage you have very specific, you know, not that I've practiced it, but I know a little bit about it.

[53:24]

You have fairly specific instructions you're supposed to learn to embody and follow. And those instructions are supposed to function in you to develop an identity unique within your culture. But shared by others. In the lineage. Both horizontal and vertical. No, by horizontal and vertical, I assume you understand it means vertical through generations and horizontal in one particular contemporary generation.

[54:34]

Now, Zen, I'm going to... This is kind of a lot to say, but I'll try to say it in a condensed... not too condensed... We also have to eat to live and continue our identity as separate. And now that Simone and Peter think they've understood, they're... I think that the primary way in which Zen and Taoism are similar is in this concept of a kind of secret DNA that's evolved through lineage practice.

[55:57]

Yes, I'm just, I don't know, secret DNA. Anyway, I'm trying to say something. Yeah, so... So it's not just that, you know, Yaoshan is the disciple of Shido.

[57:18]

So it is not only that Yao Shan is the disciple of Xiu Dao, who is the disciple of Hui Neng, and Yun Yan and Dong Shan, It's rather that there's a kind of teaching about what the possibilities of being are. Bob Dylan said, that to be an artist you have to be continuously becoming. He didn't say you have to be continuously creative.

[58:22]

You have to be continuously becoming. And that may lead to creativity. And that's not so different than trying to stick to, I mean, I think he's touching the sense of an actuating present. Okay. So the kind of teaching or vision of being or of the world, was it various people hit upon because of their needs or whatever? I'm saying it's not unique to Buddhism. But it's not usually it's unique to individuals but not usually turned into a lineage.

[59:48]

But if you do look at you know say the history of science you'll see that Very often, a particularly creative scientist has studied, lived with, or practiced with, or something, some other very creative scientist. And in art and painting and architecture, And in science you see that there are these kind of lineages that often last one or a hundred years or several generations, and then there's another, etc. Because something really does happen between people. that's past, mind to mind, body to body, or so forth, that is that the same person

[61:18]

as talented or intent or whatever as that person is, energetic, without that contact something different would have happened. Now Zen has tried to take this and develop it over... How can I put it? Has tried to take this and conceive of it as something that's happened over centuries. But probably, while it has happened over centuries, it actually happens in each moment.

[62:40]

Okay, so what do I mean? How do I practice with Yaoshan? I just answered my question. How do I practice with this Quran? I practice with Yaoshan. I conceive of Yaoshan as a friend. Somebody I know well.

[63:41]

And you can use this case of Yao Shan to get to know our lineage. Now, I guess I have about 91 lineage ancestors back to Buddha. And there's a real lineage of passing the teaching for a thousand years or so. That's pretty good. Probably not for 2500 years. It's probably mostly made up at a certain point. But I'm impressed by a thousand years. Okay. But it's not simply a matter of that actual persons have passed the lineage, the teaching. And that, as most of you know, is what winter branches means.

[64:51]

The branches look like they're just dead. And when spring comes, they bloom. So from one point of view, the branches just look like branches. From another point of view, there's always a kind of secret spring, silent spring. Okay. So you never know when they're going to bloom. Okay. So what some very realized and talented persons did, primarily in the Sun dynasty, is they basically created the lineage as an identity.

[66:03]

as an enlightened identity. And they packaged it in various persons. In other words, they gave certain aspects of this to Yaoshan. And then they gave other aspects of the enlightened identity to Dongshan. and to others also. So by the time you're at Dogen, you have Dogen as this kind of genius and a practice practitioner. And he's continuing the concept of this lineage that was created in the Sung Dynasty.

[67:30]

Okay. Yeah, okay. So I'm kind of weaving back and forth to try to give you a feeling for this. Okay, so how do I, again, I have the question, how do I practice with this koan? I treat, again, Yaoshan as a figure or friend. who can be me or I can be him at certain times. No. He's presented in this koan as saying, I don't, you know, I'm not a teacher of the sutras or

[68:33]

Shastras. But if you read, you know, it's good to kind of read quite a few stories about him. So if you, although there's 91 or 92 persons now in your lineage, I actually forget whether I'm the 90th or 91st anyway. It's just a number. But you can use Yaoshan, since we're working on this koan, as a way to get to know Shida. and a way to get to know the persons on either side of him.

[69:49]

So if you can open up a little area of the lineage to yourself, by, say, getting to know Yaoshan sort of well, and that's some other time you get to know Nargajuna sort of well, and so forth. So the lineage kind of likened opens up or becomes illuminated at various points. And that illumination of sections sort of starts extending to the other sections. And this takes a while, it takes some time before you kind of enter into this process.

[70:55]

But there's no hurry. You have your lifetime. Which has no length. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, Yaoshan is presented as a young man, a teenager, deciding to practice. as having studied the sutras and the shastras and following the Vinaya. Then he found it was too much. The Vinaya was 227 rules for men and 311 for women. 77 for men and 311 for women.

[72:01]

And he, after a while, thought this was a few too many. He wanted 311. So he decided he'd like to practice Zen. So he went to Shido and said, you know, I'm pretty good at sutras and shastras and so forth, but I want to know about directly pointing at mind. This story sets the stage for Koan 7. Where he says, I'm not a teacher of Shastras and Sutras. You shouldn't read the Sutras.

[73:02]

I'm a teacher who directly points at mind. So when he ascends the seat and when he gets down, he's directly pointing at mind. So for us, the koan is, what mind is he pointing at? Okay, and then there's various stories which illustrate what mind he's pointing at. Like, Nafshan is sitting and Shiloh comes by. And Shida says, what are you doing? And Yashan says, I'm not doing anything.

[74:25]

And Shida says, you all know these stories, but anyway, Shida says, well, then you must be sitting leisurely. And Yashan says, Yeah, yeah. Shido says, Yaoshan says, if I were sitting leisurely, I'd be doing something. And so Shido says, what is this that you're not doing? And Yaoshan says, a thousand Buddhas could not know. And another story Shido says, here not even a needle can enter. And Yao Shen says, here it's like planting flowers on a stone. So what mind is this?

[75:33]

That not even a needle can enter. Or a thousand Buddhas can't know. Or like planting flowers on a rock. And another famous story of Yashan, the most famous, which is the implicit subject of much of Dogen's teaching, Yashan says, the practice is to think, not thinking. What is not thinking? Then he says, non-thinking. Yinsatz des Denkens. Yinsatz des Denkens. What is this mind which is to think, not thinking?

[77:04]

That's not really different from to not invite your thoughts to tea. But how does this mind function? And in this particular koan you're really getting a kind of window into the secret DNA of the lineage. When do you, as this koan points out, when you dream, The content of the dream is not voluntary. So what about a mind, a non-dreaming mind in which the content is not voluntary? Can this mind function in the midst of your usual mind?

[78:05]

And what does that start bringing forth? It brings forth something that the cows can't know. And not even a thousand Buddhas can know. And it's not the same as your cultural knowing. And not the same as your natural biological identity. but something that functions not through consciousness, but begins to kind of reveal things to us. And some of you refer to these experiences. So, Yashin is saying, in my monastery, In this monastery we are not studying the sutras or the shastras.

[79:34]

We are finding this mind that not even the sages can know. That's the practice of this monastery. That's the practice of this monastery. Das ist die Praxis dieses Klosters.

[79:54]

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