Yeah, sometimes when I first look in the window, I see you all momentarily in masks from Carnival in Europe, like Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, or something as if David brought Fasnacht Basel masks to all of you. And you're all sitting there. But you need some drums to beat and things like that. He's head of the drum corps, one drum corps in Basel. Yeah. And then I look again and, no, you look the same as I'm used to. And I guess my feeling when I say that, because, you know, I really do think, oh, geez, look at that. Whoa. I, uh... My feeling is I'm really speaking to you who, for the most part, know I know you very well.

[01:01]

I mean, years, decades, some of you. And that's what I like. I like speaking to an initiated audience or an initiated assembly. But at the same time, I know I have a feeling that I don't know you and I have to speak to those that of you which I don't know." So I have to reach to what I don't know, or at least what you don't know, and that means I don't know, etc., etc. But I say all that and then I don't really have anything to say today, so we'll see what happens. I have some observations. One is, I mean, two startling things I find in this koan 93. And traditionally, teishos are about koans in the Zen tradition.

[02:08]

primarily, especially in Wenzhai, and Keishos are about how you practice with koans or how you practice with your life. Anyway, so I'm always trying to think, I have some observations, but can they be observations you practice with? Anyway, one observation from this I have startling aspect of this poem, is referring to the jewel, the wish-fulfilling jewel, and just saying that, I mean, you know, already, we have an idea, jewels.

[03:11]

Where do jewels come from? Jewels are mined. Okay, so this is, you have the word jewel. So whoever put this colon together said, okay, jewels are mined, so I can use the concept of mined, have been mining coal or jewels, not. Anyway, I can use the concept of mining, to say this jewel is found in the fact that everything changes, is found in thusness, which is a thusness I think we could call a experienceable way to say everything changes. Okay. And so then once you have the word mine, you have the fact that mines have at least, let's emphasize here in this coin, three characteristics.

[04:18]

The hidden, you don't know where the mine is. This, all around here, you find these old mines where some poor fellow, I mean, maybe it was exciting, I don't know, the winters then were unbelievable, how they lived in tin cans and out of tin cans, or in logs, I don't know how they managed, but anyway, they did, and they looked for gold. So we're in a mining camp here, basically. And it's hidden. Where do you find the gold? Where do you find the jewels? So the first is the hidden. And the second is the contained, the included. The mind includes these things. That's where you find them, once you've got the mind. And then there's the production. What happens when you get them out of the mind? So again, I kind of try to avoid speaking philosophically. because it can easily become discursive and then non-experienceable, etc.

[05:30]

But I think we want to see that this practice we're doing holds together conceptually, because if it holds together conceptually for us individually, we won't argue with it so much because you know we're smart and so if you don't even if you don't think philosophically underneath your mind is computing does this hold together does that make sense and after a while sometime in Sashin or at some point you think that doesn't make any sense what am I doing this for so the thoroughness with which if you accept the basic premises Buddhism, especially Zen's version of it, makes sense, I find it completely extraordinary. So if you have some idea of the jewel of enlightenment, something special, the wish-fulfilling jewel, then again, you can practice with, do I have wishes?

[06:38]

You have wishes. If wishes were horses, we could all ride. What are your wishes? What is your, as Sukershi would say, your innermost request, your inmost request? Most deeply, what is your request? So, what would be the wish-fulfilling jewel? And if you do have an inner request, outer request, something that would really make you feel comfortable and at ease with being alive. Yeah. How would you, that wish, how would you attain it? Well, I mean, it's hidden. Where is it hidden? It's hidden in just the fact that everything's changing.

[07:39]

Well, hidden in the fact that everything's changing. That's the problem. Everything's changing. I don't have that in anything. Well, how do you relate to everything that's changing? So that's one. This concept of the jewel as found within the mind of thusness, I think is an extraordinary concept. fruition of the development of koans. Okay, the other thing is that the koan starts out and it says, Lutsu does this and that, blah, blah, blah. And then as soon as the commentary starts, it says, Tianyang got it wrong. It's not Lutsu, it's Shizu. What? What? I mean, this is a thousand-year-old text. You know, it's not yesterday's newspaper. Sorry, the policeman or the judge was Shizu, not Lutsu.

[08:42]

So obviously this has been left in the con for centuries and centuries. Why is it there? Well, it's a perfect, excuse the reference, Derridian deconstruction. Because if the text is presented, that it doesn't even know who the characters are. Ken Dunn's got it wrong. It's not Lutzu. Well then, what's this about? Is it true? Is it false? It becomes your text in its deconstruction. We don't even know really who the characters are, so who are the characters? Your reading it is, of course, the character. Now, I also think it was fun to ferret out, suss out, ferret out, and suss out.

[09:46]

The... parallel to our Western ancient tradition of a philosopher's stone, and that the philosopher's stone is a stone that creates other stones. And I think of Louis Agassiz, who I studied at one time. He was a contemporary of Darwin and opposed to Darwin's ideas and he was one of the smartest people in the known world in the 19th century and And his view was that there was separate creation. Everything was separately created. Horses were separately created. Dogs were separate. He couldn't imagine that horses and dogs had the same ancestors, let alone us had the same ancestors. So this extremely, you know, if you read about him, you'll see, extremely competent in all ways, scientist, teacher,

[10:57]

He just couldn't get his mind wrapped around the idea that thusness was the source of everything. That the source of things are relationships, not objects. And if they're relationships, it leads to something. If the source of things is relationships, then, you know, we're related to dogs and horses and etc., So here you have the philosopher's stone looking for an actual stone which changes other stones into gold, silver, and so on. But this same concept in Buddhism, and we can't know, and I can kind of like, I can trace what looks like an intellectual development within Buddhism over many centuries, but it's That it happened that way, I don't know. It's just the Buddhism as it's now presented to us and been received by us allows us to see that, well, it starts with thusness or relationships.

[12:12]

So this is all about source. The concept of the philosopher's stone or the wish-fulfilling gem is, as I said yesterday, what is the source? Because we have to have a beginning. I mean, really, if you're going to practice, you need to have some sense that there's a beginning to you and to what happens and etc. And maybe we don't need beginnings and we chant beginningless from beginningless etc., And it's this idea that jewel is pervasive. Om Mani Padme Hum. This is the boss mantra, right? Om Mani Padme Hum. Mani is jewel. And Ratnasambhava, one of the five Jnani Buddhas, one of my favorite of the five Jnani Buddhas, Ratnasambhava, which is the Buddha that, in fact, if we ever turn that into a

[13:27]

the dome into a stupa. Christian won't like this because that's our guest season, that's our income. But I also have a fantasy that it'll have the five Jnani Buddhas in it. Anyway, Ratnasambhava will be there. Ratna means jewel. And Ratnasambhava, his particular emphasis is the relationship between perception, sensation, feeling, and consciousness. To realize a consciousness rooted in feeling. Well, this is very much like the mine of the jewel, wish-fulfilling gem, is thusness. Okay, now let me just say some of the thinking. Again, I'm a little embarrassed to be talking somewhat philosophically.

[14:32]

But anyway, I have to share what I'm thinking. Let's just take what is Buddhism based on. That everything changes. And let's say that absolutely everything changes. Everything changes. Absolutely everything. That's how I put it. Absolutely is interesting because it means that things change doesn't change. That's a little joke in the middle. Everything changes. Absolutely everything. Okay. All of Buddhism is based on that. If you really accept that and you live that and you act in that, Your relationship to suffering changes, you know, you worry about whether you're going to die or not. Everything changes through really accepting that absolutely everything changes. Okay, but it's an observation.

[15:40]

And if it's an observation, there had to be an observer. Okay, you can't have a concept like everything changes without an observer. And it is, after all, Words. And the words require an observer using language. And so if everything changes is observed, then you have a context. an observer who's observing the context and what is that observer observing with but a mind and when we look back with buddhism it looks like one of the main differences between western culture and yogic asian culture is how much of the culture stemmed from meditation and how little of it, I mean, there were shamanic rites and ecstatic states and etc., but the degree to which meditation, and also there was quite a

[16:42]

Tradition supposedly, I don't know, you know, I wasn't there, of a kind of psychedelic soma, kind of psychedelic mushroom, psyche and soma. There was a early Indian tradition of using psychedelics of some sorts. And the meditators who emphasized, no, we're going to just use meditation. And the just use meditation, just use meditation theme won out historically with the more definitive. And so the just using meditation approach emphasized unchanging mind. Not a mind changed by psychedelics. Just the observation was rooted in the contrast between a world that changes and developing a mind that by contrast doesn't change.

[17:50]

So developing a field of mind in which things change. So all of that is part of everything changes. Absolutely everything. Okay, so again, that's an observation. How do you make it experienceable? Well, in this case, the emphasis, and we can talk about other examples, but let's just stick with this. Thusness is an experienceable way to describe change. If we have, and I like the fact that there's, you know, we talked the other day, that we have two words in English that sort of translate the word for thusness. One is suchness and one is thusness. And I think they're both useful.

[18:52]

I primarily use thusness, but suchness emphasizes just as it is. And thusness emphasizes just as it goes, or just as it isn't. And this is also in the koan, because the koan speaks about everything comes and goes, is it? Well, Shizu Luzu says, well, what about if it doesn't come and go? That's also it. And what if it doesn't come and go, then is this emphasis suchness, just as it is at this moment, everything in the mind, motionless. You can feel that. Everything's moving. Motionless. Because mind itself is motionless. So this is a territory that's hidden in the mind of thusness.

[20:04]

Until you... You know, Roland said to me... I said to Roland the other day, noticing him in the kitchen, and it's nice to spend time with you, Roland, dear, which I hadn't had the same chance in Europe. And he was, you know, he's learning the kitchen and all these details, and I said... You're learning all these details you can't use anywhere else. And I had that experience in Japan. That's why so many expatriates stay in Japan so long, because you learn all these skills of how to function in Japan, which really is a skill. And then you can't apply it in Los Angeles, you know, so you stay in Japan, because you... You know, it's the most sophisticated skills you ever learn, so you want to keep applying them. Well... It helps people. Usually people last about 12 years who really get stuck. Some get out by three.

[21:06]

Anyway. But I hope actually that what I'm teaching and discovering and teaching and practicing with you are skills, resources you can use everywhere and anywhere. I'm trying to, as layperson, as a monastic, as a European, or whatever your livelihood is, etc. And so I guess what I'm emphasizing now is the conceptual integrity of our practice. So the source of our practice is the realization of thusness, the making use of thusness as the mine of the wish-fulfilling jewel.

[22:11]

And what is the goal of our practice? The Buddha. But what is the biggest name for Buddha? Thusness. So thusness is the source of our practice and thusness is the goal of our practice because tathagata means nothing more than that which comes and goes or that one who which comes and goes. So in the middle of that is the mind of thusness. Yeah. Yeah. Each of you are also Ratnasambhava. Can you feel that? Maybe we should have, you know, if you ever invite me to the fast knock again, maybe I can have a Ratnasambhava mask, or we can have a whole bunch of us wear bodhisattva masks of various kinds, throw the whole thing into confusion.

[23:27]

It's so confusing. It's the most organized confusion I've ever seen. Thousands of people running around in masks, flowing perfectly through the streets. Well, there's more I could say, but it's time to stop. Thank you very much.

[23:49]

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