Yuan Wu, the compiler of the Blue Cliff Records, said, step back from conventional thinking. Step back from conventional thinking. And worldly entanglements. Then he said something that's kind of oddly translated, but what he means is, and enter the activity of the attentional stream. Und dann sagt er etwas, was ein bisschen merkwürdig übersetzt ist, aber was er meint, ist im Grunde genommen, und trete ein in die Aktivität des Aufmerksamkeitsstroms.

[01:01]

And within an independent awareness. So let me say that again. He said, step back from conventional thinking and from worldly entanglements and generate an attentional stream and engage its active awareness. And then he said, sit upright and investigate reality.

[02:04]

So that's what I'm trying to do. And I think that's what many of us here, maybe all of us are trying to do. Now, one thing I forgot to mention. Maybe you're going to hate me for having forgotten to mention. But it comes, you know, I mention it every now and then, and I guess it's not part of the introductory to Sashin evening. But if your intention is to sit still and at some point the pain is just too much And you have to explore yourself where too much is.

[03:20]

And you sometimes should draw the line too soon. And the next time you draw the line a little later. But it's perfectly acceptable to at some point sit in a rest posture. She says, no, you should have told me that years ago. And you put your knees up, and generally the way is you put your knees up and put your arms around your knees and sit there for a while. But you don't... You then try not to move in that posture. And particularly, if you have any sense that this is damaging you, or that it's causing pain that lasts after the sashim, then you should find ways to sit in units that you can handle.

[04:55]

And especially if you have the feeling that sitting hurts you and that it causes you pain, which also lasts after the session, especially then you should look for units, sit in units that are good for you. I have very stiff joints. Inflexible joints. And it took me a very long time to learn to sit. I think at least a year before I could sit even one side cross-legged, sitting every day. I didn't miss a day in five years or something. And it took me another 15 years, probably, before I could sit the other half lotus. Yeah, I was a middle-aged gent by then.

[06:06]

During the first years, I think I've told you several times, Sukhi Roshi came by in the morning Zazen and leaned over toward my ear and said, Maybe you ought to give up and just sit at home. But I knew this posture somehow made a difference, so I determined to learn to do it. And also I think, it doesn't seem to be, maybe it isn't part of the opening instructions that the sutra card, when you are using it in the service, is held in a mudra of three fingers and your little fingers.

[07:33]

And another thing that is perhaps not mentioned in the opening of the Sashin is that it is also necessary if you hold the sutra cards during the recitation, then you hold them in a mudra. That means you have three fingers on the outside of the card and hold them with the little finger and thumb on the front of the card. I mean, you know, I don't, I'm trying, I've decided, it seems like I've decided in this Tay Show to speak about imaging. And Ezra Pound, the poet and cultural... The commentator was one of my first teachers. I mean, not in person. I could have met him, but I decided not to meet him. Why does he want to meet a young guy like me? So I didn't go to meet him.

[08:34]

And Ezra Pound, the poet and also the cultural commentator, was actually one of my first teachers. So not in person, I could have met him, but I decided not to go to this meeting where he was. I thought, what is he supposed to do with such a young person like me? And despite his crazy and even despicable politics later in life, He anticipated much of what I'm doing now. I don't know how much I got from him, but a lot. He said, for instance, a thing is what it does. Er hat zum Beispiel gesagt, ein Ding ist, was es tut oder was es macht.

[09:38]

And he also said what I said yesterday. I didn't even know he said it till this morning when I happened to notice it. That nouns and verbs flow together as one. So a thing is what it does, is a way of saying everything is activity. Ein Ding ist das, was es macht. Das ist eine Art auszudrücken, dass alles Aktivität ist. Also ist die Dinghaftigkeit der Sutra-Karte Teil ihrer Wirklichkeit und nicht nur der Inhalt, der draufsteht. As I said to somebody during the hot drink who didn't want to drink that strange stuff.

[10:43]

Even if you're not going to drink it, I said, take the bowl because the serving of the bowl, the darkness, the rushing around, that's all part of it. So join in that part even if you don't drink anything. So the hot drink has something to do with this sour rice which is used to make sake. But it's even more about doing something in contrast to our usual way of serving meals. You rush in and you bang the bowls and you...

[11:43]

You know, just a little fun. Contrast. Yeah. You have to have the lights on a little bit so you don't pour the sake dregs all over the hands of the person. So the sutra card is also something that you do. So generally we hold it Three fingers and one finger like that. I know how to do it.

[12:47]

And whether you chant or not, that's irrelevant. Because you create this mudra of your hands and the card and then I'll notice if you don't chant. I usually notice anyway. So the whole idea is that each thing you do with a certain form, a thingness form, a doesness form, and you do it completely whatever it is. And the idea is that everything you do, you do in a certain form, in a thing-like form and in a form through doing.

[13:53]

And whatever it is, you do it 100 to 100%. Yeah, so it's not about whether you feel like chanting it. Time to chant, you chant. Okay. Yeah. And Pound also says he has a word, phanopia, and I don't have to worry about translating it or spelling it, but he talks about it as meaning throwing images at images. And Pound also has a word, phanopia, that, without saying exactly what it means, at least it means

[14:57]

And he created the idea of the poetry movement of the early 20th century called Imagism. Er hat die Idee für diese Bewegung der Dichtkunst im frühen 20. Jahrhundert geschaffen. Sagen wir Imagisten oder was sagen wir auf Deutsch? He talks about really how images, you create an image and then the image works with other images and creates a kind of articulation through imaging. What's the last thing you said? Creates articulation through imaging. Okay. For example, when you bring attention to the body points. You're choosing to create a particular bodily image that functions within your experience of the body.

[16:16]

And you can feel that image because you can feel your spine. and the other body points. Now this feeling like mind over matter, I say arm lift and my arm lifts, that's mind over matter. I thought I proved it, you know? Mine never matters. Yeah. And so if you create this image of the body that's within the body, it begins to have a power within and throughout and outside of the body.

[17:26]

Pound intuited how powerful imaging was, but he had no idea of how it functions within East Asian cultures. And just simple things, like I pointed out before, that our letters and words are on a page, but the page is just paper, just background. When you read a word from a book in English, I spoke in Deutsch, you pick it off the paper and put it in your thinking.

[18:28]

When you are a Japanese or Chinese person and you take an ideograph or a kanji off the paper into your body, the space comes with it and you experience the space of it. It creates space. Space is not just a background. It's a kind of dead thing that you can do without almost. Space is what brings the kanji alive. And you know it in your body. As I pointed out, a Japanese or Chinese person who you ask what is a particular kanji,

[19:44]

A scholar, I mean the newspaper in Japan, because of MacArthur, requires 2,000 characters. Most people would know 3,000 or 4,000. Scholars would know 10, 20, maybe 30,000 characters. The mind isn't smart enough for this. But the body is. So you ask them, they say, well, I'm... Oh, it's that one. So in Koan 15 in the Shoyuroku, the book of equilibrium and equanimity, The Koran 15 in Shoyuroku, the book of equanimity.

[21:26]

Guishan and Yangshan are hanging out around the temple. Actually, Guishan sees Yangshan coming and Guishan says, where are you coming from? Of course, he totally knows where he's coming from. There's no cars, there's no Vespas. So he says, where are you coming from? And very sweetly, Yangshan, the disciple, but they were kind of peers, says, from the fields. And then he says to Yangshan, Guishan says to Yangshan, well, how many people are in the fields or how many are working there? And Yangshan decides not to hit him.

[22:36]

But instead he just stands still. Takes his hoe and, as the word is, plants it in the ground. And clasps his hands. And just stands there. And Guishan says, yeah, on South Mountain there are a lot of people cutting thatch. This is a famous and memorable koan. But what is it about? It's really not about what Guishan says or Yangshan says. It's about creating the image of a person standing, holding a pole, hands clasped in a meditative steadfastness.

[23:58]

sondern es geht darum, das Bild von einem Menschen zu erschaffen, der da steht, mit dem in den Boden gesteckten Spaten, die Hände übereinander geschlagen, in meditativer Standhaftigkeit. Yeah, and as Rapan says, it's thrown into your image field. And he says, it's held in your eye batteries, your eye memory, the batteries of your eye memory and ear memory. And Ezra Pound never made a commentary on this koan, but this is what he would have said. Okay, so... As an image, what's going on there?

[25:14]

In the middle of an irrelevant discursive conversation. Yangshan, on the one hand, is very polite, but on the other hand, he simply goes to the pole. What is the pole? His spine. And the clasped hands represent the flow of energy in meditation. And the pole of the hoe also represents the, and I saw Sigmund and others working with poles today, digging the pond. The pole is also the probing pole, which occurs in many koans.

[26:21]

And the probing pole is how you check, find the depth of something. So here this koan, for someone who thinks and feels in images, As images flow together and overlap each other. So the pole of the whole becomes the probing pole and the spine and then the spine is also a probing pole with which you know the depth of things. Yeah. And, you know, in Koan 35 of the Blue Cliff Records, Which has a similar confabulation.

[27:55]

Confabulation means a context which is fabulous. I was just testing you. Well, you sat up all night. I mean, no wonder you can't remember. No confabulation. So, in Koan 35 in the BCR, it says, in a similar context, Manjushri says, in front three by three, in back three by three. Im Koan 35, da heißt es, sagt Manjushri, vorne dreimal drei, hinten dreimal drei. And this is a koan I presented and worked with Yamada Muman Roshi.

[28:56]

Und das ist ein koan, mit dem ich mit Yamada Muman Roshi zusammengearbeitet habe. So for me, these two koans flow together and instead of on South Mountain there are many people cutting thatch. And I hear Guishan saying in this koan, in front three by three and back three by three. And this in 3, etc., and on South Mountain, these are called, in the koan, they're called basically talismans. Do you have the same word in German?

[30:04]

Talisman. Yeah. And talisman, the etymology of talisman is to complete a result. Sounds like a redundancy, doesn't it? To complete a result. Yeah. The etymology of the word talisman is to complete a result, and it sounds like it's doubled. But it's also like Dogen's genjokon is to complete that which appears. Aber im Genjo Koan von Dogen heißt es auch, das Vervollständigen, was erscheint. And that's a very useful phrase to practice with. When things appear, you complete them. And release them. Receive and release. Das ist ein wirklich nützlicher Satz, mit dem man praktizieren kann. Was auftaucht, das vervollständigst du. Und dann lässt du es los. Du vervollständigst es und lässt es los. But there's no way to practice to complete that which appears, the title of the main fascicle of Dogen, in effect.

[31:12]

Yeah, unless you have established this continuity, attentional continuity. Because without that attentional continuity, you don't have any experience of everything being a continual unit of appearance, a unit of appearance, a unit of appearance. You put it all together. I mean, we tend to put it all together, smear it together as if it was, you know, a magazine illustration, and it's not. It's pixels. Okay. Yeah. Wenn du diese Aufmerksamkeitskontinuität nicht hast, dann neigst du dazu, oder wir neigen dazu, alles ineinander...

[32:20]

Pixels are dharmas. The word Dharma means units of appearance, units of appearance. And it doesn't mean nothing unless it's your experience of units of experience. So a talisman then is often a physical object where something's engraved on it.

[33:23]

And again, the etymology is something like to continue the consequences of of a result, continue the consequences of what appears. And so a talisman is something you carry with you to give you power and luck. And a talisman is something that you carry with you to give you strength and happiness. The Johaneshof is a talisman. Buddha's robe. This is a talisman. I wear it for luck and its power.

[34:28]

And I'm expected to wear it when I'm giving a Dharma teaching. And I can carry my spine in my hand. This all sounds corny, but... The inner schmalz of Buddhism. But I decided when I was young to explore this existence. I mean, I didn't like it. You know, when I was a kid, everyone was running around in Europe shooting each other. And I've always thought it's ridiculous that during most of my lifetime, much of the population has thought the world is created in our image.

[35:34]

And we still have some, it's very hard to get that out, we still have some more than just lingering idea that we're the most important guys on the planet. But I don't think octopuses and squids, cephalopods, think, ah, the world is created in my image. I mean, one octopus would say to the other, you're as nutty as Ezra Pound got. The world isn't created in our image. Look, it's not in a dragonfly's image either.

[36:46]

I mean, we're big-brained critters, that's true. And we're air-breathing. And whales and dolphins are big-brained critters, but they're water-living. And cephalopods are extremely intelligent and subtle, but they have their many brain. They have an interconnected many brain, many brained beings. What is it? They're squids and octopuses. Octopi. Yeah. And so they can't build environments like we do. Because we're smart in a centralized brain sort of way and because we're air-breathing, we can create complex environments, libraries, buildings, cities, books.

[38:24]

Which become part of our intelligence. Yeah. I mean, my intelligence, whatever it is, and your intelligence is related to what you've read and done and so forth. So, I mean, culture is a kind of battery that we use to charge ourselves. And it's a generational battery. And the idea, as I pointed out several times, that the precepts are the bloodline. The idea is, if you take the precepts and decide, this practice is what I'm going to do, You're deciding to join a multi-generational being.

[39:41]

Which in its shared image through the precepts and practices is a kind of multi-generational being. And this multigenerational being is also the Buddha. So commenting on this koan about Yangshan and Guishan Zen Master Toji says when Yangshan clasped his hands and planted himself All the Buddhas and Buddha ancestors disappeared.

[40:50]

It meant it's the Buddhas, it's the collective practices and wisdom of the Buddhas and ancestors which allowed Yangshan to do that the way he did it. And that image then can be a talisman. You can feel that image in your body. And if you're somewhere in the city or in an airport or a train, a supermarket, you can find yourself also, even in your activity, in that image of Janshan.

[41:57]

And when this image or your body points is like a talisman you carry with you, a result you've achieved and now carry with you, As we've talked about, Your personal self-referencing narrative has stepped back. And you've entered a body which we can also say is a universal body. It's the body we all share. And when you know that universal body, you know other people also in various degrees their universal body.

[43:03]

And by feeling how you function from the inside, you often can feel into it, know how other people feel from the inside. And the background of that kind of imaging as a way of being is how the Zendo is a mandala and a mudra. So yesterday I tried to give you a verbal proof An imagistic proof.

[44:26]

That even our world, even our time and space and the experience of the present is a construct. and to know how we actually exist as one of the three main aims of Buddhism, is to feel us in the middle of this construct of space and the present and time. is that we feel the way we are in the middle of this construct, the construct of space, time and the present. And perhaps we can touch it most clearly when we feel the image of Yangshan in the fields.

[45:28]

And Dogen said, I only ask that each of you be steadily intimate with your field and stream of mind. And steadily intimate means... in the midst of the activity of knowing of the stream and field of mind. So thank you for joining with each other and with me in this Sesshin. I'm trying to explore using Buddhism. It's the best system I've found. And going back to a thing is what it does. So I became a Buddhist thing.

[47:02]

Look at it. I'm a Buddhist thing. Because this is what I do. And I'm doing it with and through and with your help, you. I could not do it alone. Thank you very much.

[47:23]

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