Since you've all read, I assume, the koan, you know the illustration of the koan, or of, yeah, of the illustration for the koan of the encounter between Dung Shan and Shui Feng. So, Xue Fang is working in the kitchen and separating, it must have often been the case, grit and so forth from the rice. And Schwefan worked in the kitchen, and as it is often done, he separated the rice from the... How did I say that in German?

[01:02]

From the stones. Thank you, from the stones. And... Spelzen. Spelzen. Okay, Spelzen. Spelzen. Yeah, that's what the story is about. We don't know what it's about. Whether it's speltzing or not. Yeah. So Dung Shan says, what are you doing? Cleaning the grit out of the rice or the rice out of the grit? Und da fragt Dung Shan, Shui Fang, was machst du denn da? Trennst du den, oder säuberst du den Reis von den Spelzen oder die Spelzen vom Reis? And Shui Fang says, both gone. Und Shui Fang sagt, beide verschwunden. And then Dung Shan says, oh dear, then what is the Sangha, what is the community going to eat? Und dann sagt Dung Shan, oh je, was soll denn die Sangha, was soll die Gemeinschaft denn jetzt essen?

[02:07]

And Shui Fang just turns over the bowl. Yeah. And then Dongshan says, well, you've got it, but you need to know someone else in order to understand it, to realize it. And this is parallel, this story is conceptually parallel to Rinzai, Linji saying, sometimes I take away the subject, sometimes I take away the object, sometimes I take away neither and sometimes I take away both. Yeah, so that's that shared lineage of Rinzai and Linji. Dongshan is present in this koan. So when he says to him, are you cleaning the grit out of the rice or the rice out of the grit?

[03:35]

He's taking away intention, taking away the subjective. So in this Zen sort of dialogue through physical objects... Xue Feng says, both taken away, both gone. And so, as I just said, Dongshan says, oh, shucks, there'll be nothing to eat then.

[04:38]

So at that point, Xue Feng really says, all gone. So again, this is an illustration and not an explanation. And it's an illustration, like trying out the guitar, that you investigate. As you know, most of you know, I incurably create neologism. Sometimes it's a neologistic logjam, a stow. But anyway, for me, I would say you breast, [...] I can't even say it myself, breast-visticate.

[06:01]

Not investigate, but breast-visticate. No, okay, fine. I mean, investigate means to go into tracing and tracking. So this is using the breath to go into tracing and tracking. It really is rather hard to say. It's easy to write. Breath-vestigate. Ah, breath-vestigate. The English word investigate means to follow and to feel. And the word that he tries to create is a combination of breath and examine. Now, I do this not, you know, it's also because I just want to take the baggage away from all of our English and German words which are leased out to Western culture.

[07:10]

So if I say breath-vestigate, if I say that, you can just say the same thing, breath-vestigate. Hey, good. We could do a little number. It makes you then sort of think, breath, investigate. I mean, maybe you will actually breath-vestigate. Yeah. And so that's one thing I think you should breathvestigate, investigate. Both gone, both gone. Both gone.

[08:11]

And the other, of course, we should breathvestigate the one who is not busy. And also I think a third really at the center of this koan is that Yunyan and Daowu are illustrating the basic active activity of the Dongshan transmission lineage. As are, he is, Xue Feng and Dung Shan. So it means that, how are you going to do this presumed, assumed investigation? In each situation, whatever it is, looking at the moon, looking at the stream, looking at another person, being present with another person,

[09:35]

Can I take away intention? If the two of us or several of us are standing here, can we take away the subjective? Well, you can imagine separating rice and grit and pebbles or whatever, and you're just doing it. There's no longer an intention present. And again, this is an investigatory repetition. Now and then, in the midst of whatever you're doing, you feel I've taken the subjective away. If there's always present the subjective, there's always you, I, me present,

[10:57]

You're stuck with it. Somehow, sometimes you have to unstick it, unstick the subjective from your experience. And then you investigate that feeling. What does that feel like, to have no subjectivity present? And can we take away the object, too, so that no objectivity is present? No objects are present. And what I read you yesterday, the adept is not known by name and form. Name and form are understood by the adept to be non-conceptual. So you're playing around with your experience, your brain streamed experience.

[12:10]

It's kind of a sensorium Netflix. It's being streamed all the time from the way your brain presents the world to us. Now, excuse me for reminding you, but each of you is going to die. I'm sorry to remind you. Isn't it funny? We need reminding. Isn't it funny that we need reminding? Yeah, and every time you give that sweet little baby the newborn, we give birth to somebody, and then what do we do? We put them in the position they have to die. Oh, shucks. We welcome the baby and then say, oh, too bad, you're going to have to die.

[13:34]

We learn that rather slowly. But let's use me as an example. I thought there would be an exception made in my case, but I recognize now there won't be. So I'm going to die, right? But I hope that you all will continue after I die. You and whatever we call the world will continue. Okay. But you won't continue in my Aber ihr werdet nicht in meinen Sinnen weiter existieren. Wenn die Gegenwärtigkeit der Gegenwart, die Dauer der Gegenwart durch meine Sinne ist,

[14:50]

The present right now is my experience, my sensorial experience of all of you. Sensorial experience. Well, that's enough, whatever you said. I'm repeating this, and I've said these things before, but because we kind of need to find language for it, our own language for it, Although it's all happening really outside of language, still language for it allows us to actually notice it and it can begin to make a difference in how we live.

[16:08]

So this sensorial present looks external, but it's actually internal to me. Sinnliche Gegenwart sieht aus wie etwas Äußerliches, aber sie ist tatsächlich etwas mir Innewohnendes, etwas Innerliches für mich. Wenn ich tot bin, dann wird diese Gegenwart in den Sinnen, die jetzt im Moment meine Erfahrung von euch ist, das wird alles weg sein. Okay, it'll be gone. But it still exists right now. It's just, it exists in a much wider way than within my sensorium.

[17:11]

In other words, you will continue, let's hope, after I die. That which will continue after I die also exists right now. And what will continue after I die exists right now. And it exists right now, but not in my sensorium after I'm dead. So if it exists right now, in the same way, pretty much, as it'll exist after I'm dead, then as close as what we can come to call reality exists outside of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mentation.

[18:25]

So then we can understand maybe the Heart Sutra this way. It says no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body. no mind objects. One of the fundamental conditions, as you know, of Buddhist teaching is that we live as close as possible to how things actually exist. As I say, if you pour water from one glass to another, you know that exists.

[19:44]

Gravity is doing it. You just know it. Your body knows it. And your body, if you practice, can know that everything is impermanent. Dein Körper, wenn du praktizierst, kann wissen, dass alles unbeständig ist. Can even know that existence is outside of our sensorium. Kann sogar wissen, dass die Existenz außerhalb unserer Sinne liegt. A dragonfly has something like 30,000... I like dragonflies, as you know. Has something like 30,000 lenses in its eye. And we can handle about 60 images per second, and a dragonfly can handle about 200.

[20:49]

And I've always liked how their four wings work, not like this, but sort of like that. I lived on a lake and I was always hanging out with dragonflies. I grew up along a lake. Yeah, and what makes me sad is driving these days because my windshield used to be an insect collector, but almost no insects hit windshields anymore. What makes me sad is that when I drive, when I drive a car, then it used to be that my windshield was regularly an insect collector and nowadays only very few insects hit the windshield.

[22:00]

I don't know, something like 20% of the... Insects still survive. Who knows how many? Not many. Small percentage. I have a habit of bowing every time I see a dead animal along the road or something like that. And every time an insect hit the windshield, I'd bow, but it would be hard to steer and keep bowing. But now I have no problem. And I wish I had the problem. Anyway, so a dragonfly is living in an entirely different time world than we are. But there's some kind of world outside the dragonfly's sensorium.

[23:05]

And there's some kind of world outside our sensorium. And Buddhist practice says it makes a difference to know this. We begin to function in the world with a sensitivity that extends beyond our sensorium. But that's part of what is meant by the parentage of the one, what I meant by the parentage of the one who is not busy. We can say that as someone related to me recently.

[24:15]

Stillness and the one who is not busy seem to be, you know, the same or related. But of course stillness and being not busy are related. But stillness is, but being not, the one who's not busy is stillness in the midst of activity. And we can understand emptiness is a kind of stillness in the midst of activity. So the Bodhisattva is not, it says in this what I read yesterday, has no location. It's said that Archimedes said that you give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum and I can move the earth.

[25:21]

But there's no fulcrum, there's no lever. There's no name and there's no form. There's no location. The closest that I can get to it is when, you know, that space is the gravity quanta, so they are nowhere, because they are space, they're not in space. I'm not a physicist, but anyway, the concept is very close to Buddhism. And so much of Buddhism seems to be very close as far as I can as an amateur.

[26:43]

amateurish way of looking at science. To me Buddhism becomes a way of living how things actually exist. And as a way as you can take away subject and you can take away object And the fulcrum and the lever... there's no location. And that no location is also the one who is not busy. So that dimension of Yogacara and Madhyamaka Buddhism is present in this koan. That Yuan Wu, Da Wu and Yun Yan have no location.

[28:02]

Or their location is right here, now. Yeah. Now, one other thing in this way of... related way of looking at things. Now again, what I've been saying is much of Buddhist teaching is code for investigatory repetition. Like a simple example is, it's the instructions, as the instructions say, you can lean forward and back and right and left. But that's just code for all the ways you might straighten your posture.

[29:12]

It just means use your body to find your body. Turn your head, whatever. So it's not instructions, it's a suggestion. Okay, so in this shift that you can experience from physical posture to a physiological posture, And the move into a physical posture, into a physiological posture, in the Anapanasati Sutra, it says, visualize or imagine from the soles of your feet, even your toenails, up to the crown of your head.

[30:34]

So this is code for really develop an interior visuality. I've always wondered why we experience it as an inner visuality, although the eyeball is not involved. Maybe it's so much information that it needs to be processed by the visual cortex, which is a large part of our brain. In any case, it's code for developing an inner visuality which... explores your organs and explores from the soles of your feet to this crown chakra.

[31:41]

And it means awaken the chakras from inside. But not just the chakras, awaken the whole interiority of the body. And I think you'll notice in Zazen sometimes you have an inner visual field, but it's not eyeballing, it's an inner visual field. And generally, the code is not explained the way I'm doing it, but I'm doing it. So you develop a skill, it takes a few years really, that you can see, feel inside your body visually. It's like being visual. It's a kind of inner GPS.

[32:51]

You can explore your organs and the activity of your organs as systems, not just as the heart, but as the whole circulatory system. And I'm quite sure the acupuncture points were discovered from inside like that, like this. I think it's not just you poke a lot of places and you say, oh, that seems to be good to poke there. No. So you begin to feel an interiority. And that opens you up to the fact that what I'm seeing now is actually interior.

[33:52]

And the practice of developing an inner visual interiority begins to be a simultaneous inclusion with the exteriorized visuality. And knowing this feeling is also what is... the dynamic of the one who is not busy in the midst of the relationship between Yunyan and Daohu.

[35:14]

I know that not only because it's present in the con in various ways, but I know that also because these two guys could not have practiced Zen as adepts without knowing this inner visuality. And the more you develop that simply through the kind of flashlight of the breath investigation, The inner flashlight.

[36:16]

You begin to feel, and in various circumstances, this third eye chakra begins to be sensitive in some situations and this crown chakra is sensitive in other situations. And that may happen as a gift, but it also happens through practice of developing an interior visuality. No, I don't know. Again, I got only so far. But I think this is enough to give us a feeling for the shifts that are possible through practice and in a koan like this.

[37:20]

We live in this world of subjectivity and objectivity. And it's the four semblances of Yogacara, the semblance of objects. They're objects, but they're only objects within our sensorium, so they're only the semblance of the objects. And the self is only the semblance of a self, a seeming self. And the senses even are only seeming.

[38:26]

And consciousness itself is only seeming. It doesn't reach to the world that exists, whether we're alive or dead. So such an adept lives unlocalized. And that frees us from thought and anxiety. And allows the one who is not busy to say both gone. Is this the way you live? It's possible. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[39:32]

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