Yes. Could you say more about the physiological posture? Okay. Yes. You're so serious. I mean, this is so simple. Um... Your favorite fantasy? My favorite fantasy? Yeah. Fantasy, yeah, of how the sangha should look in 10 or 20 years. Oh, I didn't know which of my favorite fantasies I should share with you. Well, let me just say it'd be nice if you were still meeting in this room. And next week, or this coming week from Wednesday, I will be meeting in this room again.

[01:21]

Some of you will be here next week, but most of you won't. It will be a different room. And in 10 years it will be a different room. Okay, what else? I haven't forgotten. Yes. I would be interested to know how to get into the material stream of learning. The material stream? Yes. I would be interested to hear how to enter the material stream of the lineage. Are you not there already? I don't know. I mean, you know, we could give you some...

[02:23]

symbols of entering the material stream by taking some material off the top of your head. But she might not like that. I don't know. It really comes down to just and it should be more so, it will be more so, during whatever years I am continuing, just the people I happen to be able to be next to. It's not going to be about who I should be next to, but just whoever happens to be there, because that's the way it works. And you're the only other Richard I know, and so if our material streams can be closer together too, that's nice. And you are the only other Richard I know.

[03:42]

And if our material streams were together, that would be nice. Yes, okay. Yes. I mean, it's not good, but I still want to bring it up. I am not deadly serious, but I do want to still mention this. Because my favorite thing would be if you could just speak more koan, koan, koan. And with that I would like to say how grateful I am that you let us fall into this choir room today. And by saying that, I also want to say how grateful I am for how you've let us or helped us fall into this koan space today.

[04:56]

And I've just enjoyed the resonance of it so much. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I just have a feeling that there's so much in it, and it resonates with so many aspects. There's the poetry of it, and the depth of it, and how you manage to pull this together and bring it out, and in your words, that there's just so much in it. And in that is also the gratitude for all the years of the winter branches, because that was so much of an opportunity for us to develop things together.

[06:13]

So you can't see how it happens, that it was always possible, how you, from the first Tejo, in a way that is indescribable, brought us in there, but at the same time we could also jump in and develop something. And it's indescribable how you, throughout the winter branches from the first taisho on, have managed to find ways to bring us into a koan and made it possible for us to enter it. And we also were able to enter it. And just so much developed from that. Thank you for knowing that, recognizing that. Danke, dass du das anerkennst. The koans are a multi-generational creation.

[07:22]

Die koans sind generationsübergreifende Kreationen, Schöpfungen. They were a creation of some centuries of shared practice. So they're a resource that goes beyond any single person. yeah and so one of the you thought his question was serious your question was really serious yeah anyway so that that If as a sangha we discover how to explore these extraordinary records, these koan records, this is what the job of the lineage is.

[08:29]

As you said, in the winter branches we did get a feeling together. Okay. You haven't said anything yet, just scratched your head. Maybe you could say something. Maybe you could say something. If I look back at this review these last 16, 17 years, I'm not that old.

[09:34]

I must say I have found a confirmation. Whether my path has a heart. It was not really clear until a few years ago, and I think it was six years ago, then it was really clear to me that this way of the heart, and what could have happened here, and I spoke to you about it a few years ago, that what really counts in the rain is here and now. And so for the longest time, this wasn't clear to me. But maybe five or six years ago, it suddenly became clear to me that this path, my path, has a heart. And I was able to experience this here.

[10:37]

And I think we talked about it a little bit. And what really matters in life is here and now. That was really a goal that came up and when I talk about a goal, then I always talk about this goal-less goal from the very large room of the museum. And And if there's a gate to the path, then I find it to be a gateless gate, opening into the infinite width of the mind or consciousness, the space of consciousness.

[11:56]

And in this question of mine, whether the path has a heart, what I found in it is that I've learned to love someone without needing to possess them, be it my wife or my daughter or just a friend. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. Yes. These all don't have to be goodbye statements. Hello. Our title is Continuing Practice. And the subtitle is Undivided Activity. And the subtitle of the subtitle is You Are Nothing But Birds. Really?

[13:10]

That was your suggestion in this debate email about the title. Yeah, okay. I sort of remember. Yesterday we had a very nice Sangha Council meeting here in this room. We had a large circle. And it felt very good, and it was one of the many births that have happened in this room. Any highlights from it? Nothing but highlights. Oh, nice. Okay.

[14:14]

So maybe I should, if I may interrupt the processive now. Progressive and processive. Progressive and processive. Progressive and processive. a process which only has the goal of being a process. I've suggested I might want to talk about the seal beyond the elbow and all this. And since the meeting which will be coming up here starting Wednesday evening will be

[15:18]

aimed at, but not primarily only, or not only for psychotherapists. And I think I suggested Psyche and Soma, or Psyche and Soul, or something like that. And I think my suggestion was Psyche and Soma as a title. And certainly the psychology and psychotherapy is the most parallel craft to Buddhist practice. Is the, you know, I don't know.

[16:42]

I'm just saying things right. I don't know what I'm talking about. But is it possible that maybe we could explore, is the psychotherapeutic relationship actually a kind of conversation with God? I mean, I know some therapists think that. In other words, is the concept of the soul a way of communicating with God? Now, I'm actually going to see Brother David Steindl-Rust Tuesday, a week from this Tuesday. And he's a very old friend, and we, in fact, he practiced, did ongoing 90-day practice periods at Tassajara when I was there.

[17:47]

We gave a talk together a while ago in Austria, and he announced that Baker Roshi asked me, Dick, I don't know what he calls me, asked me, could you try out imagining there's no God? And he said, I really tried, but after two days I couldn't do it. Yeah. But also I used to get kind of mad at him because one time we drove across the country and our conversations, he always ended up sounding like a Zen Buddhist.

[19:10]

I say, I want you to sound like a Christian so I have something to think about. But is somehow the therapeutic relationship maybe embedded in a Christian idea of a relationship to soul? And through that conversation, you come to the truth of something. And you purge your emotions or transform your emotions. Yeah, now, Okay, so what would be a parallel dynamic in Buddhism?

[20:19]

If the condition of trueness trustworthiness is taking into account everything. Wenn die Bedingung der Wahrhaftigkeit vielleicht oder der Vertrauenswürdigkeit, Wahrhaftigkeit, wenn das alles in Betracht zieht, Now, if that's the case, and because if you have a culture which only says, here it all is, here it all is, is all there is.

[21:22]

So here it all is, if there's anything called the truth, here it all is would be the only measure of the truth. Now, what I'm saying is that in yogic culture there's an implicit Because there's no God creating space or anything like that. There's an implicit sense that this is just what it is. So this, if we're going to call something true, this what it is has to be what truth is. So how do you establish a relationship with everything as it is? Dann ist die Frage, wie stellst du eine Beziehung her mit allem, so wie es ist?

[22:47]

So that would be in some way the condition of being living close to how things actually exist or living a true existence. Und das wäre in gewisser Weise eine Bedingung dafür, dass du nahe daran lebst, wie die Dinge tatsächlich existieren. Was war das letzte Wort? Yeah, it's okay. I've never explored this exactly this way before and not with others. But behind or within any activity of us human beings, there are certain overarching, overriding or fundamental concepts.

[23:52]

Now, if one of these concepts is the truth of everything as it is, Then the question is, can you establish a relationship to everything as it is? Okay, now. So the dynamic of everything as it is is not soul or psyche, would have to be now, as I said, immediacy is the name of the game.

[24:58]

So immediacy arises through everything as it is. entsteht durch alles, so wie es ist. So if in Christian culture, and by the way, we're saying God's base, etc., I am not in any way being... I'm not interested in comparisons between Christianity and Buddhism or which is better or something like that. What interests me is how does the construction of our Western culture or our Christian culture or our Abrahamic culture but what interests me is the question of how the construction of our Western culture or a Christian culture or the Abrahamic culture functions to make our lives possible.

[26:23]

And then, of course, I'm interested in how does Buddhism function to make our lives possible. And then I'm interested in the overlap. The dissonance and the resonance and so forth. Okay, because these fundamental in the background, which are actually the foreground ideas, so these background ideas push into the foreground with like feeling you have a soul. And you can talk with your soul. And you have Socrates' daimon, which becomes demon, of course, in Christian culture. So even in pre-Christian Western culture, there's the idea of talking to yourself.

[27:25]

Now, is the therapist in a sense the intermediary of talking with yourself as you might talk with God through the soul, and then hence love and not compassion is emphasized? Well... And as far as I know I'm not Chinese. you've noticed, that there's no tradition in Chinese culture of talking to yourself. But there is, in a sense, a talking with immediacy.

[28:47]

Your relationship to immediacy is a kind of dialogic role in which immediacy tells you what you're doing, how close you are to immediacy or not, et cetera. So compassion is fixing up immediacy. It's Tsuji Hiroshi's compassion which moved him to America to try to use Buddhist practices and wisdom to fix up the immediacy which were these two wars.

[29:50]

He was America and Japan and the Sino-Japanese War. He was in the midst of both, as I said. And it was Suzuki Roshi's compassion that ensured that he moved into the United States to find a lever there to deal with the mediocrity. And his mediocrity existed in the two wars in which he lived, as I said, the Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War. And in a minor way, I shared the same feeling because, as I've mentioned now and then, as a kid I grew up listening to the war news in America about America and Europe, Second World War. And I suppose it traumatized me that we human beings were out there shooting each other all over this place over there across the Atlantic for me.

[30:53]

For me, I rejected the fact of it by saying I don't want to be a human being. That's what human beings are. So I spent the rest of my primary school and high school and college trying to find another way to be a human being, which led me to being sitting here with you. So. So. The relationship to the, in Western culture, it seems to me, there's a relationship to soul as the intermediary between God and yourself.

[32:25]

The shared territory with God. It seems to me that in Western culture there is something like a relationship with the soul as a mediator between you and God. A kind of common space. Yeah, okay. Something like that. Now, what I see in yoga culture is the way to talk to the truth is through immediacy. It's the power and... and development of your relationship to immediacy, which connects you to how everything actually exists. Now, that's expressed in this koan in a very interesting way.

[33:30]

Now, we're not... The word I'm using here is allness in English. And I don't mean wholeness. There's no wholeness because everything's changing. There's already one more, two more, seven. So there's no wholeness. And there's no oneness. That would be theology. And there's often experiences that we can have an experience, as I've often said, of oneness. And then we sometimes think everything is one.

[34:38]

That's a projection. And we can have an experience of wholeness. But I would not use the word wholeness if I had such an experience because it carries... Yeah, a sense that there's a wholeness. I would say, myself, if I had such an experience, I'd say, I felt complete. And then I would notice that completeness could be, feeling of completeness could be renewed. And what I'm pointing out here is that the choice of words you use, wholeness or oneness or allness, make a huge difference in how you actually extend it into your lived world.

[35:59]

So now you have this world in which this koan is written, literally written by a brush. And it's pretty hard to brush your teeth. No. It's pretty hard to... It's demanding, as I said, to write with a brush. And... And the whole person has to be present in it.

[37:05]

You can't, I mean, when you drive a car, you should be present. Unless you're at least partly present, you know, it's not rather dangerous. So, likewise, the brush full of ink and the paper requires a So when somebody gets a love letter or a poem or whatever, a document from somebody, and it's been hand-brushed, you feel the presence of the person was really there. And in the simple kanji of a person, which is this and this, like a walking person, if the connection isn't about two-thirds and one-third, it doesn't read. They don't know what it means. So the proportion has to be just right. Or it's not the same character.

[38:24]

So you have to be present to do this. There should be a clarity in how you pull the brush away from the paper. Yeah, okay. Yeah. So, the calligraphy itself becomes a testament to the truth of immediacy. Die Kalligraphie selbst wird ein Zeuge von der Wahrheit der Unmittelbarkeit. Okay. Then when it's really yours, you have a seal and your name is written on the seal carved in stone.

[39:30]

So you take the seal and you have to put it on red ink. I have to do it myself when I give Chukai to someone. And it does mean that sometimes you do it and the ink isn't right. You have to get the ink right. It takes a certain pressure. And you can't smudge it. You can't turn it. You can't put it down and then turn it slightly. It smudges. How do you know the word smudge? It's like schmutz. I'm schmutz. That's my dog, schmutz. Here, schmutz. Here, schmutz.

[40:33]

Maybe I need a cat name, schmutz, too. Andy Warhol had about 30-some cats, and he named them all Sam. And because they were all the same. Okay. So you have to put it down and you can't smudge it and you have to press evenly or, you know, et cetera. So that ascertains the truth of what you've written. You've written it, your presence is in each kanji, and then you put your seal on it which says this is true. So how does that relate to this koan? Now, I should pretend I'm losing it by wondering where my glasses are, but I remember.

[41:50]

So, Ken Dunn, who was one of the, two compilers of this compilation. Tianlong, einer der zwei Zusammensteller dieser Sammlung, says the ass is a kind of poem. The donkey or the ass looks at the well. Es ist eine Art Gedicht. Also da steht, der Esel schaut in den Brunnen. The well looks at the ass, at the donkey. Der Brunnen schaut den Esel an. Wisdom is all-embracing. In other words, wisdom is manifest in all-at-onceness.

[42:53]

And then it says, what really means here is, immediacy pervades with abundance. And then it says, but who sees the seal behind the elbow? Now, that's not a thing we, what the hell is that about? Of course, the seal is in your hand. And it requires a certain pressure and carefulness to put the seal down. And there's a seal behind the elbow? What's that about? Okay. Behind the elbow, who sees the seal?

[43:55]

In the house, no books are kept. Undivided activity. There's no records. The loom threads aren't even strong. The loom threads are not strong. Yet there's the work of the shuttle. Und dennoch arbeitet das Schiffchen. How can the shuttle be working if there's no threads in the loam? Wie kann das Schiffchen arbeiten, wenn es doch gar keine Fäden im Webstuhl gibt? And it says, then the pattern goes vertically and horizontally. Und dann heißt es, das Muster fährt vertikal und horizontal.

[45:02]

And it says basically then, the meaning arises through the meaning. Okay, what does, the whole point of this is, what is the seal behind the elbow? That's asking you, how do you open yourself up to everything at once pushing your elbow? So the sense of it is that through samadhi or practice, through letting the well with its darkness look at you, It's not the reflection looking at you, it's the well looking at you.

[46:15]

And letting the well, everything, all the circumstances look at you is the seal that's actually pushing the elbow. This is using metaphors to think about how do we relate to the truth of everything at once in our immediate life. So the koan, real subject of the koan is, how do you let everything all at once affect you and touch you and guide you? So how do I, sitting here with you, let feel, be open to all of you showing me what I should speak about?

[47:24]

Wie kann ich hier, während ich hier sitze, offen für euch auf einmal sein, dass ihr mich geleitet und zeigt, worüber ich sprechen sollte? Also seid ihr das Siegel hinter dem Ellbogen. Now, for instance, in a koan it might say, a further story, Apha might say, yes, I'm glad to be here, and I can see that the seal is present. And if you said that, I'd realize you had a grasp on the koan. Yes, I can see that the seal is... Present. Present. And I actually heard her say that. She didn't notice it, but I heard it. Okay, so that's good enough to end, right? Something else? Anything? We have ten minutes? Or three, or one, or minus five.

[48:59]

But to understand this sense of the seal behind the elbow, this took me a long time to recognize. Yes, Sandy. Yes, I'd like to say that. That reminds me of a poem by Rilke. Oh, that's a beautiful poem. Apollo's torso. Which the last line is, there is nothing that does not see you. I read those poems are great, but particularly in Leishman's translation when I was 18. And they affected me a lot. I felt I was home. Nothing that does not see me.

[50:13]

There's no place that does not see me. Okay, let's be quiet for a moment. Okay.

[50:18]

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