I'm always a little bit excited before I have to give a lecture. Because can I really say what I'd like to say? And there's, of course, trepidation, because I really don't know. We'll see. Usually I approximate. At least some of what I'd like to say. Okay, we have the six para... Oh, this is just a prop. I love Samanta Bhadra, so I thought she'd be a good friend for the two of us. We haven't translated together too often. Yes.

[01:02]

Samantha Bader is a good friend and I thought she would fit in well with the two of us. We haven't spoken to each other that much. Yes. So Paul Rosenblum Ryuten Roshi just finished today a wonderful seminar, three days, And I was able, thankfully, to be able to participate in much of it. And I'm also... Doesn't sound like it. But after three weeks, mostly, I think, mostly, I think, free of Omicron, COVID-19.

[02:02]

Okay, now I entitled this talk The Six Parameters and Their Relationships. And so I look into aspects of their relationships as well as I can today. I'll focus on the first three. Now, one of the things that Paul brought us was this wonderful statement of Yuan Wu, You won. Paul Wu is also... Paul Wu is my Dharma buddy here.

[03:03]

Sorry. Don't be apologizing. After all, being a teacher is a generational team. And we're on the Suzuki Roshi team. And so that's why I can pretty easily use much of what bring into my talk, I hope, much of what he brought into mine. And so I can take a lot of what he has presented in the joint seminar into this lecture. Now, what I like about the concept of a teacher being a generational team... You don't have to start all over again.

[04:08]

Every time you are a new teacher, you sort of... develop, evolve the teaching you've been offered and you are sharing. In each generation, other people can join the team. And in some ways, all of you are part of this generational team that Paul and I and you too and Nicole and Gerald and others exemplify. I hope exemplify. First you have to wonder, could I join the generational team?

[05:29]

And then you say, geez, why not? Then you, we have to see what it means to join this team. It's quite a You know, yeah, it's something. And not that you need to know everything that's happening, but I think for the first time I'm wearing... earring aids or hearing aids. It's kind of interesting. Kleenex sounds different, but if I move this, it sounds pretty unusual. Are these units I'm speaking in good enough?

[06:37]

Yes, it's wonderful. Thank you. Okay. Yuan Wu lived in the Song Dynasty. John Woo lived in the Sung Dynasty. And he lived about 72 years from 1063 to 1135, I think. 1063 to 1135. Now, these details are not so important, except I want to give you the feeling, as much as we know, he was a real person, like you and I, like we're sort of real. And he had something to say.

[07:39]

And he was the compiler. He lectured on a compilation of a hundred stories that had been put together before him and he lectured on them and they turned into the most famous koan collection, the Blue Cliff Records. Taking on Raku. And I have on my altar upstairs a little of the water that came from the spring behind the temple where he gave the blue cliff record lectures.

[08:45]

So I have some upstairs here and I have some at Crestone too and Judy Gilbert gave it to me and she said I'm happy to bring you this water from the spring behind the Blue Cliff Record Temple of Yuan Wu, Yuan Wu's temple, but probably you better not drink it. And I got this from Judy Gilbert. She told me, I'm very happy to give you this water from the spring behind the temple of the Blue Cliff Record. So maybe I should have a little sign. In the future, do not drink this. Unless you're Alice in Wonderland. Yeah. So he said, realize right where you stand.

[10:11]

Paul Roshi spoke about standing on the train station and just not waiting, just standing on the train station platform. And last Sunday I stood up for a while. This is something Yuan Wu did, we can do. We can stand up. But can we realize right where we stand? And he said, Yuan Wu said, Bring the mind to where there's no before or after. Hey, I thought this was going to be easy.

[11:22]

Well, it's kind of tricky. Bring the mind to where there's no before or after. Where the... Heck is that? Yeah, and he said, and to where there's neither here nor there. Do you say in German here and there the same way we do in English? Mm-hmm. There and here. Mm-hmm. That's already a complicated concept of here-ness and there-ness. Which ought to be explored. Yeah. One of the things that...

[12:23]

Lieutenant Paul Rosenblum, or she did, was he suggested that most of the participants or all the participants yesterday take a walk around the campus here in the garden. And one thing that Surit and Roshi suggested yesterday to the participants of the seminar is to take a walk and to go to the garden on the campus grounds. Gardens are wonderful. They change faster than buildings and yet they bring birds and a feel of being embraced to the buildings. So people reported on their walking around for quite a long time. And And quite a few people, I mean, I think concentrated on one sense primarily, or found a location which their senses kind of asked them to stop in.

[13:56]

I call this trying to find, again, the usual words for ordinary words for ordinary experiences which have some other dimensions. So the word I'd use for this was maybe depth, depth attention. Or depth attentionality. Now zazen itself is a kind of depth attentionality. And when you really bring attention to something, a leaf, a butterfly, a bird, Wenn du wirklich die Aufmerksamkeit zu etwas hinbringst, einem Blatt, einem Schmetterling, einem Vogel... The attention outstrips any description, goes beyond any... Ja, dann weitet sich die Aufmerksamkeit jenseits jeder Beschreibung.

[15:30]

So at some point the bird you've been paying attention to is... sounding in a way and sounding in you and presumably sounding in the bird in a way that there's no words for. And the more you find yourself within the immediacy of depth attention, concepts It sheds concepts. Concepts fall away. And from our tradition and our lineage, here's Paul giving us a Dharma door on how you find yourself where there's no before or after or no here or there. Now you probably all had experiences like this.

[16:42]

Especially now that you know you're part of the generational teaching team. But probably you haven't known, my guess is, exactly what to do with it or how to... really incorporate, embody, incorporate it. Bring the mind. This is already bring. Who's going to bring it? What's your intention? Bring the mind to where there's no here or there. And neither before or after. And what is he saying? Stop time.

[18:17]

No before, after. Yeah, what else could it be but some kind of stopped time? And it is the case. I mean, time is an experience, right? So we can... play with, mold, feel this experience. So during the seminar, listening to Paul Roshi, I thought, you know, to enter the fabric of immediacy. I was thinking, how can I enter the field of attentionality or the fabric of immediacy?

[19:19]

And during Paul Roche's seminars, I thought, how can I enter the field of immediacy, the fabric of immediacy, the fabric of attentionality? Now, yogic Zen practice really requires something like what I call the successional path. We could even say the paratactic successional path. I mean, paratactic, it's not such a familiar word, means to be side by side without causality. There may be causality, but mostly things are just side by side. And paratactic is not such a common word. It means that things are next to each other without any connection.

[20:20]

It could be that there is one, but mostly they are just next to each other. You don't have to go so fast. Yeah, we get all the time in the world. And do you have all the time? Yes, of course we do. We've all stopped time. Didn't you notice? Okay. Okay. So I... How can I stop time? I was wondering, sitting here in the audience, in the gathering with Paul speaking and you translating, I looked for a wado, a turning word, or some needle and thread by which to re-sew, re-stitch, stitch?

[21:45]

Yes, you know how to sew these things. Re-stitch my experience of time. Now, in sort of the paratactic successional path, now. Now. I can practice with that, but maybe I tried now it, to make it a unit. Now could be one, and then I tried it with now it. Yeah, I had to sort of thread the needle of the word.

[22:53]

So I threaded now with it. Now, one of my favorite capping verses, which I've used sometimes in a hot drink, end of the day little talk. I've used the saying, although I can show you the mandarin ducks I wove. I can't show you the needle with which I threaded them, sewed them. Yeah. So how do I, in a similar way, how do I show you the loom of the present, the loom on which we weave the present.

[24:15]

Because we're actually weaving the present all the time. Yeah. But it's an invisible loom. I mean, it's there It's the mind which brings you to where there's no before or after. Now if I say, if you say to yourself, this is empty space or an envelope or something, that's an imagination, that's an imaginable. concept of space. So let's have an imaginable concept of a loom of the present. On which I'm weaving the present.

[25:18]

So now I'm weaving. Now I looked at Hans Esser was sitting in front of me. And he had a shirt, a kind of gray cotton shirt of some kind. And it was fabric, too. It had lots of little gradations of gray and gray-white and darker gray. And so it became a now-it. I threaded it as a paratactic now-it. And then it became a now-it. I threaded it to a now-it. And Anna was sitting on my left.

[26:38]

And she had a kind of bluish denim jacket on. Anna disappeared. It was just her blue jacket was there, was a kind of a now it. And the colors, these We considered opening a pizza parlor here. These brick pillars, they became a now it to me. And Paul sitting on this very platform. Also became a now it.

[27:44]

Sorry, Paul, it's what you were, a now it. So, They were all these units, units, where now it's the column, your jacket, Hans Esser's shirt, you sitting up on the platform. All these units, the column, the jacket, the shirt, Paul on the platform. Yeah, and there was no sentient or insentient here. It was just all equally now it's on the loom of the present. I could call it the fabric of attentionality. And I found myself making a distinction between the fabric of attentionality and the field of conceptuality. And the field of?

[28:55]

Conceptuality. Now if I had a cell phone here, A palm, palm computer. Those don't exist anymore. So, ein Computer als Hand? Yeah. So, if I take my computer and I turn the camera on, it can look around. It doesn't really distinguish between my knee and the platform and the floor or Samantha Badre. It just, they're just... in the camera. And it's not a field of conceptuality. It's just a kind of attentionality that the camera can just do, just looking around, hey, hey, that's a, I don't know if that's a flaw or not, but it could be.

[30:21]

But if you have an app, an app, called a mobile scanner on your phone. Now, the mobile scanner isn't interested in just all of this nondescript stuff. It wants to turn things into... entities. And it does it sort of the way your brain does it. You know, it says, hold a little closer, no, closer, and then click. It does it all by itself. Now this is, the mobile scanner is trying to create a field of conceptuality. Yeah, so now if there was a security camera here, We haven't installed any security cameras yet.

[31:49]

Yeah. Maybe we will, so we know what the Anja is doing. The Anja takes care of me extremely well. Thank you very much. Okay, so a security camera... because it isn't looking conceptually at things, it's not a mobile scanner, it sees lots of interesting things. I mean, it sees things that nobody wanted it to see, you know. No, but if you loaded the security camera with some kind of face recognition software, It would start turning the world into entities, faces and such, but then it might miss all kinds of things.

[32:53]

I mean, there could be an invasion of Martians who don't fall into any... facial software, everyone would miss the invasion. You're doing very well with longer. Okay. So you can see, here's this little cell phone we have, which can give us a sense of what it's like if there's only a field or fabric of... attentionality. A fabric because you're weaving a kind of present you live in. Now, What I'm asking by implication here, and I don't have any idea if I'm going to have time to, oh, my time is up, but I won't give up, is that maybe the six parameters, at least the first three of the six parameters,

[34:32]

The going beyond of the six parameters is something like what I'm talking about. Now, the first parameter is generosity. Now, is there generosity in the Fabric of attentionality? A beyond conceptuality? And is the going beyond moving into a sea of... sea, ocean? Sea of... attentionality instead of conceptuality. Now if you imagine your way of perceiving is kind of like a security camera or an insecurity camera or

[35:37]

Something like that. No, if it's this insecurity camera, it's noticing all kinds of things. And primarily it's noticing associations. sensitive to associations and relationships. Und hauptsächlich bemerkt die Assoziationen und ist sehr sensibel getuned auf Beziehungen. So generosity, I would say, and I use Paul's word again, relinquishment. Und Großzügigkeit, und jetzt benutze ich Paul's Wort wieder, Verzicht bemerkt. I would say that from the paramita's point of view, the secret essence of generosity is to relinquish separation.

[36:54]

Now you can practice this yourself. Just take a deep breath. And feel your relinquishing separation. And the world comes in in all its all-at-once-ness. So you're standing in this standing, arising, alivening. Alivening is a kind of being alive, a kind of speaking. Yeah, you are alive. standing with and feeling.

[38:14]

There's no separation. Inseparability. This is actually the concept of Vairagana Buddha, the Dharmakaya Buddha. The simplest thing to say about the Dharmakaya Buddha is it represents simultaneity, all at onceness. What a relief to just relinquish separation and let yourself Be in this sea of associations. Connectivity. Okay, and the second parameter is conduct. And the second parameter is conduct.

[39:42]

How do you behave? These are rather subtle distinctions for me to try to articulate, but I hope I can give you a feeling for them as I feel them. There are small differences, but I hope that I can give you a feeling for how I articulate them. Yeah, so conduct is really what is it? It's body, speech and mind. How we conduct ourselves is through body, speech and mind. And as I said a minute ago, aliving, aliveness, or aliving, I call it aliving, aliving is a kind of speaking.

[40:43]

It's a kind of speech. Now say that you've decided to practice these six parameters. Kind of like the big essence of Buddhism. And they create a big reference point. So you're So the first is your relinquishing separation. Wow, what a relief. And now you feel the the power of body, speech, and mind.

[41:52]

The potentiality of acting in the world. So now you're looking at why is the second parameter conduct? Well, it's one thing to relinquish separation but we still have to do something. And we do something through body, speech and mind. And that takes courage. So you The second skanda of conduct is really the courage to act in the world and take your chances and be willing to fail.

[42:54]

And the third, that's as far as I'll get today, the third is patience. Und das dritte, so weit werde ich heute kommen, ist Geduld. Wakeful waiting. Waches Warten. Patience. Geduld. And what's patience? Patience is, the first is relinquishing separation, the second is the courage to act, and the third is patience. The power to accept the world as it is. If you don't have that as a starting point, there's no starting point. So this is Samantabhadra. I kind of conflated Samantha Barter and Sambogakaya body.

[44:08]

They both start with Sam, you know. You put it together, you inflate it. Yeah, Andy Warhol supposedly had something like 80 cats and they were all named Sam. Same, same, same. So the Sambhogakaya body, Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Sambhogakaya body is the body of limitless form. And isn't that what we're talking about? And now, This figure, most people would say, it's this Bodhisattva figure sitting on an elephant. That's not understanding what it's about.

[45:11]

I mean, you look a little bit like her, but not too much. And you don't look like the elephant, but... The elephant and she are aspects of patience, of accepting things as they are. And if you look at the... And if you look at... She's holding something, it's got a little thorny and it turns into this and it turns into something kind of looming. And her hands are very delicate. And the cloth, even the cloth, this fabric of her robes and things, turns into this fabric and this fabric turns into a lotus bud.

[46:23]

Yeah, I don't know if the camera can see all this. A little bit. There she is. Okay, and so... I feel, you know, if I'm going to accept things as it is, as they are, part of me has to be like this elephant. I'm just here on four legs and I'm not exactly movable. I said in a meeting the other day, we got tired of waiting for climate change, so we decided to threaten the nuclear war.

[47:25]

And now what? What could be worse? So that is... This is the world we're in. A starting point has to be... We don't know what to do about climate change, and we're threatening ourselves with nuclear destruction. It's just totally nuts, we human beings. So the elephant knows what to do. Just... Hold your ground. And now have the courage to do something when you can, even when you can't. and the accepting all at onceness, we can say is the Buddha.

[48:52]

So you have here in the first three, one way of understanding, a fundamental way of understanding the six paramitas, is the first is the Buddha, the second is Manjushri, the wisdom, and the third is Samantabhadra, the patience to be present in the world as it is. The first is the Buddha, the second is Samantabhadra, and the third is Manjushri, and the third is Samantabhadra, to accept the world and things as they are. Now I had a few other things I might have said, but we've run out of time. I tried to stop it, and I did a pretty good job, but it just went running past. I'd like to speak more about the practice of stopping time on the loom of the present.

[50:03]

But this is enough. Thank you very much. I was a little dramatic this afternoon. I don't know why. I guess I have a new translator. Thank you very much. I guess we come back in ten minutes or something like that. Okay. Now, I couldn't say this without the good feeling I had working with you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Oh, it's raining, it's raining, it's raining, it's raining.

[52:41]

Don't talk to the snake. Yes, very much. Yes, because I've forgotten that now. But otherwise, most of them. Thank you. Thank you.

[54:27]

I understood that he was talking about the end of the world in a very short time. I was also very surprised, because he stayed there, you know? And he didn't get into any high-altitude flights? Now I had to do two or three things again that I had to leave out. But I thought it went well. That's my courage to let go. And at one point I thought it was good, because I think that was a mistake of him. He spoke about the second scandal. Yes, I thought that was a good model. We won't do that now. I thought it was good. Okay.

[55:53]

And are all of them on it? Can you see all of them? Not all of them. You would have to look for several pages. Usually you only have the first page. The people who have the camera. The people who have the Zoom, they sort it automatically. I don't know. I can see that too. It can happen that when you have already asked the question, you take your hand down again and then disappear. Try it like this, the people somehow... to show when you speak. Okay. Okay. She said, get a call, Dorothea.

[57:31]

Have her come and help me pick up the hamburger. So she's in the back.

[57:37]

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