secure and intimate with the whole of reality. One obtains realization right there. In contact with the flow, one is able to turn things around, able to turn things around, one assumes responsibility directly. Now that's the pointer. Then the case is just a Yuan hits the coffin twice and says, alive or dead.

[01:05]

He hits it once. And Da Wu says, I won't say alive, I won't say dead. Now, of course, this kind of story requires some close reading and consequential reading. And that you are willing to take this as it has something, may have, will have, could have, does have, something to do with your own life. Now speaking about close reading, in all of the years I've been doing koan seminars in the winter branches version of it,

[02:11]

One thing that no one's ever mentioned to me is whether it made any difference or they noticed any difference between the morning being in robes and... more Buddhistically formal, and in the afternoon being more informal. Every seminar I wait for someone to say something. In every seminar I wait for someone to say something, but that never happens. You know I find English Kind of hard to use.

[03:31]

But it felt like that. So one of the words I'm using is circumstantially. Circumstantially, I'm just combining existential and circumstance. And in the word circumstantially, I combine the word existentially and the circumstances. But the stance in existential and the stance in circumstance needs the same thing, just where you stand. But I find circumstantially feels different than circumstantially. Circumstantially feels different from circumstantially. Okay. Do you want to tell me something? You know, because

[04:49]

In so many ways, we are our circumstances. And so if I say circumstantially, maybe that makes that clearer. We are so often determined by our circumstances that when I connect the words existential and circumstances with each other, it becomes clear. Okay, so anyway, so here's this koan which you might have read beforehand. I don't care. I like starting always from the feeling I don't know anything. Always re-read a koan as if I... as it for the first time, which sometimes it is. Yeah. So from if we again take this anthropological stance, Is this an alien culture?

[06:32]

Well, it doesn't have to alienate us, even if it is alien or foreign to us. And as I have spoke about in Dharma Wheel meetings and other places recently, Many of us have started practice because of paranormal or non-normative experiences. Yeah, non-normative maybe. easier than all of the baggage that goes with paranormal. In other words, something that interrupted the narrative of our identity and our culture, and when that narrative is interrupted

[07:42]

In other words, something that the history that we tell ourselves has interrupted us and something that the views that we have learned from culture What did you say? If that happens then? It's a kind of initial enlightenment. And even if it's buried and we've forgotten about it, it can work in us. Yeah, okay. So koans are assuming or trying to take a non-normative approach to your experience.

[08:58]

In koans wird versucht, einen Ansatz, einen Zugang zu deiner Erfahrung zu finden, der nicht der Norm entspricht. And it's good to remember that language in East Asia in general, that language in koans and yoga culture, the words are pointers, they're not descriptions. I mean, often there's simple conceptual differences behind these cultural differences. Our Western culture starts with zero. We assume there was a beginning. Yoga culture starts with infinity.

[10:21]

Or it starts with allness. We saw that in the shakuhachi player the other day. He showed us the musical score for the shakuhachi. And he said each character, kanji, represents a note. And it also represents the finger. But it doesn't tell you which finger to put on the hole. It tells you which finger to take off the hole. That's just little things like that show you that they assume everything is activity, so there's already the flute and the fingers. Now, which ones do you take off? And these small differences show you that in this culture it is assumed that everything is activity anyway.

[12:01]

And it is assumed that the flute and the fingers already exist. And now it's just about which fingers you take away. We start with which fingers you put on the holes. So now there's interesting relationships between infinity and zero, but we won't go into that. But if you have a culture which assumes you start with activity, you start with infinity, with allness, Wenn du eine Kultur hast, die mit Unendlichkeit beginnt und du mit Allheit beginnst. Then each word takes a little piece out of allness and says, well, here it is, this little word, but it snapped back into allness and you can't hold on to it. It keeps going back into allness. Yeah, so these words are just pointers. They point at contexts and alternatives and the obverse and the converse and so forth.

[13:06]

And the koan tries to suck you into or at least persuade you to look at the narrative of that question. And it tries to get you to think, you know, maybe is it alive or is it dead? But the real alternative in this koan is Is there an alternative to alternatives? In other words, is no alternative an alternative to alternatives?

[14:31]

Okay. Now, this is, you know, I mean, for most of us, this is pretty subtle stuff. And I wonder, is it useful to bring it into our, bring it to our attention? But I'm in question of all of you and the practice and subtlety of all of you, so yeah, why not? And I'm trying to speak about it in a way that could be useful to you in your life. Okay.

[15:34]

So we have to take, we have to look at the koan and say, by saying this, what are they not saying? And this, anything they say is a focus within all the things they could say or didn't say. But since they assume also, a koan assumes, that you're bringing your practice to it, you're bringing your allness to it, that it can just suggest things to call forth from your allness some feeling. Now, this book, The Biblical Precipice, was published in 1977.

[16:36]

In 1976, I was asked by the publisher to write the introduction. I thought it was an amusing request, but I didn't know anywhere near enough about Collins to write the introduction, so I said no. And I thought it was an amusing idea, but I had the feeling that I didn't know enough about Koans, so I rejected it. So, Maezumi Roshi wrote the introduction, I think, and he knew much more than I did. But at that time, I had the Zen Center supporting San Francisco, supporting Cleary to work on translations and things.

[18:01]

He didn't want to be part of the university, so we just supported him to do whatever he wanted. But in 1977 or 76, he'd just graduated from university, college, and the Dharmic evolution of English looked pretty primitive. But in that year, 1976, he had just graduated from college and the dharmic development of the English language was quite primitive. And he was probably a very young person. And so was I. I think I was. Yeah, so I think we have to look at this a little bit, the phrasing here, and kind of guess at what it means.

[19:17]

So secure and no anxiety, no angst. and intimate with the whole of reality. I would say nowadays allness because whole implies there's something can be whole and nothing can be whole. It's always changing, adding and subtracting. And nothing is actually real, it's always momentary. So there's no real reality.

[20:25]

There's only relationship, so I say relationality. So secure and intimate with the allness of relationality. Also, sicher und vertraut mit der Allheit des Beziehungsnetzes. Are you having trouble? Yeah, we didn't make it prettier in German. Yeah, well, prettiness in one language isn't necessarily pretty in another language. Okay, and then the next phrase is, one obtains realization right there.

[21:29]

It might be better to say right here than right there. And maybe it would be better to say exactly here instead of exactly there. And obtain, yeah, well, okay. But anyway, the realization may happen when you are secure and intimate with relationality. So this is a factual statement from the point of view of our tradition. Now, it's asking you.

[22:39]

And if you're going to play with these koans, you know, is it asking you consequentially? Can you be secure and intimate with relationality? with all relationships. And not just relationships, but the relationships that include all relationships, allness, whole of reality. So this koan is challenging you right now in the very first word, the pointers, which are pointing at something.

[23:45]

Can you answer this call, the call of this koan? A call, a cry, actually, from the depth of a tradition trying to make sense of this life we lead. as Avalokiteshvara is the one who hears the cries. So this statement isn't just a casual sort of statement printed on the first part of this poem. This is a cry from a tradition which has tried to make sense of the world as close as possible to how it actually exists for 2,000 years, 2,500 years.

[24:54]

And it's trying to make this statement as credible as possible because if you are secure, and with the allness of relationality, this can be the site of realization. Buddhism can't say anything stronger than that. And its contrast in this particular is contrasted with two other kinds of enlightenment in the second paragraph.

[26:02]

One is, Cohen says, putting aside for the moment the sudden enlightenment in the spark of a momentary spark. The infinitesimal shift from one view to another view and In that ship, there's a moment where there's no views, and that no view, even if it's shorter than, you know, Hague's boson,

[27:14]

That little moment which is not perceivable within our sensorium, It's quicker than an email from somebody. This is an enlightenment mail, email. And it's so quick, but we function in that kind of dynamic our body does, our mind does, and our consciousness does, but our body is functioning like that. So putting aside that kind of enlightenment, sudden enlightenment, and putting aside the realization of fearlessness, We could say these are two kinds of enlightenment.

[28:46]

Is there any value, is there any hope in putting forth a continuous stream? A continuous stream, will that also help people? What is this continuous stream? This continuous stream that arises through practice, through time. It's cultivated, doesn't it happen in the enlightenment male? You know, space and time, let's say, are biological. I'm trying to find ways to speak about it. So I'm trying out biologic.

[29:57]

If someone asked me the other day, an architect, interior designer, why did the tiles that the plate in the Zendo or why are they at angles and not square? Because the room is nearly square and the corners of the town are square and so forth. So why not keep that squareness to a That's thinking of the room as a concept. But the room is an activity.

[31:06]

It's a kind of biological space peering out of your experience. So you wanted to design and redesign the room as much as possible from each step. Step one, oh, you made that design. Step two, you make another design. Okay. Okay. So we're trying to, you know, bowing at the altar and so forth, all trying to get ourselves to activate this biological space. And this koan is also then about time, but time as change within change.

[32:10]

Let's see if we can get there maybe tomorrow. Okay. So secure and intimate, let's call that, well, obviously it has to be immediacy. The continuous flow, you're intimate with the continuous flow of immediacy. And I like the nowhere, as a word, nowhere. It's also, depending how you space it, now, here, or nowhere. So what you need is a nowhere else mind or a now here mind.

[33:22]

And if you can conceptualize that, you can maybe begin to try to live it and know where else mind. And when you see it going somewhere else, you kind of think, we've come back a little bit into the infinity of all this. Now here in the nowhere else mind, you have to just claim yourself in this way to try to get some phrase that allows you to forget the phrase, just be nowhere else.

[34:29]

So to finish this opening statement, but let me say, if I do this, alive or dead, Am I talking about the board? Is the board alive or dead? Well, it's not alive. You can see it's not plasticized wood. Or am I saying, am I alive or dead? Or am I saying, are you alive or dead? So it's a question, are you going to look at this causally, like he says, alive or dead, about the person who's in the coffin?

[35:31]

Or is it paratactical? Is it paratactically? It's just beside each other. So is my alive or dead on the piece of board? really the same as his alive or dead on a cotton. Or Boatman Yendo. And each side of the river has a sign that says, which side are you going to? So when people said, yeah, how much does it cost to go to the other side? He'd hit the board and say, which side are you going to? One's free. This is koan language, which is appearing in different koans to give you, to make you wary of alternatives.

[36:53]

Okay, so secure and intimate. Let's call it intermediacy. Intimate, immediacy, intermediacy. You just say intermediacy, good enough. So secure within intermediacy. Which can be seen the sight of enlightenment. In contact with the flow, I don't like flow, it's kind of corny, but in the intimacy of immediacy, that's also in contact with the flow. And able to turn things around.

[38:17]

It means your engagement is proactive. You're a participant, proactive participant in immediacy. And one then assumes responsibility directly. You're responsible for your life in this immediacy which you're inseparable from. Now, I hope each one of you, as we leave this seminar, this day show, and spend the rest of the days here, remaining days here, notice when you are inseparable from

[39:31]

And when you're not. If you can't notice when you're not, you'll never notice when you are. So are you more engaged intimately with the Medici on this little path out here, over the two bridges, or on the road, or, I don't know, standing, gazing timelessly at the sky? Thank you for translating. Alive or dead? You didn't translate, did you? It was too good to translate. Thanks a lot. Oh I forgot.

[40:59]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_75.24