This koan is about Prajnatara not reciting the sutras. And yet you just recited the sutras. Are you practicing this koan or not? This koan's been on my mind for a few weeks now. I don't know if it's my mind, but this mind, which I seem to be part of. In fact, you know, part of my mind Paul's got, or I've got part of his, and I talked with him shortly before the last Sashin he led here about this koan. And unfortunately I wasn't at the Sashin, but I

[01:03]

I imagine it may have been in the background of the Sashin teshos or occasionally in the foreground. And although I practiced with this koan off and on for years and taught it a number of times, That doesn't help much. I have to, as we start this winter branches, I have to get back in the context of the koan and in the context of you, each of you. And in the context with you of the koan. And I find this koan a little bit too complicated.

[02:20]

But it's a transitional koan. In this collection of the Shoyuroku. The third and fourth koans are transitional koans. And from the fifth koan, it's a transition from Indian Buddhism sort of to to Chinese Buddhism. And I think if we want to understand the koan, of course we have to look at the intention of the compilers.

[03:23]

And certainly, as I said yesterday, one way you see the intention of the compilers is to see it in the context of the other colons, number one, two, three, four, etc., So as I said, the first one, we've got silence and thusness. And the second one, we've got China as represented by the emperor and Bodhidharma who doesn't know who he is. So the emphasis on emptiness. And the third one, we have again the scriptures, but we don't read them. Yeah, but this koan is scripture. I mean, the koan itself is scripture, which we're not supposed to read, so you better stop at the word turtle.

[04:51]

So if you take it to kind of, oh, I'm a Zen guy, I'm into bliss and blah, blah, blah, I'm not going to read this. But what's being pointed out here is being pointed out in a scripture. And if this koan is about anything, it's about how to read scripture. And as I said yesterday, how breath can be read as scripture. Okay. Now, I said also yesterday afternoon that a koan is like a director's notes for an unknown play.

[06:10]

Yeah, you find Elia Kazan's notes for a movie you don't know what it relates to. Yeah, or as I said, it's like you have the ingredients for a recipe, you don't know what it is. So the way to look at a koan is to look at the ingredients and don't think about cooking. You prepare the ingredients in the kitchen of the present. So the kitchen of the present, each moment after moment.

[07:22]

Your successive observations, each percept, are brought together with you. The ingredients of the corn. Die werden zusammengebracht mit den Zutaten des Korns. So what happened with the corn in Paul Roshi's Sashim? Und was mit dem Korn in Paul Roshi's Sashim passiert ist? Or what happens with the corn now depends on this kitchen we're making right now. Yes, so what are the ingredients? Well, there's a turtle. There's a fire. As I said, that can stay in your mind, turtles and fire. Again, polar bears peeing in the snow.

[08:23]

Not something you analyze, just something you have in mind. I think that a turtle and a fire are used as an example in Zen culture, Zen teachings, as something that doesn't fit together. But if you're trying to understand things like that, you're trying to look up in Zen literature what this... You reduce it to nothing. Yeah, you want a koan pony. A koan pony. Do you have ponies in June? The little horses? Yes.

[09:43]

Sorry. Little horses. Bob Dylan has a nice song about little horses. No, a pony is something you use for a classic piece of literature that explains what it's about in a very short way. Isn't that right? Like college students want to have to read Moby Dick and they'd rather have a pony than a whale? Also, das sind Erklärungen zur Literatur. Also, wenn jetzt ein College-Student Moby Dick liest und dann lieber ein Pferdchen hat als den Wal, aber das ist der Spitzname für diese Erklärung zur Literatur. So instead, just bring turtle and fire into your kitchen. And see what happens to these ingredients. Maybe something far beyond, oh, this is something not...

[10:45]

Understandable. Will happen. Okay, turtle fire, a state beyond time. A state beyond the beginning of time. And I suggested that if you bring beyond time or beyond the beginning to each percept, To each breath-percept, let's say. Breath may understand where the mind, usual mind, thinking mind, does not.

[12:05]

There's a sense of satisfaction or a sense of acceptance or knowing that you can't think your way to, but you can breathe your way to. Wouldn't this be sort of using the breath as a kind of scripture? Wäre das nicht eine Art, den Atem wie eine Art Schrift anzuwenden? Using the breath not as a way of concentrating yourself, but as a way of understanding. Und den Atem jetzt nicht als ein Mittel für Konzentration zu verwenden, sondern den Atem als eine Methode, einen Weg, etwas verstehen zu können.

[13:15]

And just related, tortoise hairs in Buddhism. Tortoise hairs. Yeah, they do. Can you see the whole thing? Tortoise turls. Turtle hair. Turtle hair. It's something that doesn't exist, but it's on drawings of turtles because turtles live long and represent longevity. So turtle hairs represent something you can explain but not understand. Und deshalb stehen die Schildkrötenhaare für etwas, das man erklären kann, aber nicht verstehen kann. You can explain the explainable parts, but you can't really explain what it's about. Also man kann die erklärbaren Aspekte davon erklären, aber um was es wirklich geht, kann man nicht erklären. So, a state beyond, before the beginning of time.

[14:18]

One of the ingredients. A mortar and pestle. On which the lip of which flowers. On the lip of the pestle, of the mortar. Not F-L-O-U-R, but F-L-O-W-E-R. Because pestles are what you make grain of, you know, turn grain into flour. And the common understanding in Japan and China is that our crops are the descendants of flowers.

[15:21]

And in China and Japan, our grain is understood as the followings of flowers. So Hanamatsuri, the flower festival, is a festival using flowers to celebrate crops and harvesting and agriculture. So the flowers become the crops and the crops are ground into flour and the flour lets us sit here and talk, otherwise we wouldn't have any breakfast in the morning. Also die Blumen werden zu Getreide und das Getreide wird zu Mehl. Und ohne Mehl oder Getreide könnten wir hier nicht zusammen sein, weil wir kein Frühstück hätten. Katrin didn't realize she had such an important job. All the mortars in her kitchen are flowering.

[16:22]

Okay. Okay. So we've got mortar and pestle and flowering and we've got... We've got lineage. We've got Punyamitra, the 26th patriarch. We've got Prajnatara. Bodhidharma. And we're making fun of the lineage too. It's sort of like we start making fun of St. Augustine and St. Thomas and the saints and, you know, these guys, you know, they really didn't understand anything. Yeah, Prajnathara displayed wonders and he didn't understand anyway, etc.

[17:24]

And his brain fell to the ground, but his spine supported the sky. What the heck is the relationship between these things, these ingredients? Don't try to understand the relationship. Just hold the ingredients in your kitchen What should we make for lunch today? Well, I don't know. And then you have, you know, what else?

[18:27]

The story retold from a Chinese point of view in the Emperor Zhuangzong. Yeah, that guy. I mean, what is this koan called? The invitation to a feast. This is all about eating anyway, this koan. So here we have a Chinese emperor in the Han dynasty inviting Shu Jing to a feast. Yeah, and then the Shu Jing is asked, why don't you read the sutras? I mean, this is a run-through. This is a, what do you call it, a sequel. What's that? A sequel? Yeah, it's like a second movie. Indiana Jones meets the emperor the third time or something. Yeah. So in this sequel... Remake.

[19:34]

Remake is the word. Oh, remake. We got a Chinese remake here. This whole column is a Chinese remake. So the emperor asks Xu Jing... The Emperor asks Xu Jing, Why don't you read the scriptures? And he says, when times, when the way is easy, the imperial command is not passed along. Yeah, and when it's peaceful, nobody sings songs about peace. Well, what about your disciples? Do they chant the sutras, read the sutras?

[20:36]

In a lion's den, there's nothing but lions, baby. Yeah. Where the elephant walks, you don't see fox tracks. Wo der Elefant läuft, da sieht man keine Fuchsspuren. And earlier it says, you know, if we really want to understand what Prajnitara meant, we have to look to Chendong anyway, and he's the Chinese compiler of this koan. Und wenn man Prajnitara verstehen möchte, heißt es, man soll zu Chendong schauen, und der ist ja gerade der, der diese koan-Sammlung zusammengestellt hat. So here we have, you know, it says in the koan, Xu Jing bested Prajnatara. His answers were better than Prajnatara's. So what's going on here in this Koran? Well, anyway, it makes fun of the lineage.

[21:37]

It supports the lineage. It makes clear you're the lineage. You know, it's Chinese. It's no longer Indian. Yeah, that's the message of this koan. And all the successive koans. And now it's us. That's true. Yeah. Now, the contrastive paradigms in the koan are Breath and scripture. They're like the two protagonists of the Quran.

[22:52]

Yeah. So let's look at scripture first. It's one of the ingredients. What is Prajnathara's name? What does Prajnatara mean? Prajna. He's named after a sutra. Hey, my name is Sutra. I don't have to read them. Yeah. So what's going on in this koan? So Prajnatara, Bodhidharma, he brought the Lankavatara Sutra to China. Bodhidharma has apparently brought the Lankavatara Sutra to China. And Bodhidharma is also the one who did all the sitting.

[23:53]

And we ask ourselves here, what is the relationship between breath and scripture? And everyone knows, everyone knew in China, that Buddhism came to China through these big translation, as I called them yesterday, Max Planck Institutes. They were vast intellectual, that transformed China, the language, et cetera. For centuries he went on. We could say probably the best minds of every generation for centuries were involved with this. Okay, but the scriptures mean nothing if there isn't practice.

[25:09]

How do we bring scriptures into the kitchen? Now, in very early Indian times, In very early Indian times? They, you know, at some point stopped trying to describe the world in terms of dividing the body up and trying to understand by dividing things up. They began at some point asking, what connects the parts? And almost all over the world kind of sense one of the main, if not the main, connective is the breath. When the breath disappears, prana disappears, the parts of the body fall apart.

[26:25]

So it's understandable that the breath is considered what connects the parts. And then prana, what connects the parts, sort of started becoming a self of some sort. Yeah, self as the word was atman. Mm-hmm. What's the word for breath in German? Atem. Cousins. But Atman often, as I've read anyway, was used to mean the breathing body.

[27:29]

It just didn't mean self. It meant the self as the breathing body. So the point I'm making here is what connects the body, what connects us with each other and in the world is the breath. And breath and self and cultivation are very closely related. And when in the Rostenberg seminar last month, I spoke about how the medieval, 11th, 12th century, European monastic and scholastics, the monastics and scholastics,

[28:39]

thought that Latin is what connected them with each other, not their tribal or Germanic or Franco identities. And Latin is what refined the mind. So you didn't read Latin just to communicate. You read it to refine the mind. Man hat also Latein nicht nur gelesen um zu kommunizieren, sondern man hat Latein dazu verwendet, seinen Geist zu verfeinern oder zu trainieren.

[29:59]

And strangely, that which connected us through language throughout Europe This common source became the idea of it also is how we developed our individuality from a common source. From a common source of a shared language, we developed our individuality. And then through this interior development, Christianity, interior religion, in a sense, you found God. To the extent that this is the case, it's quite parallel to the Buddhism. And the word Sanskrit means that which is refined.

[31:01]

Okay, I'm asking refined if they like the word or not. It's okay. Do you like the word? The German word. The German word? Okay. Anyway, I should stop soon, but I'm just getting refined here. I'll be sweet soon. Sugar being refined, you know. So Sanskrit was understood and scripture not simply as a mode of conveying wisdom. Also Sanskrit and the scriptures were not understood as a means Not as a mode to convey wisdom or knowledge or information.

[32:23]

But the Sanskrit itself refined you so that you could understand what it was talking about. and use your language as a meta-refinement beyond its social and practical needs. In a somewhat similar way, football is a meta-refinement of the human body. And so, football, when we watch these wonderful games and we have to figure out what we're going to do Wednesday night and Thursday morning, I think there might be one or two fans in the winter branches.

[33:26]

It's what in Creston we call the Super Bowl problem. Okay. So the refinement of the body through football shows you something about what a human being can be. The meta-refinement of sports shows us something about a human being. Diese Metaverfeinerung mittels Sport zeigt einem, was der menschliche Körper sein kann. And it was understood both in Latin, the medieval European time, and in Buddhism that the meta-refinement of scripture and language shows us what a human being can be.

[34:32]

So now Prajnitara, named after a sutra, says, I don't read them. What he's actually saying is my refinement comes through breathing in a way that's equivalent to reading the scriptures. Can you say it just exactly again? His refinement comes from... The prajñottara's refinement comes from reading, from breathing in a way that's equivalent to reading the scriptures.

[35:36]

So if we're going to understand what he means by reading, by breathing, we have to understand what also is meant by the scriptures. Now, this koan is a good example of the refinement of Scripture. You have to start out with an image, the tiger in the fire. I mean, no, no, no. It's a turtle in the fire. Yeah, so you start out with an image, and how do you carry an image while you read? How are analogies, allegory, metaphors actually a kind of version of language?

[36:57]

So this poem is full of allegory, metaphor, etc. It's an extraordinary example of scripture. Through which we understand the practice of breathing. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'll try to be simple tomorrow, not complicated. But I had to bring out this relationship between scripture and breathing. And the key is to realize that the use of language refines you. And the assumption here is And the assumption here is that you are not complete.

[38:10]

And the way you complete yourself through practice. You are engaged in a form of completion which will never be complete. Suzuki Roshi perished. He didn't complete. We are completing. That's lineage. And we're all engaged in this mutual refinement. Yeah, prajnatara, punyamitra, bodhidharma, you don't have to translate those things, chendang, wansong, and each of you.

[39:15]

Thanks very much.

[39:17]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_77.81