So let's start by continuing the discussion you had together. There's all this big space here, you know, you can't move forward with it. Then I feel more like you're in my lap. It's okay, I mean, it's all right. All right, so anybody want to say something? I'd like to report in general on the group that I participated in. And please, if others in the group have something to add, please do that. So we began by reading through the koan together.

[01:01]

And in doing it, trying to hold in mind your instruction from this morning. Reading it with a feeling of breath, not intellectual understanding. Namely, that we read with a feeling for the breath and not from an intellectual understanding. And we then collected what was relevant for the individual, what she addressed from the text. It began with the question about where does the wayfarer actually dwell? And how do we meet ourselves in relating to the different parts of the car?

[02:04]

And where do we meet ourselves in the different parts of the Quran? Some particular sections of interest were the iron spine holding up the sky. shadowless tree, a turtle hitting for fire, several sections on clarity, both an instruction or a hint in the koan about how to practice clarity by not dwelling in body and mind. You read the whole koan, not just the beginning part or something?

[03:17]

Up to, we read Han Shon's poem. Up to the end of Han Shon's poem. And we related to different things that we were questioning in terms of coming back to the original case, how they were found in the case. Where they were found in the case or how? How they were related. So relationships of different things of interest, it kept returning to the original case in the introductions. And both things that seemed perplexing and also some very direct instructions about six methods involved in breathing. And some of the methods were rather, yes, they made us perplexed, but one was very specific and it was about six methods for breathing.

[04:25]

What you say sounds so different from what he said. I was in his group, so I know what he meant. No, but I mean, you know, he says these sounds and you say these sounds, and for you guys it's the same. And my own personal feeling was at the end of the discussion... there was a feeling of engagement with where we're dwelling. Okay. Thanks. Anyone else? I would like to report from our group one point which is in contrast to this.

[05:32]

There were big difficulties with the text in general. Some were so angry that they want their money back. I think this was a very important moment in our group, this incapability to do anything with the koan. And we used a lot of the time to find some freedom with it. Peace. Peace. Peace. Some peace with the koan. Peace. Peace with the koan. Okay. Someone else?

[06:46]

Yes? There are three things I remember. The first sentence, the beginning of time, Three things mostly stuck to my memory. The first one is the state before the beginning of time. Or just before the beginning of time. He didn't say state. The space around the breath. The space around the breath. When I remember it, with this, that has a certain... So this sentence has a special quality, and the quality of mind, and with that I try to go on looking. The first sentence. Yeah, yeah.

[07:48]

With this state of mind, I try to read the other. He tried to be with his breath around things and with that state of mind to read the Qur'an and the whole text. It was interesting for me to read the verse again. I can say it in English. Maybe somebody can help her by reading that part in English. Help her? Help him? No, because it's translated already. Yeah. Yeah. Danke. And there was the part for Yussel that I, and I have that connected, that is, so outside, not dual thinking, but I asked myself at the same time, that says so nicely afterwards, but I asked myself as a question, what does that mean for me?

[08:56]

So not with that, but to immerse myself in my art and to look, what does that mean? Not so, that spoke to me like that. So he felt that it was a non-dual statement, and he liked the statement, but what he decided now is... He is this guy here. This guy, Andreas, Andreas, yes. That he wants to practice with it, to take it in his breathing. Okay, practice. What it means not to have it. I find it so easy to say it, but it is very hard. I cannot feel it. And the other thing is a question about these six breathing things, to evaluate the quality, what it means, how to find it. I think it is to return here. Concerning the instruction for the breathing, the fifth is the coming back.

[10:06]

Returning. Returning. He doesn't know what it means. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's very helpful to me really to have these discussions with you. I appreciate it. Thanks. And to hear that the call-out makes you angry, perturbed or something, this is also good for me to hear. If I hear too much, I don't talk about koans. If I hear a little bit, then I find it interesting. Now, Yesterday, Tara spoke about how the image I gave of kind of bobbing in the sea was helpful to her.

[11:19]

Now, the question a... the compiler and writer of these texts had the question they asked themselves, is how can we produce a text that endures in the memory? That's also my job as a teacher, if I give a tesho. If I'm a good teacher, I'm attempting to speak to your memory more than your consciousness. So it may sound sometimes like it's scattered or there's a kind of mosaic in the way I'm speaking.

[12:33]

Now, I'm happy to speak to your consciousness. There's nothing wrong with your consciousness. It's nice, actually. But consciousness tends to forget. Or it tends to... make things understandable to the consciousness, and then they're sort of like, yeah, they don't sink in. So I want to speak, you know, I'm just, you know, sorry I tell you these things, but this is what I'm supposed to do, so I'm trying to do it. So I'm trying to speak in a way that you can't too easily weave together what I say in your consciousness.

[13:46]

Some teachers don't know that tradition, and so they produce a lecture in their consciousness and give it. People like it. Why not? But if you produce a lecture in your consciousness, it stays in the consciousness. It's the substance of dreams which understand dreams. It's the mind of dreams which produces dreams, understands dreams. The mind of consciousness, which isn't the main site, S-I-T-E, of a dream, can only partially, in a limited way, understand dreams.

[15:06]

So I need to speak to your dreaming mind and non-conscious mind as well as your conscious mind. Because practice occurs in both realms. And practice, I mean, if you're going to really practice, and one of the things that meditation does is join these realms. Yeah, then somehow the koan and my teaching has to speak to both the realms of night and the realms of day. And in this koan, there's explicitly the presentation of two realms.

[16:28]

That's implied, of course, with this And Ymitra and Varuna, the god of day and night. The gods of day. A different god for day and a different god for night. Now, this is also the realm of kind of like the Greeks, deities mixed up with humans. Is it Prajnatara or is it Mahasramapatra? I said putra this morning, patra. Prata, I mean, yeah. Is it Prajnatara or Mahasutra? Mahasutra. Mahasutra. Mahasutra. Yeah, yeah.

[17:42]

Okay, or is it Bodhidharma we're talking about or Avalokiteshvara? And that little story about Phangan, Phangan or Phangan. He was supposedly the teacher of Hanshan. Also, er war angeblich der Lever von Han Shan. And supposedly Han Shan would visit him now and then. Und Han Shan hat ihn ab und zu wohl besucht. Yeah. And so Han Shan and Xite, you know who those two guys are? Und Han Shan und Xite... Well, I know you do. That's your profession. Ich weiß, dass du weißt, wer die beiden sind, aber... Hanschan is, you know, all those poems of Hanschan and Gary Snyder translated and Arthur Whaley translated and so forth.

[18:47]

Cold Mountain poems. Some of the best Zen poems, really. And Shite was sort of some sort of kitchen boy in Fungan's... And he went to hang out with Han Shang. And supposedly Han Shang lived in the mountains, cold mountain, you know. Maybe he lived in the black forest, you know. And there were a lot of eccentric people in those days. I mean, I love the guys in Japan who sculpted in wood with hatchets, but they'd only eat wood, too, so they lived on bark and things like that in the forest. Helped them sculpt, I don't know.

[19:48]

They sculpted in wood. They had a particular style where they chopped with an axe, but they also only lived on wood, on trees. They actually ate bark and things like that. I'm not recommending any of this to any of you, but... So Hanshan lived up in the mountains, but he'd come down into the local cafe sometimes, and after he'd had his, you know, cappuccino, they'd find written on the wall a poem, and somebody would write it down. But Hanshan and... I'm just telling you these little episodes. You can look them up, you know. Hanshan and Jitoku... Jitoku in Japanese. Um... Um... represent two figures eminently realized, presumably, who did it out of their own resources.

[21:17]

They weren't monks, they weren't ordained, etc., And so that Feng Kuan talks too much is a reference to a story that someone went to Feng Kuan and asked him to do something, establish a temple or something. And he said, oh, no, no, don't talk to me. You should go and talk to Hanshan and Shite. That's Samantabhadra and Manjushri. So this guy who wanted to found this temple went, found Hanshan and Shitte and they said,

[22:23]

Oui, Manjushri and Samantabhadra. You must be kidding. Ja, und als er sie aufgesucht hatte, sagten sie, also, ja, du musst dir da einen großen Spaß erlauben. Wir sind doch nicht Manjushri und Samantabhadra. That's not us. I mean, Fung Kwan talks too much. He is actually Amitabha. So here, what is this all telling you? This is a kind of like... It's a game. But it's a game that mixes up God's... And people. Peter Dreyer, the clown? Hey, that guy is Amitabha. Yeah, it's like that. So there's a kind of feeling of of our identities move into different realms and so forth.

[23:52]

And that's also a kind of theater. So you can imagine the koan, you know, like as Andreas working with the first line. You have a stage here and the curtains are closed. Somebody comes out and pulls the curtain behind him. And says, we have a story here about two star-crossed lovers. Two star-crossed lovers? Two star-crossed lovers. I don't understand what that means. It means, well, it's not important.

[24:54]

Star-crossed means the astrology of the two doesn't make them suited to each other. They're star-crossed. Okay. Also, da haben wir die Geschichte von zwei Liebenden, deren Sterne nicht gut zusammenpassen. Here we have a story of two star-crossed lovers and a turtle heads toward fire. And in the end, where will they end? Under a shadowless tree. And now, let's have the first act. And he steps back and the curtains open and there appears Christoph with his puppets. So what's this about? This is about images. And images, because images make a story stay in the memory.

[25:59]

So the double enclosure, well, you know, that means body and mind, something like that. So they tell the story of this general who was outnumbered and wouldn't surrender, was willing to surrender, but they wouldn't let him, so he broke through, needed that kind of courage to break through the consciousness and thought coverings of the body. Okay, so I think you may feel better about these koans if you can read them as a a bunch of images, often a stringing together of images, which are meant to endure in your memory, in your body, in much the way, as I said, if I'm giving a lecture,

[27:23]

I'm not so concerned with you consciously remember. And I've often heard you can't consciously remember. What did he say in lecture today? I couldn't come. Yeah, a turtle, something about a turtle. But if aspects of it pop up later in your living, in your zazen, then I've given a good lecture. So this is a stringing together of images meant to speak to different dimensions of you and in this particular koan especially the realms of day and night, time and timelessness.

[28:54]

And even Heraclitus, you know, who has this sense of two realms of contraries moving together. speaks philosophically of water becomes fire and fire becomes water and the contraries meet and so forth. But instead of speaking in a koan like this about contraries meeting, they just say, a turtle heads toward fire. So it forces you to ask yourself the question, what would it... What's wrong with that turtle, anyway?

[29:56]

But the image stays with you and turns into a question. Does that make any sense, what I'm sort of jabbering about here? Yes. Okay, good. She can't even remember what she wants to say. She's so happy that your images are doing a good job. Oh, good. But then she did not remember which images were my job. It's working, actually.

[30:57]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm imitating her, yeah. I was not in the group of Frank, but these koans do remind me of the Commedia dell'arte, which is with puppets, and she never liked that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, also. I think it has something to do maybe with the form, a little new form, but also they seem to be completely constructed. These coins? These coins, these images are constructed. And your teachers never are... really don't feel constructed, but from their experience and life and warm and so on, they are...

[32:00]

So they don't function with me and they don't pop up at all. But you teach us to do. I see. Deutsch... Yeah. When Rosi told me about it, I suddenly remembered that the comedy Le Verte, this German-like one, and also from Casper's plays, I never liked them. I didn't know them, and I didn't know them later either. And then I remember these koans in the arch, in the literary art perhaps, and they don't come up, they rather lock me in. And when Rosi tells it, I find it very poetic, it opens me up. And my friends are also interested in these koans. And also her dreams are not like this coffee. They're not? Well, if they were, I'd start offering you incense. If they were, I'd start offering you incense. The other part she already said to you in English.

[33:31]

She feels that they are constructive. Well, you know, so you're saying that the The images or the way I teach does pop up, it does work for you, but the koans don't. But the way I teach is rooted in these koans. But the way I teach is rooted in these koans. As Dogen's, his entire Shobo Genzo is rooted in koans, even though people say, oh, Dogen's not rooted in koans. I mean, the whole text is rooted in koans. So, you know, it's... Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not a Chinese guy.

[34:43]

Maybe I am. Anyway, someone else. Yes, Tara? So she was in Frank's group, but she does agree with Lona. what the difference is between your teaching and the koans way is that your images she can feel in her body whereas the ones of the koans she doesn't yeah well you've listened to me a lot longer than you've read koans and that makes some difference actually

[35:56]

I mean, you're fairly new practicing here, but you probably heard 10 hours or 15 hours of my talking. Poor fella, poor fella. So if you had 10 or 20 hours on one koan, the image is... you know, might work better. But let's just step back a moment and just say what this koan at least is saying. If you take nothing else from it, Let's imagine you open the Bible, the Christian Bible.

[37:09]

And it said, all of this Bible, if you just breathe with attentiveness... The attentiveness of how you actually function, body, mind and consciousness and so forth. You can throw away the Bible, you can throw away all the teachings, they will appear in your breath. Now, that's an extraordinary teaching, if that's the case. And it's not in our Western culture. Everything in Buddhism is right here in you and only comes from you. You're the source of the teaching, you're the source of any idea of deities, etc.

[38:15]

And you are the measure of its truth. Now, maybe you don't like the way that Colin's saying it, but... Yeah, it's like that. No, it's helpful to, you know, this is, let's say, medicine. It's a prescription. And so when you, as Andreas seems to have the idea, got the idea, Andreas scheint diese Idee, ja, geschnallt zu haben.

[39:15]

The first line says, what, a place before time or something like that? A state before time. A state before the beginning of time. Okay, a state before the beginning of time. A turtle heads toward fire. Der erste Satz lautet, ein Zustand vor dem Beginn der Zeit. Eine Schildkröte bewegt sich aufs Feuer zu. Ja, ein... Now, if you're reading this in an embodied way, you don't go further until you have some feeling of a state before time. before the beginning of time.

[40:25]

If you read on right away, you're not reading on with the mind. It asks you to bring to the text. So we have the curtains here and the person comes out at the beginning of the play, everybody's settling down, it's getting quiet. I'm going to tell you an anecdote now, just because I just thought of it. A friend of mine, the poet and playwright Michael McClure, who has recently published one of the best books of contemporary Buddhist poems I've ever seen,

[41:32]

He had a little theater with about twice as many people as this, maybe twice as big. And everybody's sitting around and talking to their friends. And a cellist comes through and a violinist comes through. And they sit down, get their chair, and they start warming up. And they go, you know, you warm up. So they're warming up. And you do that a little bit. And slowly, the Boston Symphony is brought in underneath.

[42:35]

On a tape or something, right? And you hear them warring up. And nobody gets it for about ten minutes. They're talking and they're looking up at these two guys and the whole place is swelling with music. And the police and everybody looks at these two guys. I went several different nights, and every night it worked, and people just couldn't get it until after a while. Okay, so this fella comes out and says, I want your... I want you all to forget where you came from.

[43:49]

Your cars have been removed. The doors are locked. We're going to be here through the night. So let's just forget about everything until tomorrow and let's see what happens. And if some of you are upset about this, you don't like, I mean, you don't like, please, the toilet is over there, you know. So that would bring an attempt to bring that mind to the play. So this little theater piece, in a sense, is asking you to bring the mind a state before the beginning of time. You have to kind of like, what would that be?

[44:55]

Speaking of that, I have a clock here, but it's at state before the beginning of time, and I can never tell what time it is in my clock, because it's a 24-hour clock. I can't tell. I guess it's quarter to six. Is that right? Anybody got the time? Yeah, you're thinking, try to read the time. Quarter to six. Yeah, good. I give up. Actually, it looks like 20 to six. I don't even see any glasses. That's my problem, too. Because 12 o'clock's at the bottom and 24 o'clock... Why did you choose that?

[45:59]

Because I like it. I like knowing what to... I mean, I'm practicing what I'm preaching. A state before the beginning of time. I don't even know what to... I only wear it when I don't really need to know what time it is Okay, someone else? Yeah. I like the skull corn and the whole text is great, but I still don't get it. Why does he emphasize the inhale and exhale differently? Is it just a kind of structuring or does it have a practical sense?

[47:16]

Yeah, okay. Did you say that in German?

[47:19]

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