Well, I'm very happy to be here and joining the sixth winter branches, I think. And that my friend, and after all these years, can I say my disciple? I hope you will. Oh, really? At least a disciple in our lineage. Neil, to translate for me. I was under actually quite a lot of pressure not to come from Crestone this year. They even raised money to prevent me to come. And partly it was a practical matter that they want me to finish the book and so on. I have practice periods set up so that I don't give tesho like this.

[01:17]

But each monk week, five-day week, And then there's one two-hour seminar with me in which they critique the text with me. It's actually, for me, extremely helpful. And I'm really learning what works for people in reading and trying to practice what they read. And what surprises me is the degree to which

[02:25]

For many, almost everyone, how they understand what I'm saying better by reading than listening to me. Yeah, and I have to give this some thought. Because basically Zen is, what I think I've said here before, an autodidactic apprenticeship. In other words, the primary obligation is for each of you, each of us, to teach ourselves. And that teaching is supported and encouraged by the apprenticeship of face-to-face practice together.

[03:54]

Now, there's certainly more information in us being here together than there is in reading a book. No, I mean just imagine or compare if you were talking with me on the telephone compared to my sitting here in front of you. Okay. Now, I think that the... that the gut, I don't know, gut sense, hara sense, bodily sense of the practice, and the emotional sense of the practice probably is conveyed more strongly in this oral lineage.

[05:21]

If you love it, that's this... Okay, now I'm speaking about this because Not just because I'm telling you something about Crestone. But because both the practice at Crestone and the practice here is an experiment in... basically oral tradition. And this winter branches is part of this oral experience. Okay. Now, it makes a certain amount of sense that the, let's call it the reading channel, is more developed in us than the oral channel.

[06:43]

Because we've each been reading since we were quite young. And most of our education and development has come through reading. And even if you're not a reader particularly, our culture is constructed through reading. reading which is carried from generation to generation. But there are people at Crestone who have been practicing with me for, you know, 10 years, 15 years, more. And they say, oh, something I've said somewhere between 20 and 200 times. They read it and they say, oh, now I understand.

[07:57]

That's why I've been doing all these years. And in a way, I find it discouraging. And in another way, I find it quite exciting to... To see that the reading channel, let's call it that, is so powerful. Of course, in our culture, a teacher isn't taken seriously, you can almost say, unless he has a book. So you can say that in our culture a teacher is not really taken seriously if he hasn't at least written a book. You know, I actually resisted not only myself writing a book, as you can see, but resisted Tsukiroshi doing a book.

[09:08]

Because in an oral tradition, there's a clear back and forth about what understanding is. There is a clear back and forth in an oral tradition of what understanding is. And now there's what, I don't know, supposedly it's the best-selling book on Buddhism in the world, and there's a million or two million copies out there somewhere, and there's no back and forth to see what understanding is there.

[10:20]

Yeah. And I've also discovered I can't teach from Zen mind, beginner's mind. Because all of you here and there have read the book. And it may even have brought you to practice with me or brought you to practice in general. But really, I've tried several times over the years to teach a seminar based on Zen mind, beginner's mind.

[11:24]

And the message I get very strongly is, don't interfere with how I understand the book. Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, we read privately. We read on our own. And you become, through reading alone, I think you come to possess the understanding as your own. So if I go through a page of Sukershi's book, which, by the way, when I put it together and edited it and brought it to the publisher, I'd gone through it 56 times, word for word. Okay, so when I take a page and I say to, you know, now here you see there's Majamaka teachings, and here in this paragraph it really switches to YN teachings.

[12:45]

I don't want to hear that, people say. And there's two or three levels of teachings under each page, but no one wants to hear that because they possess, feel they possess, how they've understood it, which has affected them deeply. So my challenge is to write a book can't be understood in too many different ways.

[13:47]

Now, if this is an autodidactic apprenticeship, Now, that assumes, basically, traditionally, that assumes we live together in a monastery for 10 or 15 years. And there's certain templates. Templates? Models or... patterns through which you do things. And Sukhirishi clearly created Tassajara as a template or model for practice in the West. Now if you read Dharmakirti, for instance, Dharmakirti assumes that you cannot understand the truth without living in a monastery.

[15:06]

Dama Kirti says that you can't understand the truth if you don't live in a monastery. Just the way you might say a physicist studying quantum mechanics or something cannot understand quantum mechanics unless he has the education of a physicist. Now, I'm bringing this all up because I want us to examine what we're doing here. Before we study a koan, what are we doing studying Buddhism? Now, for Dharmakirti, an apple is not the truth. An apple is a fact.

[16:24]

The truth is agriculture. You locate the truth in the process of agriculture which produces a good apple. Does that make sense to you? I mean, there's all kinds of ways how this is true, I feel, but let's try to look at a truth you can base your life on. You can't base your life on an apple unless you're Adam. It only makes sense if agriculture produces the apple. That you can understand and do something about. So we can ask, what is the agriculture or physics, education of a scientist?

[17:42]

for a Buddhist. So these koans are a kind of agriculture or education for a scientist. Or education for a poet or something, an artist. Okay. Now, Dharmakirti assumes an apprenticeship A monastic apprenticeship is the necessary ingredient to practice, to understand things as they actually exist. Okay. But we're not all living together in a monastery. Does that mean we're, huh, too late for us?

[18:57]

But I think the fact that so many of us have been practicing together so long is an assumption within each of us that it requires an apprenticeship. But the fact that so many of us have been practicing for such a long time is a, let's say, the assumption that there is a need for such a teacher-student relationship. qualities, aspects of the Dharma Sangha in Europe and the United States. We are actually practicing Part of the time in monastic-like institutions here in Cresta. And in a way we carry some of the template of this practice into our daily lives. And we're practicing together. The accumulated number of years we've been together in this room is hundreds of years.

[20:29]

So there seems to be an implicit or explicit recognition in Dharma Sangha practice that it is a kind of apprenticeship. So the winter branches seems to be a recognition of apprenticeship as a central dimension, aspect of our practice. And the winter branches also seem to be an explicit recognition we have to study on our own. So if Dharmakirti was here, I'd say, hey, Dharma, Akirti, or, you know.

[21:30]

And if Dharmakirti was here, I would say, hello, Dharmakirti. That's the name of a television serial in America. So DK. DK. DK. So DK, don't you think that what we're doing in the winter branches is a kind of, yeah, is what you mean by it requires monastic apprenticeship. We're doing it in our own way. He'd say, I think, well, It's brave of you all to try it. Let's wait and see. The Buddha lived, I don't know, 2,567 or 8 years ago.

[22:59]

No one knows. Buddhism started coming into primary flow into China was early Christian era from about 200 to 600 A.D. Und das floss eben zum Beispiel nach China in der frühen christlichen Zeit vielleicht von 200 bis 600, unserer Zeitrechnung? Ja, so we're delving, exploring, deep into ancient Asian history. Das heißt, wir tauchen ein und graben auch sozusagen oder legen frei auch alte ancient Chinese history? Asian history, Chinese history. But we're also delving into our own history and our own future.

[24:00]

And that's exactly what they were doing in the first place. centuries of the Christian era in China. Now, as I pointed out in the first winter branches on koans, that it's of considerable importance that the koan we looked at was the first koan in the collection. Now we're looking at the second koan in the Book of Serenity. And the first koan in the Hekigan Roku, the Pien Luu. It remains important that these are the first koans.

[25:11]

Now, I want us to, in many ways, look at things contextually. But first we'll start fairly simply with the conceptual and historical context. Now, these koans are about Buddhism becoming Chinese. And what are we about? We're about Buddhism becoming Western. And how do we know this is about Buddhism becoming Chinese? Because these two koans are about Bodhidharma coming from an Indian, South Indian man who went to Northern India and then to Southern China and then to Northern China.

[26:36]

And predicted in India, supposedly, by his teacher, Prajnath Tara. So there was something about Indian Buddhism that predicted, that's what the Chinese say, that Bodhidharma, Prajnedhara's disciple, would come to Buddhism. But this is transposed in most of the stories about Bodhidharma as Bodhidharma coming from the west to the east. Now, can I ask you, how are your legs?

[27:38]

Is everything okay? You're doing fine? With your hip operation and everything? Thank you. Better than before. Okay. But there's a big difference between from India to China and from the West to the East. The West and East are versions of each other. You can't have a West without an East. They're just locations. India and China are not the same. They're not versions of each other. West and East are versions of each other. So the question soon very quickly becomes not why did Buddha come to China, but why did he come from the West to the East?

[28:46]

What is the location? Not much difference. And in the first koan we have in the Shoyuroku, Book of Serenity, we have what? What is the subject of the first koan? The question really is, what is the Buddha? And what is the teaching? And what is the teaching in the first koan? Silence. I think silence is probably nearly the same in China as in India. Clearly the implication is, whatever the Buddha's teaching is, it's universal.

[29:51]

Because you can be silent in any culture and it's nearly the same. Okay. And what does Bodhidharma bring to the emperor? And he's not just bringing it to any old guy in China. He's bringing it to the Emperor. That means he's bringing it to the center of Chinese culture. And what does he bring? Emptiness, no holiness. And who is he? I don't know. Well, silence, emptiness, and I don't know are basically the same thing. And what's going to be probably the name of my book?

[31:06]

Original Mind. So Original Mind, emptiness, I don't know, and silence are basically the same. And ursprünglicher Geist, Leerheit, Stille und Ich-Weiß-Nicht sind grundsätzlich das Gleiche. It means somehow Buddhism is maybe true because it's culture free. Because if you're going to find something true, it has to sort of be always true or universally true. Now, perhaps Buddhism is only universally true if you have an education, a Buddhist education. And perhaps physics is not true for everyone. It's certainly not true for fundamentalist Christians.

[32:07]

But it's pretty much true for anybody who has an education in physics, whether they're Indian, Chinese, or German, or whatever. Now, Ravi Welch, who probably many of you know, who practices with us, has recently established a... in Ravensberg, is that how you pronounce it? Is this Ravensburg? Ravensburg, I think. A Zen group for therapists and a Zen group for clients, psychotherapeutic clients who also want to bring meditation into there.

[33:11]

And partly because he's doing that, the Protestant Bavarian... Social Services Church. Something like that. The Social Services Division of the Bavarian Protestant Church. Where he has been the... the person who supervises the therapeutic work of the... the Bavarian Protestant Social Services. And he's been the supervisor for 15 years.

[34:14]

And they just told him he can't do it anymore. Because if they found out he's a practicing Buddhist, they said, you cannot be a practicing Buddhist and have a true human perspective. Close. Now some Christians would say Christianity is universal because God created the world or the universe or something. So it's universal. God created everything.

[35:18]

It has to be universal. But if maybe more sophisticated Christians don't say that, then they might say, but only Christianity has the true human perspective. Yeah, but Buddhism is also trying to establish a true human perspective. Implicit in these two koans is that they're true. How is the truth established? Because they're culture-free. Unless they're culture-free, then they're just... one other cultural version.

[36:26]

And I think many of us who practice will have someone, some uncle or friend say to us, why don't you practice something that's part of your own culture. The implication there is that, well, Christianity may not be universal, but it's our culture. But then a Buddhist would say, well, what we're practicing is culture-free. So, is it true? Is Buddhism somehow culture-free? Ivan Illich calls the translator... A frontiersman.

[37:42]

The frontier, yeah. The American West was the frontier. Yeah, I know, but that's like the German word. Yeah. Okay, anyway, his point is that the frontiersman makes the frontier by crossing it. He also calls the translator the ferryman. And what did Bodhidharma do? He crossed the Yangtze. on a reed. So instead of making a new frontier, you create a frontier by translating, he changed the ferry boat into a reed.

[38:47]

So these first two koans, are about what is the authority of the teaching. What gives it authority. What gives it authority is its culture free. Emptiness or silence or not knowing must be the same in every culture. Okay, so that's the conceptual and historical context.

[39:49]

So the practice context is What is the context of emptiness, silence and not knowing in your life? These koans are asking you, are you ready for emptiness, not knowing, silence? Yeah, so I just barely got started here, but I think I should stop. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you.

[40:49]

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