Good morning for this second week of our practice month. How many new people are there in this week? Four or five? Two more coming. Okay. Okay. Now the theme has been, will be, is Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Each one for a week. So now I should start speaking about the Dharma. But I find I... I can't do it without speaking about the body.

[01:04]

And What did we... I would like... I mean, I can't really review the first week for the seven to be new people. Except to say that... What can I say? the potentiality to experience Buddha in ourselves, the practices to realize Buddha in ourselves are based on a particular way of experiencing the body, In a particular way of viewing the world.

[02:20]

Yeah, and if you don't get this, you don't really understand how these practices work. Yeah, and you don't get... what's underneath a lot of these teachings. And so we end up spinning our wheels. Or hoping for the future. I think Padmasambhava calls past, present and future the three cul-de-sacs. Yeah. So we, the word body and

[03:21]

English, I suppose, German, I don't know, is the root of it means something like a brewing vat, like for beer. Anyway, all the images are of a container. And a body is something we have. But in yoga culture, a body is something we do. And a body is something more like a spring, a quellant. A spring which, like an artesian well or well or spring that connects us with heaven and earth.

[04:56]

Yeah, and is a kind of potency, not a container. And they don't even have the images of, they have the image of heaven and earth, not heaven and hell. And heaven and earth are not separate from each other. The earth penetrates the heavens. And the heavens reach into the earth. And the sky, at least, the sky starts here. If it doesn't start here, where would it start? Yeah. That's, you know, kind of rather different. If you really feel like that, like you're walking in the sky here, this kind of shifting your view makes a big difference.

[06:14]

Sometimes I think the importance of this is the main, emphasizing the importance is the main thing I'm bringing to how we practice Zen. Stressing again the importance that the Eightfold Path begins with wisdom views. And to take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And again, basically an act of renunciation. Yeah, you're saying I'm not going to take refuge in the usual things I take refuge in.

[07:19]

Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and Zen especially are considered to be actually one body. So today I want to see if I can give us a feeling for this difference in the way of looking at a body. And I don't really know if I can do it. Yeah, so I'll try out some various things. First of all, the body is round. Now, I meant to bring a rubber band or something. Or that piece of wire I picked up on the floor would have done. If you have a gummi band, you can make it all kinds of shapes, but it also then can be round. You could push it in so it has two arms and two legs. Would it still be round then?

[08:54]

From the point of view of the yogic way of looking at the body, it would still be round. Okay, so invariably, inevitably, I'll come back to Sophia occasionally. That's my main object of study, so... Okay, so she's got this body or something or other. Yeah, but we can't say it's her body at first. It flops around and does things. Bumps into things. And slowly she's bringing it under a kind of control. Let's imagine she's got some kind of opening up awareness and consciousness.

[09:57]

And it's opening up and spreading out. And one of the understandings of the body in Chinese culture and in Buddhism The body is something that extends out, that it spreads out. Sort of like when you pour a pancake into a frying pan. It kind of spreads out, at some point it stops. So we're maybe pouring a pen, or somehow a pancake of consciousness is spreading out in Sophia.

[10:59]

But the frying pan has a funny shape, you know, it's got arms and legs. So this pancake spreads out into her arms and legs. But in a sense it spreads out in between the arms too. Because she can reach her arms to those places. And I've never studied Tai Chi, you know. My feeling is it's something like they're trying to let the body find its roundness. Let the body move out into the space, body and mind occupying. Now, one problem with speaking about this coming from the Chinese and yogic side Is they have not developed such separate words as we have for body and mind.

[12:08]

Because they're not really considered clearly different. So whatever terms... are used overlap with each other. What did you say the other day? The body is space? Yeah. Well, how do you say the body is space in English? It doesn't make any sense. The body has a different meaning in English. in Buddhist culture. I mean, first of all, it means what makes us alive.

[13:09]

It's not the corpse of the body. And the body is considered something like, as I said the other day, a tuning fork. Or dowsing rods. You know, Hakuin Zenji says, the sense, do not think the sense fields are contained in the sense organs. The sense fields are not contained in the sense organs. It's also... by extension, the world is not contained in the sense fields.

[14:23]

But the body contains the world. So the world is not contained in the sense fields, but the body contains the world. Now, what I'd like you to do this week is to, you know, just play in your own mind and activity with... With these different, these other ways of looking at the body. Thinking about the body, feeling the body. Experiencing your activity. And if any one of the things I say sticks with you, use that.

[15:36]

Don't try to remember everything I said. Because if you can get the feeling of one in your thinking or your activity, the others will produce themselves. So we can imagine first of all this awareness or consciousness arising here and extending out. And one of the ways we extend it is through the body.

[16:38]

But it extends, the body is a sort of manifestation of it. But the body isn't considered to be material. Sometimes I reflect on how science is going to think of this, but let's leave that aside. The body is not considered to be material. It's something midway between material and mind. It doesn't fall into either category. It's an expression of mind and it's something like material too. And the skin is Just an organ like the rest of your organs.

[17:53]

Maybe like it's something viewed something like surface tension on water. Like you can suspend a needle on the surface tension of water. Yeah. But the surface of the water is still always communicating with the rest of the water. Yeah, and your skin really is... just part of the whole of the soft stuff of your body. I use the word stuff, but, you know, I don't know. I have to find some words, so you have to understand what I mean. Mm-hmm. So, like, when you straighten your posture... You have a feeling of straightening your skeleton.

[19:13]

Somehow we can use the mind as a kind of skyhook. That's a thing that kids are told in America. I don't know about Europe, but it's like elbow grease and skyhook. There's no such thing. But let's imagine a skyhook by which you're pulling yourself up. You have to hook something onto the sky hook. So first you put your skeleton on, maybe. See if you can feel into your skeleton throughout your body, back, rib cage, in the middle of your arms and so forth.

[20:19]

Yeah, like some kind of ghost movie. And all these skeletons sitting here. And then grab, hold or lift the organs, all the organs of the body. But you're not just inside the skeleton or the lungs, the chest, ribcage, etc. But they're all around, within and without. So you lift up all the organs and make space for the organs. Yeah, lift your lungs up into your rib cage. And make space. Here you're practicing with the four elements. Yeah, this would be part of the first foundation of mindfulness.

[21:28]

Yeah, and if you can feel the organs of the body and feel the skeleton, You can also then feel the mind, which is like somehow asking the organs and skeleton to do something. But the body says, oh, thank you, mind, that was good. Or maybe the organs say, hey, that's not too bad, do that again, mind. So maybe the mind is the servant of the organs, or the organs are the receiver of the mind, I don't know. We can't really separate these clearly into active and passive. And we think of the body as usually something passive and the mind as active.

[22:33]

And it's the mind which gets the body to do things. Und es ist der Geist, der den Körper dazu bringt, Dinge zu tun. Yeah, to jog for one hour and not 35 minutes. Der ihn dazu bringt, eine Stunde lang zu laufen und nicht nur 35 Minuten. Yeah, or we ride our bicycle. Perhaps we ride our bicycle trying to reach a certain time rather than letting our body without thinking decide when we finish riding or continue riding. These are the kind of relationships you, if you're practicing, you should play with. I listen to the clock or the body or both or discipline.

[23:43]

I mean, this shouldn't be an open and shut question. Now, I said the body contains the world. As heaven and earth are considered to be some kind of versions of each other. A polar, poles, not a dualism. Mm-hmm. Somebody named Karl O. Schlag, I believe.

[24:44]

Schlag, he'd be popular in Austria. He has some kind of phrase to try to describe his experience. as pre-reflective, non-thematic, knowing or cognizing. Now, if we try to use his phrase in Buddhism, we'd have to say something like pre-reflective, Und wenn wir seinen Satz im Buddhismus verwenden wollen, dann müssten wir sagen, vor der Reflexion. Non-thematic, that's probably good. Nicht auf einen Gegenstand bezogen, das ist wahrscheinlich gut. Non-discriminating. Nicht unterscheidend.

[25:46]

Non-cognizing, I would add. Und nicht cognizing, nicht begreifend. Knowing. Wissen. Now that's not, that's the body which knows, that's the body, mind, vision, which knows the Buddha. Now, this is not just a Buddhist idea. It's also in Chinese culture. It's in early Taoism and so forth. So let's go back again. The sense fields are not contained in the sense organs. And the complexity and subtlety of the world is not contained in the sense fields. Not limited to the sense fields. But the body somehow contains the world. Now, another definition in Chinese of the body is a share of the whole.

[27:09]

A part of the whole which can know the whole. Okay, so it's assumed that the body somehow has this macrocosmic, microcosmic relationship. And the body itself, if not interfered with by conceptual thinking, can know the world like a tuning fork or dowsing rods more accurately. clearly than the six sense fields. Or more fully, if not more clearly. Yeah.

[28:11]

There's no way by ordinary consciousness you can feel water, but your body has a tuning. And you know, I've done dowsing. You can dowse things, but you can't see or think. But the body is really the dowsing rod. The Rods are just an extension. Okay, sorry. Having done some dowsing in my short life, you can actually find not only water but telephone lines and other things underneath the ground. It's not done by conceptual thinking. It's outside the six sense fields. And yet, It's your body that's dowsing, not really the rods.

[29:12]

The rods just help you see. Now, it's assumed in the concept of the body in yogic and Chinese culture that the whole body is actually dowsing all the time. So we don't want Sophia's body-mind awareness to just penetrate in the shape of her body, or just penetrate through her six senses. But we'd like to let her feel the penetration of her knowing in the world itself. as part of the world itself.

[30:30]

Now I could go on with this topic as you might imagine. Maybe this is enough to get us started here. Now let's go to two of the little stories. I don't know, were they passed out this morning? They're from a book of koans called The Iron Flute. And Genro is the ancient commentator and compiler. And Njogen, who put this contemporary version together, And Jogen, who lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles, was one of the really first Zen teachers, I think, to stay in the United States before Suzuki Roshi, too. I think he was also Eiken Roshi's first teacher. Anyway, he lived in San Francisco for some years.

[31:53]

I knew where his apartment was. I never met him. And then he lived in Los Angeles, and he didn't teach until he lived in Los Angeles. And Tsukiroshi appreciated him quite a bit. Though Tsukiroshi also never met him. So in there, there's Nyogen's comments and Genro's comments. Okay, so you have... Now let me just look briefly at these two stories. Linji or Rinzai is out planting a tree. Okay. So Wang Bo, his teacher, comes out. What the heck are you doing? We got nice... shrubbery around here, bushes and everything already.

[33:08]

What's she sticking a tree in the middle of everything for? Or some kind of comment like that. And now we have to... The story doesn't make any sense unless you assume that Linji and Wang Bo both feel a relationship to the tree. as if it were part of their body. And if Linji himself has one primary aim, And the assumption is, Linji himself and Huang Bo share one fundamental aspiration.

[34:12]

This mutual aspiration to realize Buddhahood with you. So in that context, he's asking, what are you planting this tree for? And I don't know. What does Linji say? He says, I don't know. It'll make the garden more beautiful. And it'll offer shade for future generations. To practice here at the monastery. Then he taps the earth, you know. With his hoe, three times. Wang Bo says so. Your self-assertion, a little too much pride here.

[35:21]

And Linji just taps the earth again. And Wang Bo says, yes, you will preserve my teaching for future generations. Now in this story is a concept of the Dharma body. An assumption that the body and the tree and the garden and all somehow have an intimacy. have an intimacy. Yeah, so you plant the tree, you're somehow planting yourself. So Wang Bo is suggesting that, is saying that Linji, means that he will offer shade and teaching to future generations.

[36:48]

His intention body to realize this aspiration extends into the future. So he's planting the tree as part of his extended body in the present and into the future. So we can take care of Johanneshof in this spirit. We plant ourselves here. Or even if we come for a short time, you plant something here. And even while you're away, it's growing here. And if your intention, this mutual aspiration is firm, it grows in you wherever you are.

[37:50]

And this is not a body in a container. It's a body that's always inseparable from the world. And inseparable from the world, it's always learning from the world. Maturing in the world. And the world is maturing in it. So as Sophia again is in a different time than we are. And we are each in our own time.

[38:52]

And as I've been saying, the time you were a child is actually a different time, not just a different experience. And actually the time of each of you is different. And we mature in the world and the world matures in us. So a person for whom the world has matured in them Lives in a different world than another person. Just as a gardener in a garden lives in a different garden than a person who's just walking by the garden. So the mature Zen practitioner is in a different Zendo than the new Zen practitioner.

[40:00]

It's the same Zendo, though. So we mature the Zendo in ourselves... And we mature the world in ourselves. And we mature ourselves in the world. And that, we're offering that all the time to everyone. This is our, this, we could call something like this the Dharma body. So this story is about Wang Bo and Lin Xi's Dharma body. Which is inseparable from the tree and the garden and the monastery.

[41:01]

and future generations. And Wang Bo by saying, hey, you're a little bit too proud here. is poking a little at how deep his intention is. And Linji just taps the ground three more times. And thus we'll secure the teaching for future generations. Maybe I'll leave the other story till tomorrow. Now this afternoon in the seminar and groups you meet within, I think it might be good if you spoke about your own experiences of the body of your body, not just the societal body, or social body, that always shapes our body, and limits it, and the cultural body even more so.

[42:23]

But sometimes I think all of us have experiences of the body in some subtle way that's not just what our society tells us it is. So if any of us have any of this wider knowledge of how the world is not contained in the sense fields, not limited to the sense field, but may be in many aspects of its wholeness, contained in each of our own body, which we can't really say own body, unless you have a wide sense of ownership. And maybe there can be some review for the newer people of what we did this last week.

[43:55]

Thank you very much. May our intentions be the same in every being and every place.

[44:22]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_71.79