To try to save this cat. Or to try to save me. Who's buried alive in my book. That it's actually quite difficult to make... the change from being so engaged in a text to being present with each of you. Excuse me, can I turn this toward you a little bit? Anything you'd like. It doesn't go out at all. It probably does, I just wasn't sure. Hello. It's become quite warm compared to the other day.

[01:07]

So, how was your discussion today and would you like to give me anything from it? Turn it off because no one's singing. I think we try to bring in the... what was said about the gods in the second... in the commentary. The gods? The gods may go on you and... and you, this... Ah, yeah.

[02:12]

Yeah. And we try to... to connect this with the case, and we saw a parallel in the action of destroying and lunch marks, killing the cat, and the melting of the fire. We identified this with the five skandhas and tried to give the right answer, but actually we didn't agree with what was also said in the commentary, that the one is a mistake. V.C. says that that is called lack, and Chao-Chu is called... Chao-Chu's answer is called repairing, so we didn't agree with this value, which is given for the first part of the case.

[03:18]

And then later we turned to the introduction and tried to find how Nanchuan and Chao-Chu... Chao-Chu. Chao-Chu's actions are... On the one hand, expressing the true imperative, and on the other hand, bringing out the complete manifestation, but we didn't really understand this connection and why this both seemed to be a complete manifestation. Each of these actions seem to be one part, but we didn't find out what is the whole and why two parts and how they are related. Okay, well. Yes, first we were concerned with how this story with the gods, what is written in the commentary, is parallel to the case. So what Nanchuan is doing is described in the commentary as having a defect and what Chaoshu is doing

[04:24]

with this goddess, the five constants, and we kept it partly for the five skandhas, why it was repaired again, and then another point of discussion was also how far the influence, where it is said that there is the true imperative as one half and the great task as the other, how far Nanchuans and Chao-Chu's answer should be one of them, how it is connected and why it is one and why Lanzhuang's action does not deviate and he needs Chao-Chu's answer. Anyone else? We connected the same, we talked about the same theme or aspect and at the end somehow it came out that it's got to do with lineage.

[05:40]

And there are several other pictures in the commentaries and other parts of it. For instance, the tunneling of the mountain, where on the other side the spring comes out, the fountainhead. So, the action of Nanjuan was making the tunnel, cutting through the mountain, and the action of um of shashu was uh the the other part of it coming out of the other side of the mountain yeah it was the fountainhead okay because And the monks of the Eastern Western House were a little bit like the mountains.

[06:53]

Okay. Also wir haben auch über diesen Bereich gesprochen und am Schluss der Diskussion ist ein, also There are very few Chinese Jews. Yes, I know there are some. I said few. Und dass das auch in Beziehung steht zu dem Bergdurchtunneln, dass auf der anderen Seite die Quelle wieder weiter fließen kann, dass das Wasser durch den Berg kann.

[07:58]

Gut gefragt. Okay. What I find somehow depressing about this quran is if I read it, I don't know whether it's a metalogue or not, but if I read it metallogically and I put instead of kegs the quran itself in this quran, then what strikes me then is the inability to talk about the issue because what we are doing in discussing this quran is somehow to discuss about About the cat, if you keep the cat or if you take away the koan, how can we act like Shaoshou? Which answer can we give, which is not like arguing about the cat? Okay. So what we are actually talking about is what we are doing right now, namely conversations about the choir.

[09:13]

And the choir is also the cat. They argue about the choir. Then the question is, we do the same thing that Nacho did with the cat. We take the choir back. And the question is, how can we answer, how can we give a direct answer? Yes. We found out already, we're discussing that the cat is still dying, and a lot of cats have to die, because the discussion is still going on, and it will only be ended when we could reach an answer. We found that it would not help to just copy Chao-Chu

[10:14]

And also put the sandals on the head because that is his answer and everyone has his own personal answer. And I guess... Well, I didn't come in here to see all of you sitting with sandals. That would have been amusing. But I think the solution is somewhere in that way that to show the own personality, to express the own being in some way that is instantaneous, not so. And this, I think, this is the solution. Mm-hmm. to bring their own life and their own fragility and this into the story. Yeah. Okay. Deutsch? I don't think it would help to imitate the Chao-Chu and to put the sandals on the head.

[11:41]

In my opinion, everyone can only help the cat with his own answer by showing himself in his own fragility and express oneself spontaneously. And I think that's the solution. Okay? For me the impressive thing of the poem is that somehow it's... I can barely hear you. somehow this feeling of the cat from the cat I feel somehow inside and it's a feeling of that the presence of the death of the cat is somehow with me and makes a mixture of sadness and joy I don't understand or I don't can really follow the ideas of the

[12:57]

There is a solution in your discussions, because your dad is a criminal as well, for me. For me, this killing of the cat touches me. It makes me feel like I've cut myself in half. It's a mixture of neediness and joy. I've been trying to save the cat for a long time, but I can't see the gift in the coal alone, in every cut. Yes, you can share these emotions which a lot of us have with animals.

[14:10]

Because when reading such, it seems to be usual in ancient Zen masters, that killing or obeying this life seems to be okay because there's another part in the text with Chan Master Fori who gives a dove to a cat and said, excellent. And the cat picks up the dove. I have problems with this behavior of . Yeah. Me too. We all do. I was so calm to hear that Roshi had the same emotions as many of us, as far as love and honor are concerned, and I had the feeling that it might be common in the older, more mature souls, because there is another place of change in the world,

[15:26]

I had a love affair with the koalas yesterday evening. When I was breathing, I just tried to imitate this movement. I did that. I cut. I sat down with it. And with my breath in and out, I saw pictures. I saw this picture of the cat breaking through the head. And at some point I thought to myself, I am this cat. I am that. I will be cut through. And I had the feeling that I had often been cut through in my life. And I did the same with others. I thought, what can help me? I had the idea that what could help me to melt my stardust is with feeling. Love. How I can reflect that. I feel like a man, like a man.

[16:37]

I think the men were like a cat. He played that, exactly the behavior. That's how I felt. The legs were shaking when I noticed that. It was like the Quran started working in me. I would like to share an experience I had with the Quran. Yesterday evening something happened. First I tried to really do this movement of the cutting and then I took an inhale and then with the exhale a lot of images came and the one image was really I'm a cat, I get cut and I also have been the one who has cut in the past other people. And I realized that I'm really kind of the Kuan started working in me and I'm in the melting process of this petrification I'm in, how I'd become a stone.

[17:42]

sort of, and I started feeling that the solution or whatever is really to feel compassion or to feel love. And this came quite as a shock to me. Four or five weeks ago, the driver of an Indian master was murdered and all the devotees were very surprised. How can something like that happen? And the Master kind of repeated the conversation he had with this person, his driver, for 22 years And the last conversation was that he told his driver, please stay inside.

[18:57]

Don't go outside anymore today. And he didn't tell him, if you go outside, you will be murdered. And he went outside and was murdered. And everybody was startled how this could have happened. Because people know that he is clairvoyant. I feel the coil is a similar story and I see two things one side is compassion and on the other side the law, the Dharma To bring these two things together, this is what I feel the koan is about.

[20:17]

So the question is, what is right to do at the moment? To show compassion? So the question is what's appropriate to show compassion or to create a situation where somebody can learn? And For me personally, I'm starting to see this... I used to see this compassion, and I'm starting to see the other side, and how helpful it can be to say, no, it's more important to learn and to endure the pain that arises from it.

[21:30]

And I start seeing these situations everywhere in life now and it's something I'm learning myself right now. I used to just mostly see compassion or emphasizing compassion and now I realize that the other side is equally important to learn and go through the pain of learning. For example, it happened that a woman came to me, somehow I met her and I could see that she was suffering from cancer, and she said, yes, yes, that was the test, and then I talked to her for a whole weekend to investigate her life as to how it came to the disease, That was the compassion. And then afterwards she looked for a doctor who confirmed that it was not so bad and that everything was fine. And my compassion was not strict enough.

[22:39]

So I could have been much stricter. And then she called me later from the hospital. You can't do anything anymore. It's too late. And recently a woman came to me and I could see that she was about to get cancer and then the diagnose confirmed that. And in my compassionate side, I looked with her at her life, what could have caused this. But she didn't take that seriously. So she went to a doctor who would actually confirm that she was fine. And then just recently she called me from the hospital saying, she was beyond help. So I felt I didn't create a strict enough situation for her where she couldn't learn something. Martin, you started to say something a couple of times?

[23:45]

Well, I'm still surprised and confused about this Jao Zhou's action, because on one hand his action is unique, it doesn't refer to the situation at all, it's kind of senseless, and if there is not a kind of hidden background, meaning, and in the other hand it resonates with non-jointly on a kind of non-graspable level and when they break what occupied my mind was This in a way could remember in our own culture here to such actions like we have it in the Dadaistic art and the question which arises out of that is are there any actions which are... any expressions of the great function... any expressions

[25:07]

of the great functions which are more valuable or more true than others. On the one hand, this is a very singular and unique hand. There is no contact at all in this situation, if there is nothing that can be understood naturally. On the other hand, his action is a field of resonance with what Langevin does there. These kinds of actions exist in our culture, for example in Dada, these really singular expressions that are no longer in connection. And this question that suddenly arises, If we talk about the great function or about the complete manifestation, are there actions that are more valuable or more real than others?

[26:28]

Or is there any criterion on which this can be found? Any other comments lurking in the shadows? I was touched by the possibility of action of Astrid, who said that she would have taken the cat and acted very spontaneously. Astrid? Astrid. She would? Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, if somebody else answered that this actually couldn't be real because she is not equal with this Buddhist monk. So it's not relevant to be equal.

[27:31]

This touched me really because I don't agree. I don't agree that you can't act because you feel not equally with somebody else. That's a big question for me. Because the theme was that you should... The answer is to answer, whatever it is, but to answer, to bring something up, instead of not... expression there. Yes. Yesterday we spoke about... You have to say it in German. What touched me was the... I think it was the doctor who said that she had just taken the cat away and that it was quite spontaneous. It was a behaviour that was not appropriate for her. I thought that was good. And then came...

[28:32]

that it wouldn't be possible to act like that, because she wouldn't be equal with the monk. Maybe she wouldn't have the chance to act like that. And I don't agree with that, because for me it's not a question of being equal or of feeling, but of acting. Yes, we had the same point of discussion and maybe what I think is if there is some person who is really serious and holding the cat and killing, You know, if there's a really serious atmosphere, that means if you really do something, then in this atmosphere you show your whole being. And this is very difficult.

[29:36]

I think this is this kind of respect that is really difficult, you just to stand up and do something, because with every action you do, you show your whole being. And this is very difficult to do, I think. And I think that it makes the difference between a Zen master and maybe me. But we answered that the intention of your action is the answer. The intention of doing it, the intention of the interruption, this quality of the allowed to do it. It could be a certain intention of the person who interacts. But the intention is not enough. You have to do something, you have to show something. Can I say what you said in German?

[30:38]

Then with this seriousness, with which he does it, it is incredibly difficult to actually do anything. Because you can only act in this moment when you present your whole person very openly. And that's a very sensitive thing. You have no way of hiding. And to act at this point is incredibly difficult. It's almost impossible. Okay. Somebody else back there want to say something? Yes. I can see this whole story only in a metaphoric way, because killing a cat to press words from other people in a very instant moment is so cool.

[31:57]

And so I think he showed the monks that they are divided. The cat was a metaphoric... He cut it in two, as the monks are, two parts, discussions, and it couldn't be bio-landed again, because they had no word to land it, or to... I can only see the story with the cat symbolically, because otherwise it would be too cruel to force a group of people to say something. Otherwise it would be a normal act to take them away or to say stop. I think that, also with the cat, he had some time to share and some time that they were also shared.

[33:15]

And that's actually just with a word. One word would have needed to make the cat sad again. And that's just a trick, because they know the word. Anybody have a view to express that hasn't been expressed yet? I don't know. Let's try it. For me, the koans are important because... The monks are showed with a kind of weak side. They quarrel. They behave in a very normal way. And the teacher himself is showed from a side you don't know whether it's right or wrong what he does. So it's a kind of normal life stuff that goes on here. Yeah, so from practicing a little bit with koans, I've also learned to look what the koan is not pointing out.

[34:19]

And the emphasis is on quarrel and on killing, and I somehow this morning started feeling kind of a longing, kind of feeling a loving feeling, Yeah, I mean, these people tried so hard, and Anand Sharma's probably disappointed. not happy with himself and maybe he thought he was a failure and yet there were all these people together trying to make something work and I felt a lot of compassion and love for them and also on some level for us trying to do something similar and maybe fail and maybe be stupid and to to have this kind of longing coming out of a koan is very important for me, because it's not normally the case. For me this koan has become very important, because in contrast to most koans you are confronted with very human things, such as conflict, that even the teacher does something that you could not really see,

[35:33]

Yes, and this is the surface of the koan, so you deal with it, and so little I know about the koan practice, there is always something underneath that is not addressed, and that's why I started to get such a feeling this morning, and I can't describe it any other way than such a loving feeling and just longing, yes, so we don't feel much different here than in the koan, I would like to add something which came to mind. An aspect of the koan is how do people talk about different things. The monks are arguing with each other, and there's argument. And if you compare it with Nanchuan and Chaozhou, there's a line in the poem which says, after all, singing and clapping go together.

[36:55]

So they are doing something different, but it goes together. And the minds are arguing about something, and it doesn't work. And when discussing this quran, I always look for agreement on the matter, on the quran, and how to come along with the different views of the quran, which then exist simultaneously. Judy. He was a Jew, no. His boy attendant.

[37:56]

No, go ahead. Well, anyway, so one day he cut his finger off his attendant when he was imitating him, and he caught this, caught it, and the attendant was in line, and then the attendant went away, and he asked, what is it? And he wanted to yell at the finger, and the finger wasn't there, it was enlightened. But I thought it was kind of very rude to cut fingers somewhere. We might want to move to that. Please. I might be a cousin. Cousin, you just look like a cat. But I think he's almost a very compassionate being. I hope so. And so... He must be very sure that this, what he does, is all right, or is right.

[39:13]

And this sureness doesn't come from mind, it doesn't come from thinking or from seeing a hint. I mean, the Master just couldn't be sure that this method of cutting a finger would work, but it did work in this case. And also, in this case, this Sudhani, or what's his name, Nanchuan, for me, in a way, acted out of the same sureness to catch it. He did something completely quite incredible in this moment. but it seemed to be, for me, I had the impression that it kind of was the true imperative of the situation. And further in the text of commentary, there's also a mention that the school didn't die out.

[40:17]

Yeah. That's something which I noticed, which touches me a lot because very often I seem to fail to act according to the true imperative, true necessity. I can't feel it, and it kind of makes me angry about myself, because I block my concept of thinking, myself, and so on. Okay. Deutsch? Oh, it's really happened so long. Don't just give us the headlines in Deutsch. There was a young man who had a condition.

[41:25]

He was used to holding his finger up to the light. One day he caught the finger cut. When he wanted to leave, he ran away. He looked at me and said, what is it? He raised his finger and I was there. And then the light came. Maybe it's actually very unusual to act like that, to cut off someone's finger, if you're not a fearless monster. If there is no certain certainty that what you are doing is right, and even this certainty can, in my opinion, not come from a thought, but from observation, it has to come from deep within, and the certainty that it is what it is. In our history there is no such thing. the true command that is to be carried out.

[42:25]

In a certain sense, the true command of this situation leads me even if it is not to be understood, even if one cannot understand it. is that, from my point of view, if it does not come to any enlightenment in the situation, probably right, because that means that this school is not excluded from the text. And I often feel that there is something like a warm command in such a situation, which I cannot execute because I hesitate or because I am caught in the self-image of other thoughts. Okay. Anyone else?

[43:26]

Okay. I heard somebody say, working with Zahara makes a brutish character. Maybe that's a point too. Is that a Sufi saying? No, it's a Christian mystic saying. I don't know. be certainly brings the body down the body brings you down in your body working with the horror Yeah, he's Leonardo. Anyway, go ahead, Jim. Yes. I remember. You're hurting us all in our stomachs. Okay. So let me respond a little bit, okay?

[44:45]

First of all, everything you've said today and yesterday has been, I think, absolutely necessary to say. Partly because, I mean, 100%, because it's the process of working with koans, and it's essential to working with this koan. It's also the case in another 100% that the whole thrust of this koan is for you to be willing to be Jojo and the monks and to speak for the monks. So working with this koan is to be willing to speak out as the monk should have.

[45:56]

And to act out, too, because what you said, what is your name? Andreas. Andreas said about you did the gesture of the koan. And this is a very Mendelian response to the koan. Where you amplify a physical gesture to bring something out. And when you're working thoroughly on a koan like this, The teacher will ask you or expect you to physically enact some of the koan or physically express your understanding without words.

[47:17]

Now, if we were meeting for four or five days, I would take a day, a morning, an afternoon perhaps, and sculpt this koan. And an extraordinary process, practice that I first was introduced to by Eric. and which I found out more about when I was meeting with the therapists in Austria. And I think it would be deeply instructive if we actually acted it out Say one of you was the monks of the East Hall and another of you was the monks of the West Hall.

[48:39]

One of you was the cat. Many volunteers for that. And one of you, of course, was Nanchuan and one Zhaozhou. And one of you would be the great function And one of you would be the true imperative And maybe one of you would be the tunnel through the mountain And we'd move you around and see where you felt comfortable and what you felt should happen And it's a totally amazing process to me, how powerfully it works. And though you may not believe it, but my guess is that some of you would find in the process of sculpting this that you actually acted out the opposite of what you think you feel.

[49:52]

So this kind of action, though, sculpting, is really behind the Chinese emphasis on ritual as at the center of culture. And the acting out of koans with doksan is also very related to the sense of of the depth and exposure of ritual. Okay, now...

[50:53]

I want to come back to why what we've said is such an important part of the practice of this koan. But I remember, and I'm sure we all remember certain incidents in our past that are echoed in this koan. One I remember, I discovered a bird nest, my father and I discovered a bird nest, and the eggs were laid in it. And I, at some point after the eggs were laid, I went and broke them. And at some point, after the eggs were in there, I went there and broke them.

[52:14]

And I just wanted to see what they looked like. I think I was five or six years old. And my father was quite upset about me doing it. And I said, well, I really couldn't understand because I said, we have eggs every morning, what's the difference? And my father, because when my father was so upset about it, he said, would you like me to catch the bird and snap its neck? I said, oh, no. And he said, well, then why did you break these eggs? And so I brought up that we have eggs every morning. I really was perplexed. And my father said something like, well, these are eggs from animals that we raise as a special population to, you know, etc.

[53:26]

And I still really didn't understand. And another time I remember watching a frog that had been half run over by a car struggling out of the road. across our front yard. And my mother was calling me into lunch, but I couldn't go because I was in this total dilemma. I couldn't save the frog. It was obviously a third at least gone. And yet it had so much life force going, you know, trying to go somewhere. And I was completely helpless, but I couldn't stop being a witness.

[54:53]

I thought at least I could be a witness. And so later I started studying Zen, and I came across this one koan where they say, if there's a frog in a snake's mouth, do you save the frog? Mouse? A frog in it. Well, it could have been a mouse, but it was a frog in the story. And so I... And the thrust of the story was you just let the snake eat the frog. It's wasted action to save the frog was the sense of it.

[55:59]

And I remember I didn't like that at all. You know, it makes biological sense, but I still thought, geez, I could have saved the frog in my front yard. And I've been in situations much worse than trying to save this frog, where I was helpless. And I think, you know, of course, I'm not such a person who would take a dove out of my sleeve and give it to a cat. Though I think that is a far better act than eating one hamburger. At least you know what's going on. With a hamburger, it's all removed from you. Mm-hmm. And I feel there are situations in my life where if I'd had the power of Nanchuan and been willing to sacrifice something and not try to save everything,

[57:30]

But I'm not such a person as Nanchuan, and so things got worse. Though I don't know. I can't second-guess the past, and I can't second-guess Nanchuan. Do you have that expression, second-guess? Yeah, sort of. But I can't replay the past, and I can't replay what Nanchuan could have done. In any case, let me go back to why I emphasized our telling, talking about the story, each of us. None of you will forget this cat. You will, from this, if you didn't know this colon before, From these three days, you have a story which will stay with you the rest of your life.

[58:50]

That's actually quite an important accomplishment. And this story, the more we talk about it, examine together and see the layers of it, And each of you are expressing, from my point of view, not points to be argued about, but just different ways we human beings have of viewing such a thing. And I suspect if we look closely enough, all the viewpoints have been all of ours at various times. In other words, there's a looking at this as practice, there's a layered, you take a story like this and you go through the many ways you can look at it.

[60:04]

And the level, one of the levels of this story, and this story in particular, though there are others like it, which is that it fools you, tricks you into thinking there's an answer. There's only an act. And we don't know if the act is right or wrong. We have to act, but we don't... We have to act, but we don't know And it's the same situation with the buffalo and acting in different ways I think it's described in Choir No. 70 Eric talked about showing your whole body.

[61:29]

Togen talks about the full passage of being time in every act. You're not pussyfooting around. Do you have that expression in German? No, definitely not. Pussyfooting around means you try a little of this, you play it safe all the time. It's a good expression for this call. Anyway, is it whatever action you take, you don't look back and you... The full passage of being time, the whole passage of your being is in it. This sounds maybe scary to us. We make some big mistake. Maybe we will, but we'll probably make less small mistakes. So this, but this is actually a craft, too, of learning to act fully, but in very small units.

[62:53]

You don't, you know, you don't rush out into a street full of cars. I'm trying to not produce generalizations or morality about this. I'm just trying to show you the craft of acting in the present, which is part of Zen practice. What I say about it isn't a very good description, but it's what I've said so far. What I say about it isn't a very good description, but what I can say. Okay.

[63:57]

In traditional cultures, and in our culture prior probably to Plato, culture was memorized. And you knew the myths of your culture because over and over again you heard the stories. And those stories got embedded in you like cookie cutters. So you knew what to do and you knew certain predictabilities in other people, how they would act in complex situations. Because, for example, let's take this koan again. If you just understand the idea, the true imperative, there's no place for the mind to rest.

[65:00]

Even if you really understood that and accept it, it doesn't help you act much at all. You can apply the same to any of the statements, main teachings in Bhūzāl. But if you have the sense of right now we're on karmic ground, And you see the cat. And there's a certain, by seeing the cat, there's a certain mnemonic. You know the word? Not demonic. Mnemonic means memory devices that are used to remember something.

[66:17]

Demonic? What's the word in German? In German it's mnemonisch. So if you remember the cat you... feel the presence of non-chuan, and probably the ways in which in your meditation and during these three days you've examined this story will be present there like a force field. So part of what these Khans are doing are actually trying to embed new non-mythological Buddhist cookie cutters in your memory bank. So it can work for us too because to act in complex situations with subtlety is not a simple matter of thinking fast.

[67:31]

The three bodhisattvas that are often present in In Buddhism. Manjushri representing wisdom. Samantabhadra representing patience. But that kind of patience where the world is so held that you see through it. The patience that allows you to let things happen and for you to see beneath the surface.

[68:45]

And Avalokitesvara representing compassion. Now, these are actually positions you actually learn. And the true imperative is the position you learn. Now again, I don't know if I'm making this very understandable, but I'm trying. I brought up both in the Kohan discussion at Kassel and in Hamburg this, that the Bodhisattva is defined in the Prajnaparamita as

[69:58]

The Bodhisattva was one who attained not non-attachment but the Dharani non-attachment. And here Dharani is a word very much like mnemonic. It means the retained body memory of a state of mind. The retained body memory of a state of mind. So in these koans where you suddenly have a question, speak, speak, you know, given to somebody, and they kind of... What we could say is, you can do that to almost anybody, and they sort of... And it's just so that you could do it with anyone, and he would just say it in front of him.

[71:15]

I remember when these new little tape recorders came in that people could put in their pockets back in the 60s. I had some guy, what the heck was his name? He was a record, early, one of the big Hollywood record producers. I didn't even know I met him, but I met him, and he came up to me, and he pulled his microphone and said, What's your philosophy of life? Blah, blah, blah. I looked at the microphone, and what is he doing? What's he doing with the recording? And I was... I didn't have much Zen at that moment. You probably wouldn't now either.

[72:35]

I just ignore that machine standing there. But again, let me try to say something about what's going on here. What does it mean when you can't shove someone's state of mind into ego states or worried states or fear of making mistakes states? It's because that state of mind is embedded in you. And it's embedded in you through mnemonic engagement. In other words, you keep engaging yourself with a story like this, with the images, Nanchuan, the cat,

[73:36]

all the things you thought about it, the stories that have come up. For me, the frog and the bird's eggs and the cats. And in a situation where a true imperative is called for, it calls forth this mind as a kind of embeddedness a memory embeddedness that appears in the present. So you can create your own. But the koans offer us something like, I don't know, 2700, something like that, different situations. And from one point of view, you can say if you understand one koan thoroughly, you understand them all.

[74:56]

And that's true in the sense that koans are a dialogue about the two truths. A dialogue in which the two truths are made manifest in everyday circumstances, the two truths being form and emptiness, or divided and undivided worlds. And we can see this going on in this koan too. Zhaozhou represents great function or emptiness appearing as form but there's no there's no

[75:58]

But the form still carries the feeling of an awareness of emptiness. So if you answered, which would be quite a good answer, please say it's a cat. Please don't kill the cat. This is a perfectly good answer. And it would probably save the cat. And at the time when we all discussed this with Suki Roshi and Yamada Roshi, Bill Kwong, who is now Kwong Roshi, he said, please don't kill the cat. And that was when he was just a new student. And this flavor, this direct flavor, like I said, of some people in the marketplace just saying, don't kill that cat, you Zen nut. And this direct taste or taste direction that these people have on the marketplace when they say, well, you sench, weak-headed, deadly, you're not getting this cat.

[77:36]

And Bill was able to cut through and just say, please don't kill all the rest of us for trying to think of smart answers or Zen answers. But now what's the difference between that and Huck and Zhaozhou's answer? which is a more mature Zen answer, is that Zhao Zhou's Please Don't Kill the Cat only shows form. No, the thing Please Don't Kill the Cat is a good answer, a good response, but it only shows form. But Zhaozhou's response shows form and emptiness. Because he acts, but he acts with this sense of something else going on. I mean, it's quite obvious.

[78:54]

You put your shoe on top of your head, you have your glasses to help. You're pointing out two sides or two realities and so forth. And as Martin pointed out, he also is answering in the mind of Nanchuan. So Nanchuan is described as dispassionate, not forgiving the monks, not giving them a break, but not criticizing them. He's just holding up the cap. It's just creating a field. And Zhaozhou's response is the same. It's not really about the cat or the monks.

[79:56]

He just does something. but it resonates with or is a mirror image of Nanchuan's mind. So you can't join the two groups of monks. But in this case, at least you can join your teacher. No. That's actually quite a good thing to do. But it's understood with more depth than that. Because in the Chinese... an Indian view that it really developed in India, the personal identity, the societal identity, and the phenomenal world identity are considered to be one, one street.

[81:19]

So if you're able to act with clarity, everyone around you will feel that clarity or be able to act with clarity too. And if you can do that, it's the only chance that your whole culture can act with clarity. If everyone's muddy, the culture will be muddy. And if even a few people are clear, clarity is much more powerful than mud.

[82:20]

In our human realm, at least. So a few people clear, the more the better. But a few people clear is essential for a culture. Even one good book or one good joke can make a difference. And we know how fast a telling statement about a situation passes through a culture. So that's why all the cosmic stuff in the end, relating to the gods and so forth, because it says, hey, these acts are at one with the society and the cosmos.

[83:21]

So what it says here, as Ruth pointed out, when the positive and negative principles lose their balance, When all these forces manifest as the two truths in form and emptiness, when we only recognize one side, when our actions don't simultaneously acknowledge the undivided world and the divided world, you personally and eventually your society gets out of balance. This is the teaching or emphasis in Zen. And that is what is really called lack.

[84:22]

That's really when people start, when a culture starts destroying itself. Whether that depth is brought into the culture through a mythology which keeps the balance, Or it's brought in through what Zen tries to do is to create these many koans which establish a way of acting in subtlety. Because it's thought in this worldview, and it's a worldview that I find to be true, but I can't say it's true for you. That you cannot spontaneously or rarely, unless the special meaning is spontaneous, act in complexity without practice.

[85:39]

The function of our mind is to simplify complex things. It's the way we think and act. As somebody said, it's algorithmically compressible. Yeah. So if there isn't behind that simplicity the experience of depth, the simplicity will just be simple. It won't carry the weight of being behind it. So in this ancient culture and its form in Zen, which I'm in my limited way trying to present to you,

[86:57]

It's thought, and I didn't finish my thought before, to understand the one koan, to know all the koans, is one way of looking at it. This is looking at the koans from the point of view of understanding and enlightenment. But it's not looking at the koans from the point of view of great function. Of the function of enlightenment in the midst of subtlety and complexity. Because enlightenment is not a conversion experience. which suddenly God's grace flows through you and everything is bright and beautiful and you never make a mistake again.

[88:22]

That would be nice, wouldn't it? Sometimes I weep for the possibility But it ain't that way, at least that's not my experience. How enlightenment functions, I mean, if you live by yourself in a protected way, you know, you can have a pretty joyful limited enlightenment. And some people are enlightened, but not enlightened at the depth of wisdom in a culture. And when they become famous for their enlightenment, they make big boo-boos. More people around them begin to suffer. So these koans also have the dimension to bring us into consideration of many different kinds of complexity in which we need to act.

[89:25]

And by incorporating this story, this cat, Nanchuan and so forth, and all your layered reflections on it, and the reflections that we've heard from each of us, the wonderful reflections we've heard from each of you, embed in us this possibility of acting in situations where there's no answer, but we have to act. So this is the point of this koan, to embed in you a situation of complexity where we have to act, we don't know what to do.

[90:46]

It's a classic situation we all face in the kind of world we live in. Now the next koan, the woman of Taishan, I would like to for us to read it tonight. And I even have a bookmark of a woman because there's so few women in the koans that I have at least two women here, one in the koan and one in the bookmark. And this is another classic situation. The koan is creating an image to embed in you another but different subtle complex situation.

[92:07]

What do you do? How do you understand this? How can you enter into this Get to know this woman of Taishan. Thank you. May our intention equally penetrate every being and place.

[92:36]

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