One reason this koan is so famous or well known is because it's quite doable, quite usable. So even a teenage Thich Nhat Hanh being given this koan by his teacher. Brilliant as he is. Still, he didn't, as a teenager, didn't know that much about Buddhism. Yeah. But he was able to change his life with this koan.

[01:05]

Enough so he mentions it later as a key point in his life. And we're, you know, we're all quite, we're all busy, everyone's busy. So all of us can, could wish we weren't so busy. But it's, and it's a simple idea, but for most of us an original idea. It's a simple idea, but for most of us an original idea. I don't know, original idea.

[02:08]

It's the first time you think that? For us, it's a unique idea. An original idea, yeah. We hadn't thought of it before. Which is that we can be busy and not busy at the same time. So it's a totally typical antidotal. characteristic practice that in the midst of Agatha's suffering she found some freedom. In the midst you can use busyness to remind yourself, hey, maybe there could be one who is not busy.

[03:14]

So the busyness itself becomes part of the non-busy, the practice of the noticing busyness becomes part of the freedom from busyness. So we use the difficulty to transform the difficulty. So again, this is a classic Zen case. Das ist wieder eine klassische Zen-Geschichte, Fall, Zen-Fall. And we can feel, we can identify with Da Wu and Yun Yan. Und wir können uns auch mit Da Wu und Yun Yan identifizieren. There's something kind of, I mean, I know you read Bai Jiang and Matsu and these big, glamorous, glorious religious figures.

[04:21]

But Dawu and Yunyan, you might meet out in front of coal burners. So we can identify with them. And the kind of... jocular joking nature of their encounters is very refreshing and accessible and there's lots of stories about them and they all have this kind of quality a little bit You know, smart aleck.

[05:24]

Smart aleck. Smart aleck is like the key. What the hell are you doing? You look so busy. On the other hand, this con is used to represent the flow of the teaching through two people. And if you really want to study this koan, why not? You want to become familiar with the teaching of every teacher mentioned in the koan.

[06:27]

This would be a project. But, you know, we're busy. But still, you could come back to it over time, get familiar with each one, and nowadays you can get pretty familiar with each one. In the early 60s, I only had Chuck Luck. I mean, that's what Philip Whelan calls him, Charles Luke Chuck Luck. But now there's quite a lot of writing about these different teachers. So this koan intentionally mentions teacher after teacher.

[07:48]

I don't know. I didn't count all of them. Yeah, National Teacher Wei Zhong. For example. Who said, you know, dying and undying and all that stuff. He says, body and mind are one suchness. Er sagt, Körper und Geist sind eine Soheit. Ja. So then we can understand that since Daowu and Yunyan are exemplars of this lineage, also nachdem Daowu und Yunyan so wie they are these two these two guys are two bodies and mind of one suchness having a meeting having an encounter So really, if we're going to, yeah, we can use this koan in the midst of our busyness to suddenly, I think it's possible, I know it's possible, to feel free of busyness.

[09:24]

I would say neurologically it can precipitate a left brain, right brain shift. No, that's a big deal. You can take a phrase, a story, and you can repeat it, and you can actually shift or change the right brain-left brain dominance pattern. How interesting that through practice, through phrase, through words even, there's this neurological Okay, so one way is just in the situation of your life.

[10:39]

In your busyness, you decide to realize the one who's not busy. Did you hear what I said? You decide. Do. Do it. You can do it. Just do it. That's Herbie Hancock. Just do it. This chemistry works through the power of intention, through the power of mental postures.

[11:51]

Yeah, and on the other side of realizing the one who's not busy, This koan talks about a gate quite a bit. No, this is a gate. I guarantee you, this can be a gate in any one of your, each of your life. Probably, I know it is for some of you already. But the, the, the, uh, the, uh, uh, The realized Zen practitioner realizes that realization is possible.

[13:13]

Now, I'm using realize in two senses there. I translated in two senses. You did. Well, that was very prescient of you. So maybe I could say the Zen student who's likely to become realized knows it's possible. Also, der Zen-Praktizierende, der weiß, dass es... And even if you don't know it's possible, you better know it's possible because it's the best alternative. Yeah, so you put your life into this possibility. Knowing it's possible. Now, you know, when Bertrand Russell, he was a confirmed and public atheist. Bertrand or Russell was a declared atheist.

[14:41]

And somebody said to him, but what if when you die you go to heaven and there is God? And what will you say then, Bert? He said, you should have given us more evidence. Well, here we've got 2,500 years of evidence and this koan, etc. But do you need another 1,000 years? So you decide, you put all your other Zen stuff aside, Also entscheidest du dich und tust all dein anderes Zen-Zeug mal auf die Seite. Also ich werde jeden Moment nutzen, um diese Geschäftigkeit zu bemerken. If your intention is this strong, I promise you it will work.

[16:06]

It doesn't now take you out to dinner. Is there a timeline with the promise? A lifetime line. But, you know, we find our personality so interesting. And we spend so much time wanting others to find it interesting.

[17:08]

It's really hard to just say, I'm going to discover, realize the one who's not busy. So that's the true study of this Quran. Okay. Now, it's also interesting to, useful to understand, [...] absorb the richness of this teaching. Yeah, but so what worldview allows the simultaneity of busyness and non-busyness? So you can enter from different gates.

[18:27]

So you can enter from different gates. Didn't we, Otmar, think about colon 7 too? Yao Shen sends a seat? Yes, we did. All right, good. Now, Yao Shen is... Yunyan's teacher. So we have Yaoshan ascending the seat, not saying anything, getting back down, etc. And as a bookmark for this koan, I have a photograph of Sophia in a car seat, sound asleep, slumped down. And I see Sophia ascending the seat. And this was a koan quite important to Sukhiroshi and Dogen. So Being asked to teach, getting up and then getting down?

[19:48]

He says there's teachers of the sastras, there's teachers of the sutras, but if you want to talk to them, go see them. So what does this teaching have to do with Yunyan not being busy? Or Daowu, when Yunyan holds up the broom, Da Wu just stops. What's the relationship to the stopping, the not busy, and the not giving the lecture? What's being communicated here about two persons meeting?

[20:52]

Okay, now... Yaoshan was ordained, if you looked into the background of these people a little, was ordained by a Vinaya master. And he practiced a long time. I got a little tired, let's say, of the externalized teachings, the teachings which carry the teachings. The the externalized teachings which carry the teaching.

[22:05]

Now, we'll have to think about, if you want, whether the way we do vows and all that, is that externalized teaching? Also müssten wir auch einmal darüber nachdenken, ob die Art und Weise, wie wir hier uns verbeugen und so, ob das auch so externalisiertes Leben ist. Or is that pointing at the mind? Oder ist das etwas, was auf den Geist hin zeigt? So, Yao Shan said, you know, I understand the twelve divisions and I've studied Buddhism pretty thoroughly. And Yao Shan said, I understand these twelve divisions and I've studied Buddhism pretty thoroughly. But I don't really understand the teaching of Zen. Which is pointing to the mind. Investigating the self and Buddha nature. And realizing Buddha. becoming a Buddha.

[23:25]

Now we could say that this is the teaching carried in the body pointing at the mind. Now this story is used to turn Turn the relationship between the Vinaya and the more sutra-based teachings and the body-based teachings of Zen. Turn, like just turn? Turn the relationship, shift the relationship, expose the relationship. We can say that the Koran uses this relationship between these Vinaya teachings Okay. Pointing to the mind. Pointing to the mind. Okay. Again, I'm trying to use simple examples.

[24:26]

The instruction, don't move. Und wieder möchte ich ganz einfache Anweisungen dazu verwenden, die ganz einfache Beispiele nehmen. Die Anweisung, bewege dich nicht. Die kann man als eine Anweisung nehmen, oder als Regel, die man befolgt. Es kann aber auch dazu benutzt werden, den Geist zu erforschen. And the first jhana, jhana is the word for zen too, you know jhana, first jhana is to investigate the mind. Das erste jhana, und jhana heißt auch zen, das erste jhana ist also studiere den Geist. How do you investigate the mind? Wie studiert man denn den Geist?

[25:27]

Well, you have to be able to notice the mind. A mental posture is a way to notice the mind. It's not just an instruction, don't move. It's also a mental posture again. And you can bring attention to it. You can feel its presence in your posture, physical posture. You can feel the mental posture's presence in your physical posture. Don't move is, yeah, talks to you. Your heart's beating, your lungs are breathing, but still there's something happens when you say, don't move.

[26:38]

Also, dein Herz schlägt, deine Lunge bewegt sich, aber trotzdem passiert da etwas. No. Spricht da etwas, wenn du dich nicht bewegst. Now, don't move turns the physical posture into zazen. Now, there can be mental postures in your activity, too. The one who's not busy can be a mental posture within your activity. Okay, so don't move. What happens? There's a kind of stillness. I mean, not moving is being still. But there's also a kind of mental stillness. Stillness.

[27:47]

And you can use that as an opening, a seam, an opening to pour in attention. As I started speaking about this yesterday. Okay, okay, okay. Now, as I've said a number of times, but just so we're all in the same posture, page. Attention is not simply consciousness. I can be conscious of you sitting here. And I can move attention around the room. To the left or the right? I can place it where I want. Or I can move it to my heart or my breathing.

[29:12]

Or I can learn to feel it and go to sleep and carry that attention into sleeping. Then you have lucid dreaming. And after a while you have dreaming always as a form of thinking. A thinking that doesn't occur in the medium of ordinary consciousness. So attention is really an extraordinary gift we each have. Okay. So attention can become a kind of dynamic of consciousness.

[30:22]

Yeah, but it's not simply consciousness. And you can have attention which isn't conscious. Und man kann auch Intentionen haben, die nicht wirklich bewusst sind. So, for now, let's leave it at that. Lassen wir es mal bei dem im Moment. All right. So, what I suggested that when you do Zazen, you bring attention, you use the opportunity of sitting. Also, ihr nutzt die Gelegenheit des Sitzens To fill the body with attention. And it's also useful, I mean, I started this years ago in the early 60s, exploring my body, the body, with attention.

[31:27]

So I used attention like a little flashlight or a feeling and went up and down my arms and around my lungs and into my kidneys and so forth. And, you know, naturally, you have pictures from encyclopedias and so forth of the organs. And those pictures can influence what you're looking for when you're hunting for your kidneys or something like that. But your kidneys are part of a system.

[32:36]

It's a systemic organ or something like that. So you're really looking at a whole system. So it's not the same as the pictures. Then you can go from the stomach up to the shoulder and back down the arm and into the fingers. Du kannst vom Magen in die Schulter und dann von dort durch den Arm in die Finger. If the Buddha is one who is awake, you might as well do this. Wenn der Buddha einer ist, der wach ist, dann kannst du das ja ruhig mal machen. And Sashin can get boring. You got to do something. Why not do this? Und Sashin kann ja auch ziemlich langweilig werden. Warum machst du denn nicht mal sowas? How nice to have your attention filling your fingers. But then you discover you don't have to go from the stomach to the shoulder to the arm. You can go straight across to the knuckles from your stomach.

[33:39]

And you find actually the whole body is a kind of space of which attention is a dynamic of that space. You can also imagine a huge blanket was thrown over this building and it became utterly dark suddenly. Oder du stellst dir vor, dass eine riesige Decke über dieses ganze Gebäude geworfen wird und ganz zack, plötzlich ist es total dunkel. Or just close your eyes, that's simpler. Oder mach einfach die Augen zu, das ist viel einfacher. And feel to the right. I can feel Maria Luisa's presence. And feel to the left, I can feel Gerhard and others sitting there.

[34:51]

And I can feel to the back as well. And to the front. And, you know, this is, you know, sort of peripersonal space, but it's more than that. Did you have translated that word? Just say it. I'm in the dark. You can begin to feel a presence. Now, you can actually... get so that you know the feel of that so well. That feeling can be present all the time, even when your eyes are open. Now, what are you doing when you bring attention into the body, pour attention into the body, or follow attention through the body?

[36:07]

And you're using mindfulness practice and zazen practice as a chance to do this every now and then or regularly. You're getting the body used to being a vehicle In other words, you're getting the body used to being filled with attention. Basic practice. The body gets used to being filled with attention. Der Körper gewöhnt sich daran, mit Aufmerksamkeit angefüllt zu sein.

[37:12]

And you're also educating attention. Gleichzeitig lehrst du auch die Aufmerksamkeit. Attention is getting used to finding itself in the cellular body. And attention is a chameleon and takes on the body. And once attention is used to finding the body as location, the body becomes a location through filling it with attention, the body turns into a location, a new kind of location. Now we already have a bodily sense, a bodily presence.

[38:28]

Wir haben ja bereits eine körperliche Präsenz. And what happens through this kind of practice? Um was geschieht denn durch so eine Art Praxis? You begin to join the attention-filled body to the bodily presence. Dass man diese... And really, now this is hard to... I mean, actually it's fairly easy to speak about, but it's, you know, hard to notice sufficiently to speak about it. So now you have the attention-filled body and the more inborn bodily presence joined. And this is experienceable.

[39:38]

Feelable. And the feeling becomes more and more like a feeling of light and space. A feeling of light and space and this attention-filled body. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. The experience of you, of you-ness, occurs somewhere. Usually occurs in our thoughts, in our subject-object distinctions, comparisons and so forth. But there is an experience of you-ness that we have of a kind of location that continues.

[41:01]

Yeah, that's good enough. And this experience of you-ness... begins to be located in the attention-filled body. And the attention-filled body is also the field of thinking. Und der durch Aufmerksamkeit angefüllte Körper ist auch der Ort, in dem Denken stattfindet. And we can literally call this now embodied thinking. Und jetzt können wir es wörtlich ein verkörpertes Denken nennen. And now that this attention fills the body, it also fills phenomena.

[42:06]

Your interactive situation begins to feel like your body. So you really feel wherever you are as a location, including where you're located externally. And as the body is used to now the flow and pulse of attention, When you give attention to phenomena, the attention given to phenomena also flows into the body. The attention given to phenomena flows into the body.

[43:20]

So Dao and Yunyan are in some sort of situation like this where their attention to each other is flowing into each other. füreinander haben, ineinander fließt. And this is the entry through National Teacher Hui Zhong saying body and mind are one suchness. Und das ist der Zugang, von dem dieser nationale Lehrer spricht. Körper und Geist sind eine Soheit. And the word suchness means body, mind and phenomena are one suchness. Das bedeutet Körper, Geist und Phänomene sind eine solche Soheit. So we're talking about two persons who inhabit a world that's a little different than we do.

[44:21]

Wir sprechen hier über zwei Menschen, die eine Welt bewohnen, die ein bisschen anders ist als unsere Welt. That is not so different. It's profoundly different and it's really a different emphasis in the same territory. Yeah, I didn't really finish this topic. But see what a simple thing of bringing attention to the body when you really practice it, what it is. You're educating attention, you're educating the body, you're transforming phenomena. Really simple things. So you're educating the body.

[45:29]

Educating the body and mind. That's all here before you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[45:37]

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