Okay. I seem to have woken up. I seem to have shaken off the time zone of Western United States. Yeah, it doesn't belong here. It belongs to the geography and landscape of New Mexico and Colorado. It somehow, I think, released itself and slipped through the air streams back to the western United States. Yeah. Now I'm Entering this time zone, this landscape, with each of you. Now I want to wander in the landscape of this first Shoyuroku Koan a little more.

[01:03]

I don't know exactly how, when some of you aren't familiar with what we did before, aren't familiar with this koan, how exactly to proceed. Ich weiß noch nicht so richtig, wie ich voranschreiten soll, weil ich nicht weiß, wie genau ihr mit diesem Koran oder dem anderen also vertraut seid. Now, for some of you, it probably doesn't matter. You say, oh, jeez, I listened to something, it's okay, and that's enough. Vielleicht macht es einigen von euch auch nicht so viel aus und sagen dann vielleicht, na ja, also es ist in Ordnung, ich höre einfach zu und das ist genug. And that's the way I've been teaching here in Germany. Europe for 20 years. But now I'm trying to do something where the teaching progresses, accumulates, develops. So it may not make a difference to you, but it makes a difference to me.

[02:24]

And that's what this Winter Branches program is. An attempt to see if we can develop a teaching at the same pace together. With a bunch of monks and monkettes living in a monastery together, you can do it. Optimistically. But how to do it with a bunch of adept, extraordinary lay people like you, I don't know. But I'm willing to attempt the impossible. So wandering in the ingredients of this koan, You know, I like the word ingredients.

[03:43]

Carpenters don't have ingredients. In English, anyway. I don't know what they have in German. Ingredients means in English... something you step into, something you enter. Before it's mixed. As you know, most of you know, I don't know how to cook. But I've actually come to like doing it. Before, when I used to read recipes, I wanted to proceed to the cooking. But after reading, after a while, and some misfortune, I realized I want to proceed to the ingredients.

[04:55]

So now I I read all the ingredients and sort of meditate on the ingredients for a while. Sort of let them cook in myself before I take the next step. Yeah, so much oil, a bay leaf. A gewürzblatt, is that what it is? A bay is not laurel, isn't it? Is it laurel? Laurel, maybe. A laurel. If you pick a laurel leaf off a tree and break it, it really gives you a headache if you smell it. I have no idea why you put a bay leaf... in food.

[05:56]

It's dry, it's food. But you say, so I put it in. It's a mystery, I've figured out. And then there's four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. Sorry. There's a nursery rhyme. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. Isn't that a wonderful dish to set before a king? I don't know how it goes. Oh, and a pocket full of rye. Yeah, whoever heard of putting blackbirds in a pie? I mean, particularly alive ones. Yeah, but it turns out this is supposedly a rhyme, a... Rhyme used to recruit pirates for Captain Blackbeard.

[07:06]

Rhyme used to recruit pirates for Captain Blackbeard. A sixpence was the daily pay that Blackbeard gave his pirates. And a pocket was originally like a canteen or something that hung outside your clothes. So it could have been full of rye whiskey. Send as long as six pence a pocket full of rye. Koans are a little bit like this. You don't know what they mean. What is this? What's going on? What kind of recipe are these koans? We're not recruiting pirates.

[08:06]

But we may be recruiting bodhisattvas. And we have to learn to listen to the koan. But first of all, you step into the ingredients. That includes stepping into the ingredients of this meal. For this koan doesn't exist in some absolute zen space and it's always the same. This koan now is here in this time zone. In this garden. In this schedule. And with us. Only in this way can we renew it in ourselves and Okay, so what are some of the ingredients?

[09:27]

Yeah, now some of this we went through last Winter Branches 4. Yeah, but this is Winter Branches 5, so we can do something different. A little different or the same. Yes, so we have Manjushri. Manjushri. He's the Bodhisattva of wisdom. Wisdom is to cut off outflows. From the earliest... Of Buddhism, the teaching is to cut off outflows. But here we have the Bodhisattva of wisdom leaking.

[10:30]

This is shocking. Nothing can be done about that Bodhisattva Manjushri's leaking. And the Bodhisattva, you know, it's Quan Yin who's supposed to, Kanon who's supposed to leak. They are. So certainly one of the ingredients is Manjushri leaking. And as you know, Manjushri represents the turning inward, cutting off outflows. And Kuan Yin represents the turning outward, compassion.

[11:33]

Now in Zen practice, these are not just Bodhisattva figures, they're an experience a pulse of turning inward and outward. And it means you get to know this pulse. You get to feel it in zazen. And perhaps you get to feel it coming out of Zazen. You are going to sleep and waking up.

[12:35]

Or right now, pulling in and folding out at the same time. So the end of the koan says... Yin and Yang have no irregular progression. And it says, spring, the seasons don't overlap. So this is like Manjushri. Spring? Spring contains summer. There's no summer without spring. So spring contains summer. But spring is spring and summer is summer. There's no irregular progression. Or overlap. So in this case, Manjushri is as we are both at once.

[13:58]

Manjushri leaks because Manjushri also turns inward. So this is an ingredient of the koans. As you know I've been doing this, I don't know, more than 45 years. Do I thoroughly know all 100 koans in the book of Serenity? No, I don't. I'm pretty familiar with most of them and only a little bit familiar with some. I even did the layout of this book, the English book, but I still don't know all of them thoroughly.

[15:08]

But some I know quite thoroughly. And if you're going to study koans, you ought to know at least a few really thoroughly. And one of the... One of the most obvious koans to know thoroughly is this first koan in the book of Serenity. And one of the most obvious koans to know thoroughly is this first koan from the book of Serenity. Now, when with the practice council we decided to shift from the Abhidharma to Koan study in the winter branches, we asked the council to vote. Didn't we do that?

[16:22]

On what koans we should study. And I think most of the votes were for this number one and number 53. So that's the second koan. I think that's quite right, but I had a strong vote. How do we get to know this corn, these ingredients? That thoroughly. That's what I'm talking about. Don't proceed to the cooking.

[17:23]

Just look at the ingredients one after another. You're already alive. You're already a process of cooking. Something happens just when you bring the ingredients into your activity. Now, you may have noticed that Both of these first koans in the Book of Trinity and the Book of Blue Cliff Records are mythopoetic images. Or mythopoeic images. Mythopoeic means to literally poem, to make a myth.

[18:32]

What's the problem? How to make a myth. Yeah. We have to change it to German. Oh, yeah? Oh, myth building. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I use mythopoetic a little different, meaning the way a poem may not be true, but it's real and can make our life real. So Bodhidharma, if he existed in the emperor, we don't know. And nobody photographed Manjushri and the Buddha together.

[19:37]

But this image can be very powerful in us. You know, when I was young, Seems like yesterday. Seems like now. When I was young. Seems like yesterday. Seems like now. Young Frau? Oh, okay. Anyway, you know, I can remember sitting in a cafeteria watching people come in and out in New York somewhere. And each person that came in, I sort of compared myself to. But not necessarily compared negatively or positively, but I also associated myself with them, befriended them in my mind. And I noticed that I'd noticed this before.

[20:54]

And I'd noticed this before. But I... But this time I really recognized, observed that I was doing this. And in this recognition, I could feel that I diminished myself each time I did it. In other words, I kind of funneled, funneled? I kind of funneled my... presence, feeling, to this other person, and it kind of was cramping. So at that point, I started stopping doing it.

[21:55]

Okay. Now, I don't know. I mean, let's say maybe teenage girls now, when they... They have some image maybe of Britney Spears in their mind. Is she a singer or an actress or something? I don't know. I just know the name. Or perhaps Brad Pitt. For me, I had more Ezra Pound or... or James Joyce or something like that.

[22:59]

But these images Who do we think we are when we meet someone? Britney Spears? No, I don't have that experience. Say I replace all these images, because we do have this kind of category of image of ourself and in relationship to others that walks along with us. Like a time zone, a permanent time zone. Now say you replace it with the Buddha ascending, I mean Mr. Who, ascending the seat. Here who? Yeah, then something different starts to happen.

[24:07]

When I flew to the United States the other day, I went to see my friend, Edward Avedisian, who Literally said he was going to try to stay alive until I got there. Literally said. Yeah, but before. My friend, Edward Avedisian. Ah, yeah. He was a painter and I have a lot of his paintings and I've known him since the I don't know, 1954 or something. He literally told me he wanted to die, but he was going to try to stay alive until I came to visit.

[25:11]

Now you can hardly refuse an invitation like that. Unless I thought if I put it off he might stay a lot longer. So I went to see him and we had really a wonderful time for three days. Yeah, and he died about a week after I left. And, yeah, so then when I flew back to the States, there were electrical storms, and I was stranded in Jamaica, Long Island, for a day. So I went to this Italian restaurant. And at some point... a manager came over to see me.

[26:25]

Yeah, and he said, suddenly started talking about How he doesn't let things get to him. And how he stays healthy and strong. And that was clear. He was quite a vital person. Because he doesn't let things get to him. And I watched him walk around the restaurant. I was all by myself. And he... went to other tables, but at the other tables he just said, how's the food, and hi buddy, how are you, and stuff like that. But when he came to my table, he started talking about living in each moment. I thought, oh. Mr. Hu was ascending the seat.

[27:32]

So Manjushri was watching him. Mr. Hu was ascending the seat. Yeah, and it was a unique breeze of reality. A moment where I realized he was attracted to the feeling he had of my being in the moment. And I was attracted to his moment, living in each moment, not letting things get to him. And I thought to myself, but I let things get to me. And I thought to myself, I'll let things get to me. What's the difference? So here it wasn't Brad Pitt or Ezra Pound or Britney Spears.

[28:39]

It was the Buddha. Mr. Who, I mean, ascending the seat. Is it really any different? Yeah. Yeah. Now, Dogen has a word, akiramu. And it means, I mean, in the common way it's used in Japan, it means acceptance, accept the emperor and all that stuff. You know, I barely started and I'm supposed to be finished. What will we do? I suppose I'll stop soon. Okay. So... Akiramu means, as Dogen, his sense, his use of the word, is in each sight moment.

[30:04]

He doesn't use that term. I'm using that term. No. Sight, S-I-T-E. Oh, sorry. That's okay. Location. It's an adventure. What's going to happen? I know it feels like I can't get the proper word. Well... Location. We have to work on that. And it could be actually S-I-G-H-T moment too.

[31:05]

Because if you want to, what does this koan says? It says clearly observe the Dharma. Yeah, that might take you 45 years. But let's start now. Clearly observe the Dharma. That means you have to begin to feel the physicality of each moment. So, you know, you can use a phrase, I use a phrase like to stabilize myself in each moment. Because if I just treat moments as temporal, as time, I mean, clocks go tick, tick, tick, but they don't usually go tock.

[32:13]

Yeah, you have to have the tock. Tock. Yeah, like the horn. And like the... gavel. The gavel word in English means to give and receive gavel. And this probably refers to the sui ching that we use in some ceremonies. We have a wooden board and a little piece of wood we hit on top. What was the word? Sui ching. Sui ching is a device that we use in ceremonies. You sweet thing. Okay. Okay. So if you want to clearly observe the Dharma, you've got to give yourself physical dimensions

[33:23]

You can work with each breath. But it's more subtle and complex than each breath. But that's an entry. That's an entry. But if you take a phrase like to stabilize yourself in each moment, the feel of doing that gives a physical dimension to each moment. Is something like embodied mind the same? Embodiment is the same.

[34:25]

I wouldn't say embodied mind, but embodiment, yeah. Was that for everyone or just for me? You're translating. If I want to give a feel for the translation. Yeah, to embody the moment, to somehow embody the moment. Otherwise, it just slips by. So a sight moment. Okay. Now, for Dogen, the sight moment has the dimensions of Of discernment. Relinquishment. And acceptance. The moment has a duration in which you create the duration. Der Augenblick hat eine Dauer, in der du selber die Dauer erschaffst, in welcher du unterscheidest.

[35:39]

Relinquish means to leave, to let go of. And acceptance, in its root in Greek, it means an oar. that you row a boat with. So what you accept is what you push yourself forward with. Yeah, so for Dogen there's this moment of understanding, letting go of what you Doesn't fit. And accepting too. And at this moment, you're free of your karma. You're creating your karma and releasing your karma. So for Dogen, Dharma means that karma can be released.

[36:54]

Karma is not something you're stuck with. Karma is something you can release through the Dharma. So these are all ingredients some of the ingredients of this koan that you can bring into your own activity. And so I should just stop because I want to follow the schedule and I don't want a leg revolt. But there's so many interesting things I was thinking of saying. Oh, shucks. Well, I'll see you again sometime.

[38:10]

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