It looks like we'll take possession of Hotzenholz April 1st. It looks like the Schreinerei will stay in for some months and maybe a year and a half. And the Wolfram, the present owner, who built it and set her over many years, will stay there for a while. I hope not too long. But for complicated reasons he may have to stay in the upper attic floors, two floors, for a year, up to a year and a half. I told him I'd be happy to live with him, but for the rest of the Sangha, I'm not sure they want to live with their mother-in-law.

[01:20]

When I did say, I'll be happy to live with you, I'm no problem for me, Tom said, but Wolfram, you're married, aren't you? And he blushed. So anyway, what I'd like to do is to do the next winter branches in June, I guess it is. Is that right? July? June? End of June. End of June. Teach all of it or some of it over there. In relation to this, I want to introduce the concept of Ma.

[02:29]

It's a Japanese, primarily Japanese concept. And it is often translated as space. But it means Actually, in-betweenness, something closer to in-betweenness. And the kanji, the character for it, is a gate or shutters. And in the gate... I've always thought it was the sun, but I'm also told it's actually a version of the kanji for moon. So let's take it as either moon or sun, but right now I'll say moon.

[03:50]

It's the moon appearing through a gate or through an opening. And as I said, if there's 15 books, it can be erased 1.3 trillion ways. In this room, there are an infinite number of relationships. There's Neil and his Samway. That's what this thing is called.

[04:51]

And his raksu. And his left toenails related to his right toenails. And all of that related to my toenails. There's all these lines you could draw between things. So Ma is not just a concept of space, it's a concept of space as activity. And I think that, you know, again, I mentioned Western lineages that led to us practicing. And that's in the poetry. I think it's in the poetry of Rilke, for instance. And I've noticed it particularly in paintings, painters, Western painters. Especially starting with Cézanne. But even before, painters began to paint, making you aware of the paint, not the aware of the illusion the painting is supposed to show you.

[06:21]

Did I say that clearly enough? So it's like if you draw a square, you're not drawing the square, you're showing the pencil line that drew the square. So I would say that Cézanne painted sensorial, experiential space. I would say Picasso painted... auric space, auras, nimbuses.

[07:23]

And I would say that Matisse painted space which creates objects. And I would guess that in all these cases, they're painting what for them were enlightenment experiences. And they keep painting their way toward these experiences. And of course, if we start enjoying the paintings of these guys, which when they first started painting, people thought it was terrible, ridiculous.

[08:29]

But once we begin to enjoy these painters, we begin to enter into the space they're painting. Yeah. I remember as a teenager sitting for, I don't know, an hour, an hour and a half in front of a Cezanne painting in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. And at some point, you know, he does leaves that are kind of almost moving. And I would say that, I don't know, after about 20 minutes or so, I entered, I would say, I'm quite sure, I entered into the space that he was feeling when he was painting.

[10:00]

And I kind of found myself in the forest where he was painting the trees and the movement and the way your eyes work when you scan, etc. So in a way I was being initiated into a certain kind of space that I rediscovered when I started practicing meditation. Okay. Now sometimes, you know, we say, with little kids I often count their toes. Little Pede.

[11:06]

Little Pede. You don't have to translate. Little Pede, Pear Root, Rooter Whistle, Mary Hassel, Big Gobble Gobble. That's New England. It took Sophia about four years to learn. I can't believe it. Okay. So sometimes you count your fingers, one, two, three, four, five, right? But I often ask the kids to count the spaces. So there's one, two, three, four. And as Lao Tzu says in the Tao Te Ching, it's not the It's not the spokes of the wheel, it's the spaces between the spokes.

[12:09]

It's not the clay of the pot, it's the space of the pot that makes it useful. It's not the walls and windows, it's the space here that allows us to do this. And I can't bring my hands together without the spaces that allow my hands to relate. So if I say to a kid, how many fingers are there? They say five. And if I say how many spaces are there, they say four. But there's also five. And six. And seven. In other words, there's not a specific answer. And the concept that the answer is vague or indefinite is at the center of Japanese culture.

[13:36]

And they, you know, they, I mean, if we say night and day, good and bad, they think it's nuts because there's a range. And it's never specific. It's always vague. So there's... So there's always relationships. 1.3 trillion if we've only got 15. And what's amazing is not that I can't find books I want. In the rather disorganized way my library is. Which I don't know.

[14:48]

It's in four locations and it's at least some thousands of books. But I had that many books when I was 20, so it's about the same. I know this is a teaching outside the scriptures, but anyway, here it is. But what is amazing is that in this huge number of possibilities, I can usually find things. And if you then think of all the words in the books, and I can often find the word or sentence I want in a particular... Somewhere, yeah. So something beyond a rational process is going on just to find the book you want.

[16:02]

Okay, so we are... It looks, let's say, fairly definite. I never believe anything is real until it's real several times over. But it's fairly likely that the Dharma Sangha will join Johannes Hoffman Hotzenholz together. How to join that together is we don't know. I don't know. I mean, we didn't, we haven't designed this, you know, on the mandalic pattern that would be for Japanese or Chinese practice center, with a zendo and a Buddha hall and a lecture hall and a dining room, etc.

[17:26]

We're lay practitioners with two houses built for not monastic uses. How are we going to put these together? I mean, I think we have to start with the concept of maha. Now, the concept of Ma predates Buddhism in Japan. But developed in Japanese culture. It starts with some definiteness with Kukai, the founder of the Shingon Tantric School.

[18:54]

Which Tsukuyoshi asked me when I went to Japan to study Shingon as well as Zen. And he said he always wanted to study Shingon more and asked me to do it. So now I live in Crestone in a a little Zen monastery surrounded by about 15 or 20 Tibetan tantric monasteries. Well, they're not all monasteries, but centers of various sorts. I don't know if I'm learning anything, but I'm surrounded anyway. So Kukai was about the 9th century.

[20:05]

And then in about the 14th century we have the five main Zen schools called the Gozan. And then in the 16th century you have the tea masters and tea culture developed. I think the Gozan was actually more the 14th century. That's what I said, okay. And they developed this idea of ma as at the center of Japanese culture.

[21:07]

And this young woman sitting next to me, translating so nicely, Did a pilgrimage to how many temples? Eighty-eight. Eighty-eight temples. She wandered around Japan with a backpack, taking a bus sometimes. Yeah. And how long did it take you? I did it in bits and pieces whenever I had free time from my work. bits and pieces 88 temples and bits and pieces so like 10 days it took like for the first 19 temples yeah for 10 days and then i had to go back home and work and then there were like four days off and in temple number 20 through 25 yeah so that's the bits and pieces i see okay

[22:13]

So here I'm speaking about Ma and mandalas. And there's no etymological relationship between them. And between the two words there is no relationship. Mandala comes from the Sanskrit word for disc. And maa is, as I said, means something close to, the activity of in-betweenness. And maa means something like the activity of this or in-betweenness. And Kukai introduced into Japan these two mandalas.

[23:20]

I just happened to find it in my closet, so we put it up. She said, do I have a scroll? I said, oh, look, I get the... Sure. And this is a kind of wild Mu over there, but not Ma. Mu means, of course, emptiness or nothingness or something like that. But Mu and Ma are actually very closely related. Because ma also means the simultaneous perception of form and non-form. The simultaneous perception of form and non-form.

[24:22]

Okay, now... Sometimes I despair. Why am I talking about these things? Is it interesting to you? Is it any use to you? Am I just flapping my lips? I'm just flapping my lips. But the thing is that it's assumed in Buddhism that Zazen, just simply the practice of Zazen, and especially the method of no method, teaches you a huge amount But to really refine the teachings that arise through meditation, to refine the experiences that arise through meditation, they're refined and extended by the teachings.

[25:45]

So on this prologue or pre-day, I'm trying not to talk about the main topic. That's for tomorrow morning. Or it's supposed to be for tomorrow morning. Someone said, I don't know. But I'm trying to give us some background to begin to look at the teachings which refine the experiences of Zazen. So Kukai introduced the concept of the mandala. I mean he did it institutionally, it was present before, but creating the Shingon school, creating an institution which introduced this to the Japanese culture.

[27:28]

And the Gozan was an institution of five interrelated Zen schools. So it was an institution that introduced the concepts and practices of Ma to the Japanese. And the tea schools and tea masters, also closely related to Zen temples, were another institution that introduced these ideas. Okay, so the point I'm making here is that it's the institutional incorporation, literally in English incorporation means embodiment, incorporation of

[28:34]

certain practices, views, ideas, concepts. And so what we're doing here is we're creating an institution called Dharma Sangha. And it has buildings now. I mean this one and now another one. And we practicing here are part of the institution. Okay. So Kukai introduced the concept of the mandala, institutionally introduced the concept of the mandala to Japan.

[29:54]

No, this looks like a flat surface. But I was once at the Kalachakra ceremony in Switzerland, the first that was done with the Dalai Lama. And I got to know his holiness pretty well, because the first place he stayed in the West was Green Gulch. Through Dick Blum. And Dick Blum just called me up the other day and talked to me for an hour. Blum, B-L-U-M, the same as the fellow who came yesterday. It's Blum without the Rosen... Rosenroschi, I like that.

[31:08]

Not Rosenblumroschi, just Rosenroschi. Okay. So when I was in Switzerland, the Dalai Lama brought me back to look at them making the mandala. Back behind the altar. And the... It's a flat surface, but it's projected... Like somebody, one of the senior priests came and corrected, oh no, on the fourth floor, that's a different shape. So it's flat here like an architectural drawing, but it's imagined as a structure, spatial structure of several stories.

[32:13]

So a mandala is not just a circle or a square as some Western psychologists imagine it. It's actually a spatial concept that is projected from a flat surface. And so the practitioners learn to project it in their mind and inhabit it at various levels. Okay. So once you see that this is three and in fact multidimensional, then you can begin to see that Kukai is bringing a concept to Koya-san, Mount Koya.

[33:36]

Of patterns, paths in space. Okay. And that concept is what you did in walking to the 88 temples. Because they began to conceive of the whole of Japan as a mandala. And they developed these paths all over Japan as if you were walking in a mandala. So you made the mandala by going to the 88 temples. Well, that's why you're here. Okay, so we, I think, have to in the next year or two, or a thousand years, I don't know.

[34:49]

I think big, you know. we have to find the mandala for 90 day practice periods in these two buildings or several buildings so I really wanted to talk with you in more discussion this time but I have to get a few things out so I'm almost out I haven't run out, but I'm almost out. Okay, so part of the concept of Ma is that the in-betweenness of space dass dieses Dazwischensein von Raum is filled.

[36:03]

Dass der gefüllt ist. I've often said for many, many decades now, space connects. Ich habe jetzt jahrzehntelang gesagt, dass Raum verbindet. And it's a Western cultural view that space only separates, primarily separates. The yogic view is space primarily connects. And space is an opportunity for connectedness. So space is occupational. Okay. So let's imagine we drew, we had little thin thread like Sophie Dillow, Dixon Dillow makes light sculptures with

[37:15]

with fish line, I think, stretched all over the place, and that makes light different ways, you know, appear. Sophie Dixon Dillow. Christian's wife. Christian's Frau. Was the daughter of a companion student of mine, was Suki Roshi. We're trying to keep it in the family. Okay, so say we connected strings, fish lines, all over the place here. Between each of you. Between your toenails.

[38:31]

Between your hearts. Between your blinking eyes. And there were an immense number of these shining strings. So what Kukai and the Zen people and the tea masters did is try to teach people to perceive this. So you saw the dynamic of connectedness, not entities. And some connections are more dynamic or stronger than others. Now it's assumed in this way of looking at things that if all these strings, imaginary strings, real and yet imagined strings are here, for example, in this room.

[39:55]

If you experience them, if you primarily perceive in betweenness, then you know where to put your hand and take a hold of a whole bunch of them and pull them towards you. Or release them. Or if you're depressed, you know how to take hold of them and push them down and everyone gets depressed. Or you can lift them up or make more space between them. I'm not just talking nonsense. Ich rede nicht einfach nur Unsinn.

[41:08]

This is another way of being in the world. Das ist eine andere Art und Weise, in der Welt zu sein. And really, it's something I would say babies to some degree are born with. Und ich würde sagen, dass bis zu einem gewissen Grad Babies damit geboren werden. But as an adult, it takes some... for Asian people too. It's special. It takes time to learn this. And first you have to know about its possibility. And then you have to start feeling it. And when Dogen talks about non-thinking, he means that faculty of knowing that knows Ma. And how do you let that knowing happen?

[42:09]

The other day I got in the Volvo. And I've been driving two Subarus in Crestone. And Paul's former Honda. I'm supposed to stop. Paul gave us his Honda. So I drove it to Denver to fly here. Thank you very much. Does it have seat warmers? No. But the two Subarus, one fairly new, and the other five or 10 years old, have seat warmers.

[43:23]

So Atmar picked me up at the airport. And as you know, it's been rather cold in Europe these last days. I like the lantern you've made out there. It's neat. And that's a concept of Ma, too. Because they put a lantern out to show that the house is not limited to the house, but also extends out there. The space around the house belongs to the house. So I got in the Volvo later to drive to Freiburg for the day. And I couldn't find the heat warmers. The seat warmers.

[44:38]

And I looked because they're in a completely different place than the Subarus. And I'd completely forgotten where the heck are they. And driving various cars, sometimes rental cars. I get in gas stations and I can't get any gas because I can't find the damn thing that releases Is it under the seat or where? I've sometimes stood in a gas station. Does anybody know where the gas thing is in a Toyota? If you do it in Germany and my speaking English, everybody runs. They don't know what I'm asking.

[45:41]

What is that strange foreigner hollering about? Anyway, so I figured my body knows where it is. Because it was quite cold in the seats. So I started driving and my hand went out and did it. I could not find it no matter how carefully I looked but my hand already knew where it was. This is a common experience for all of us. But it's not common to us to emphasize the mind that knows In this way.

[46:57]

And this is a fruit of inter-independence. So I will try to say something about that some other time this weekend. Okay. So anyway, to finish for lunch. So let's imagine all these strings. And you are establishing the strings. Let's take, you know, in the West we bow in church and people bow, etc.

[48:03]

And, you know, and if you look at medieval churches, supposedly the shape of the door is meant to awaken your aura. And a chakra, for instance, is clearly based on a mandala. On its floor and also where the rose window appears behind the Christ, etc. I lost it. The rose window is behind the head. So it's three-dimensional. All right. But anyway, these... These practices are dominant.

[49:15]

They're part of the West, but they're dominant in yogic culture. So let me just describe our bow. As you've heard me before do it, and so many of you anyway. When we bow, it starts here. It starts here even if it starts here. Does that make sense? Because you get the feeling for it. You start here, you bring your hands together. And in a mandalic world, there's a warm spot in the middle of your hands. Which healers know.

[50:17]

Healers are often people who get the feel of that and then they become masseuses or something. So in a yogic culture, one of the things that you become aware of, and you can see it, there's a circle in the Buddha's hand and a circle in the Buddha's foot. Now, these are not automatically awakened by just being alive. I think it's more common for meditators to begin to feel this part of the head kind of itchy, alive, etc. So it becomes a kind of litmus test of the kind of state of mind you're in.

[51:31]

So you put your hands together and this feel here and then you lift up this space through your chakras to the heart so you're in a way if what we're looking at is in betweenness There's an in-betweenness that's also my body, this body, the chakras, etc. And there's also Niko's and Susanna's.

[52:32]

So in the yogic world we're talking about, This in-betweenness is also activated, activated, actualized. You don't have to translate all three. By a kind of certain intensity of attention. And so you lift it up and you're lifting up a space. And you lift it up and are generating it. This is the feeling, generating it by the bow. And then you lift your hands up to about this distance from your nose.

[53:41]

And the body is measured by the body. So in your gassho, generally like in the morning when the morning greeting, This is about here or here. Somewhere in here. And so you lift it up into a shared space, a shareable space. And then you bow. Now, if I'm living with Nico at Crestone or here... If I think all these forms are silly stuff, you know, I just say, Hi, Nicky! But if I... I never called him Nicky before.

[54:56]

He looks very unhappy. In the nick of time. If every time I see Niko, Or now Beate in Crestone. We always do that. Every time we pass each other. You begin to actually feel a mutually shared space. And it's not just some silly thing. It's the mind, the body, this is it. So there's a lifting up of space and then making it neutral. So it's like Matisse painting space which creates objects. Now, there's one word, a cake.

[56:22]

I'll leave that for later. But in short, I'm saying these are activity now in the next years, months, weeks, days. is experiencing the spaces, the in-betweenness of these two buildings. More than just two. And discovering, seeing if we can find the mandala which supports practice in this compound. It will start with beginning to be sensitive to the experience of in-betweenness. Of intervals.

[57:31]

Breath intervals. Metabolic intervals. Phases of the day intervals. Phases of the weather intervals. Phases of lunch. All right, it's time for lunch. Thanks for your patience.

[58:12]

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