You know, I always tend to think before or after I give a lecture. Maybe not every time. Pretty close to every time. I think now this is the most essential lecture I've ever given. And I think, how can you possibly live, anyone live, without knowing this? Then I have to remember that I seem to have lived before knowing it. So I have to apply Nagarjuna's both and. Okay. And that would mean that, well, even in ignorance, there's also the Dharma is working. Even before I understood it, still, even not understood, it was working.

[01:26]

Okay. So if I think in that category of both and, then I have to be more precise in why I think that. It's not so much that understanding it is essential, but why does the articulation of a certain teaching make a difference. Then I see the cause more clearly. Yeah. You know, as I keep telling you, I'm now bionic. I mean, a little bit.

[02:26]

And one of the funny things is I can see the plastic lens in my eye. How can the... You can't see. I can see it. You can't see it, okay. So how can the lens see the lens? Also, wie kann die Linse die Linse sehen? I don't know. But anyway, I must see a reflection of it or something. It's almost always my left eye, the first operation, from the first operation. It's kind of great, kind of amusing. So it particularly happens when there's dark and light. Like when I walk down the hall, every time I pass one of the lights going from the dark to the light, I can see this clear circle of the lens.

[03:56]

Or here in the Zendo, when I go past the candles, I suddenly see this. Yeah. And this is, you know, something like this... It's what Nagarjuna intends. Now, what he wants is us to see what we're seeing in the midst of seeing. He wants us to see He wants us to understand the process of conceptualization and causation, that in the midst of perception and cognition,

[05:06]

We just don't perceive and cognize. We also see the causes embedded in the perception and the causation and in the cognition. Now, I'm afraid that I'm not going to get too far in this corner. Is this winter branches 10? Maybe we'll finish it by winter branches 20. That's less than 30 years. Or we'll just forget about it in winter branches 11. And go on instead. Both and. Okay. But if only this koan will serve as an introduction to Nagarjuna's

[06:25]

practice this in itself will be wonderful now a number of people have said to me that they didn't have any feeling before the seminar about this koan They couldn't feel any entry. And some people said to me, even during the seminar they still can't feel any entry. And I myself was a little worried before the seminar. Unless we're lucky, Nagarjuna seems pretty boring and gloomy.

[07:58]

Even though he's often called the second Buddha. But maybe if we can touch why he's called this Buddha. we will have done a lot. And we'll see not only the seeds of the Majamaka school, but we may get a feeling for why Nagarjuna's logical distinctions have been so fruitful in practice. Really, if we accomplish this, we've accomplished a lot. Okay. Now, so I think that what those of you who find the koan a little bit obtuse, or the doors are backwards... Upside down or not there at all?

[09:15]

Then just see, please pay attention to the teishos. And the discussion. And to know that I would not be giving these teishos if we didn't have this koan. And I would not be giving these teshos unless Nagarjuna was in our lineage. Now, as you know, this case, the same case in nearly the same koan, Wie ihr wisst, war dieser Fall und fast genau der gleiche Koan. Is Koan 73 of the Heikiganroku nuclear records.

[10:27]

Das ist auch wieder Koan 73 im Heikiganroku. Heikiganroku. And it's, at least in Japanese, he is, and it's number 73 because it's considered a very difficult Koan. Now it's number six in the Shoyuroku. Because, as I understand it, the Shoyuroku is more historically organized than the Blue Cliff Records. In other words, in these first koans, we've met the Buddha and the Bodhisattva Manjushri. And we've met Bodhidharma and the Sixth Patriarch and Ching Yuan who's our disciple of the Sixth Patriarch and the founder of our Dungsan lineage.

[11:44]

And it's very clear who should we meet next but the second, I mean Nagarjuna. And meet the most famous Zen master, Matsu. Of the Tang and Sung dynasties, both and. So we've got this rather demanding koan in the early part of this book of Serenity. Now let me say one thing that's a little different in a lay practice than a monastic practice. Because, you know, although it's not true that every lecture I give is essential, it's not entirely, you know, it's both and.

[12:54]

I know when I first started practicing I went to, as far as possible, which was mostly possible, every lecture of Suzuki Roshi's while I lived in San Francisco. But I was young, I could do what I wanted pretty much. Aber ich war jung und konnte weitestgehend tun, was ich wollte. I didn't have a career or a job. It was just except to support myself. Ich hatte keine Karriere und auch keine Arbeit, außer eben das, was ich tun musste, um mich selbst zu unterstützen.

[14:03]

And I could move, more or less, next door to Sukhirashi. Yeah, so I could walk every morning to Zazen and so forth. Now, teachers know who is coming to lecture. And teachers also know who's engaged, really, with the lectures. So, don't really think that teishos are different from duksan. So duksan and teishos, both and. All right. So if the teacher knows who is engaged and comes to the lectures... He or she will place or tune each lecture to those people who are engaged in the group.

[15:09]

dann wird er oder sie jeden Vortrag auf die Leute einschwingen und für die Leute platzieren, die in der Gruppe sich wirklich einlassen. So when I hear the Sandokai lectures of Suzuki Roshi, they're about the Sandokai, of course, to some extent. But I can also feel in the lectures who he's speaking to in the lectures. And it's more about that than the Sandokai. Okay, so this is one of the difficulties in a lay practice. Because there's a certain ripening time in each person's practice. There's a certain period of time where it's really maybe important to go to every lecture.

[16:37]

And it's important for the teacher, too. So that's why there's monasteries. You can live with each other, face-to-face teaching. So the Winter Branches is some sort of attempt we're making together So that we can stay together at what are crucial periods for each of us. For me and you and our relationship. Yeah, okay. Yeah, both and.

[17:45]

I often say we're, as laypersons, we're kind of disguised monks. And our monks are sort of disguised laypersons. And Sukhira, she felt this. I mean, temple life in Japan is pretty much lay life. It's not living in a monastery. And your role is as a priest. You're not really a monk. Now, Sukhiroshi himself tried to keep the... Well, he had this job as a priest, but he tried to keep the feeling of being a monk. And I would say that he was very relieved when he came to the United States because he could more fully be a monk and less be a priest.

[19:05]

Though one of the things he asked me to do was attend all the funeral ceremonies he did. And there were a lot. Because the Japanese congregation was quite elderly. And they'd been tragically relocated during the war and somehow paid the taxes, I guess, on the building. So when they came back to it, they could practice at Sokoji. But there were funerals every month, often, sometimes more than once a month. Sukhir, she wanted me to attend them because she said, you should understand this popular side of Buddhism and this priest side of Buddhism as well as the monk side.

[20:27]

So I've been trying to explore for 40 some years what is this relationship of priest and monk and lay person. And I tried to explore this relationship. But I tried to keep the monk side somehow pretty strong. Because whatever you choose, there are certain limits that you observe that make the choice real.

[21:27]

So for example, monks don't eat meat and fish. Zum Beispiel essen Mönche kein Fleisch und kein Fisch. But there's also a tradition of when you, restaurants or with people's houses, you eat what they give you. Aber es gibt auch die Tradition, dass wenn du in einem Restaurant bist oder bei jemandem zu Hause eingeladen bist, dann isst du das, was du serviert bekommst. So for 35 years I was never meat or fish or alcohol in my house. Also hat sich jetzt 35 Jahre lang, gab es überhaupt kein Fleisch oder Fisch und auch kein Alkohol in meinem Haus. And now, mostly because of Sophia, not Marie-Louise. Und jetzt ist es hauptsächlich wegen Sophia und nicht so sehr Marie-Louise. We have, not in Creston, but so often, not very often, but here in Freiburg, for instance, we have meat and fish.

[22:30]

Da haben wir zwar nicht in Creston so häufig, aber hier in Freiburg gibt es dann manchmal Fleisch und Fisch. It's interesting to learn to cook and things, but I also don't feel so good about it. Because where is this boundary between being a monk and a lay person? And if there's no boundary, it's meaningless. And how do you find and locate and make use of that boundary? So you're both monk and lay person. And the emphasis, you can feel whether you can see the causation and the boundaries. Can you say the last sentence again?

[23:35]

You can see and feel the boundaries and the causes of your actions. So it's both and, but what are the boundaries between both and? And I think it's important, I found it important when you're, you know, like the symposium. Everybody's talking and joking and drinking, and Socrates is the one who's cool at the end. And this morning Marie-Louise called me, which is very unusual because she's not up at midnight.

[24:41]

Creston very often, ever. But she didn't, but she went to someone's birthday party that was rather essential to do. And everybody was drinking and sort of out of it by the end of the evening and Marie Louise doesn't drink and she was completely the one who had to take care of everything at the end. So something like this, it's in situations, as a layperson, people should see that somehow you're also a monk. So this is both and.

[25:57]

Okay, now let's look at this a little more carefully. One of Nagarjuna's point is nothing creates itself. And nothing comes from itself. Okay, and that's a point that Suzuki Roshi emphasizes in his teisho on case 73. Okay, so, yeah. This is pretty obvious. If everything's interdependent, inter-caused, nothing comes from itself.

[26:58]

So you can't say, that's a tree, it's also dirt, clouds, rain, insects, and so forth. It's both a tree and more than a tree. Okay. Now what Nagarjuna is doing, we could say, if you want to begin to have insight into his thinking, Is he primarily developing the third noble truth? There's suffering. The first. There's a cause of suffering. And there's a cessation of the cause of suffering. It says, I think technically it sometimes says, a sensation of craving with no remainder.

[28:14]

A sensation, a cessation of craving with no remainder, no remnant. That means no causes. Or freedom from causation. But if everything is caused, how can you have a freedom from causation? This is what Nagarjuna explores. And that's what's useful for us to explore. Now let me try to just give you five minutes or ten minutes as simple an example as possible. If you tend to think in terms of or it is or it is not Well, I mean, yeah.

[29:27]

It either exists or it doesn't exist. That's one in two of the first four propositions. That means you're thinking in terms of entities. Yeah, things exist. And they're semi-permanent. You implicitly act as if they're permanent. And this is the way most of us function, as if the world were made of entities which were implicitly permanent. And it's no fault of our own, really.

[30:27]

Because that's how the world has been presented to us by our culture, family, etc. And that's the way in every culture consciousness mostly presents the world. Because as I say ad nauseam, I don't know how you translate that, to the point of nausea, the job of consciousness is to make the world predictable. Now, is this true for all peoples in all times, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?

[31:41]

I don't think so. I think some cultures, and our Western culture too, sometimes has a different balance between consciousness and awareness. And as you know, I think the productivity that has been kind of forced on us in the industrial age, mental and personal productivity as well as commercial productivity, ...has strongly created a conscious consciousness... ...and the bifurcation of consciousness and unconsciousness. And Freud noticed that in Vienna, because it was a particularly deluded city.

[32:57]

I'm just teasing the Austrians here. I love Vienna. I love being deluded in Vienna. Yeah, once a year I'm deluded in Vienna. Okay. But he thought he discovered the unconscious, which was there forever. No, I think it actually, as a dynamic, has developed in recent centuries. And as I also said, I think, the other day, that literate and reading culture has changed the anatomical structure and neural cellular pathways of the brain and body. And that develops consciousness in a certain way and changes the interfusion of consciousness and awareness.

[34:08]

Und das verändert das Bewusstsein auf eine bestimmte Weise und es verändert auch die Art und Weise, wie Bewusstsein und Gewahrsein einander durchdringen. But in any case, our culture and the activity of consciousness make it natural for us to think in terms of entities. lassen es für uns ganz natürlich werden, im Sinne von Entitäten zu denken. And so I don't really have an adequate word for it, but I say let's think in terms of activity instead of entities. Or shift from entity thinking to non-entity thinking. So that would be simply shifting from implicitly thinking things are permanent to explicitly thinking things are impermanent.

[35:31]

Momentary and interdependent and so forth. Okay, so what kind of difference is this? Now this is, again, we're talking about the insight of Nagarjuna. If your habit, as I say, the habit you inhabit, is to think in terms of entities. Is you create in yourself a causal base for entity thinking. And that's what I meant the other day by speaking of paradigms. Interconnected paradigms embedded in us that are the background of specific causes. The base of. Okay. So by entity thinking, you establish a causal base for entity thinking.

[37:04]

Technically in Buddhism it's called samskara. So these paradigmatic, samskaric, causal bases, how do you like that? Become the basis for future thinking and reify present thinking. Because if the causal base of entity thinking is entity thinking, if the causal base of entity thinking is entity thinking, what memories are called forth

[38:07]

etc. are entity thinking. Okay, now let's say you shift to non-entity thinking. You never see a tree, you always see treeing. Du siehst niemals einen Baum, du siehst immer das Bäumen. Et cetera, et cetera. Und so weiter. Okay. Now someone said to me in Doksan. Jemand hat mir in Doksan gesagt. What they're seeing is the way in which concepts form influence thinking and activity, and the way thinking and acting inform concepts or form concepts, reinforce concepts.

[39:21]

There's a kind of kind of dialogue going on between concepts and activity. And perhaps the easiest way to see that is that the example we're using is the concept of don't move in zazen. Yeah, so this is so clear that while you're sitting you can feel the concept of don't move. And if you do move or lift your hand or something, you feel the concept. Hey, the edge of the... Cut that out, you nitwit. Get back down there, hand.

[40:29]

No scratching allowed. Okay. What you're seeing is the edge of a concept. Like you're seeing the edge, like I see the edge of the lens of my left eye. I'll try to finish. Please don't get too nervous. Okay. So you're seeing the conceptual margins of behavior. Okay, now if you primarily have formed your life through entity thinking, the causal basis of all your actions are rooted in the samskara of entity thinking.

[41:43]

And so we have the multiplication of three, you know, so you get past, present and future. And so you will imagine your future in terms of entities. Because the causal basis of your thinking and action and perception is samsaric entity thinking. Samsaric and samsaric. Weil der Ursachengrund deines Denkens und deiner Wahrnehmung und deines Handelns das Entitätsdenken, das samskarische und samsarische Entitätsdenken ist. How do we change that? Wie können wir das ändern? There is hope. Remember? Both and. Okay.

[42:44]

So although you have a samskaric basis of entity thinking, You also have a probably mostly latent basis of non-entity thinking, samskaric non-entity thinking. So if you start developing the habit of non-entity thinking... Believe it or not, other memories appear. Memories of other times when you did both and thinking. thinking which assumed the interdependence of the world. So you awaken the non, you awaken the causal basis

[43:47]

you awaken the samskaric causal basis of non-entity thinking. And the more you develop the habit of non-entity thinking you rapidly, quickly, and I emphasize rapidly and quickly create a new samskaric basis, causal basis in yourself. So you're actually transforming the samskaric basis, transforming your past. By this distinction between exists or doesn't exist and shifting to it both exists and it doesn't exist. Now that's in philosophical language.

[45:11]

In our practice language, it's a shift from entity thinking to non-entity thinking. And if suffering is caused it's caused from a causal specific causes but those specific causes are rooted in a causal basis. And that makes you live in a certain realm. A realm which determines how the past reifies your present and how you imagine the future. But if you make this shift to a non-entity way of thinking

[46:13]

If you open the curtain of attention, as I said recently, open the aperture, like a camera has an aperture, In English, aperture means to open. If you open the aperture, if you widen the curtain, widen the curtain of attention in the present, so that attention is flowing through both and. You change the boundaries of your existence.

[47:30]

And you change the boundaries of your existence in past, present and future. Okay. Now, if we get to neither nor, neither existing nor not existing, this is the dynamic to free you from all presuppositions and samskaric thinking. Is it possible? Tomorrow? Tomorrow? And if you master all the four propositions, which is part of what this koan is about, you begin to be able to take any viewpoint.

[48:46]

You're not stuck within the horizons of a particular viewpoint. So when you're with somebody, not only can you see they do entity thinking, you can feel the functioning of the causal base in them. And you can understand them. You can feel, pretty much predict whatever they're going to say next. Category, at least. What if you're a Dharma adept? You might be able to sneak a little both-hand into that samskaric basis. Or either even take the basis away entirely with a little neither nor.

[49:47]

I know some of you think I'm threading or splitting hairs. But these are the fuzzy thinking, hairy thinking that can change your life. Whether you're a lay person or a monk or both and. Okay, thanks. Thank you.

[50:38]

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