You know, koans are often, you know, when you read people's, hear people speak about koans. They often, you know, the explanation is often not much more than homilies of kitchen wisdom. Homilies? Homilies means everyday kind of There's nothing wrong with kitchen wisdom. It may be the best kind for most people. But the problem with it is, as good as it is, every koan then starts sounding the same. Be mindful, you know, alert, live in the everyday. Here and now.

[01:12]

That's all good advice. But then you might as well have one koan. So if you find that when you look at a koan, it's kind of advice that could be applied to any koan. So you want to go deeper into it until there's something unique about each koan. Even though In another way, all koans are about the same thing. But sometimes you come from under the same thing, sometimes you come from behind the same thing, etc. And so on. And the same thing is transformed as a result.

[02:32]

So let's look at the conception of this koan. Really it's the sufficient moment. That's the best way I can put it. A sufficient moment. The sufficient moment. The etymology of sufficient in English means something like all the supplies are there. Supply is sufficient. So it's a kind of, you know, a way of, also the practice phrase, just now is enough. Yes, it's genug.

[03:40]

It sounds very funny in English. Genuk. I love it. Anyway, okay. So, And it's said somewhere in the verse it says the sufficient something or other. It uses the word sufficiency in the translation of the verse. But it also says the host within the dust. And the guest from outside creation. Now these two phrases are phrases you can, you know, percolate or brew. Yeah, of course, these are technical terms, pedagogical terms used in

[04:43]

The koans in general, host and guest. And the basic advice of Sukhiroshi, don't invite your thoughts to tea. It is the conception of host and guest. Who doesn't invite the thoughts to tea and who are the thoughts that are invited? Which or what? So in the first case, in the case itself, we have Buddha and Indra and a sanctuary is founded.

[06:02]

And it says about the elder in the second part, getting the beginning he takes in the end. Getting the beginning, he takes in the end. Again, this is a phrase you want to muse about in your own experience. And what happens when you muse about it? You don't think about it. You just let it sort of bounce around in the threshing machine of body and mind. And, you know, after a while, all the things you might think about it that really don't apply kind of get threshed out.

[07:05]

And as what it's not about begins to appear, Often we can't say what something is, but we can say what it isn't. And when its is-ness becomes more apparent and its is-not-ness falls away, Then it begins to connect with our own biography. I think it's almost always the case you begin to find, yes, these things have happened to me, this situation has happened to me, etc. And in this way you bring your own biography into the koan.

[08:23]

Okay, getting the beginning, he takes in the end. Den Anfang nehmend, den Anfang habend, schließt er das Ende mit ein. Da müssen wir also fragen, was bedeutet das, den Anfang nehmen? Was ist die Quelle einer Wahrnehmung? Oder was ist die Quelle des Geistes oder des Wissens? Yeah, so this koan is asking this question. Of course, many koans ask this question in a variety of ways. But it says, the host in the dust. The host in the red dust even. So dust usually is taken to mean, in Buddhist terminology, yeah, the dust of the world, the dust on the mirror, you know, etc.

[09:46]

The obfuscations. In Buddhist terminology, the dust is often used as the dust of the world, the dust on the mirror, and obfuscations, I don't know. Obfuscations, things that interfere. Interference, obfuscations. It's a kind of nice word, obfuscations. And red implies desire, you know, sort of like it's not only dust, it's desire to dust. So the mind which doesn't invite the dust to tea is present in the dust. Something like that. This is the man on a single horse with a single lance who extends the etc., The host within the dust.

[10:48]

And the guest from outside creation. Whoa. Sounds good. How do you get outside creation? And then whose guest are you? Mm-hmm. Now, when I was a younger practitioner, one of the images I had that informed my activity in the dust was a basket being woven. I had the experience, I mean, this image that I created and worked with resulted from my studying Buddhist philosophy and emptiness and so forth.

[12:03]

So the philosophy isn't helpful unless it produces an image or something equivalent that you can work with. So I chose a basket. Or the basket chose me. the other shore was arriving in the form of a basket. Yeah. So what I... We could say this is an informed intent. So what I'm getting at here, wandering around in my usual mosaic, is what is a yogic perception?

[13:11]

What is a yogic perception? Mm-hmm. And strangely enough, it's very close to an English word, apperception. Apperception is the word. Do you have the word in German? Apperception, yeah, we have it in Giebser, but most people don't know it, I think. In what? Giebser? Giebser is the guy. Oh, Giebser uses it? Yeah. Okay. And that's very similar to... I can hardly believe it exists in English because it's so close to yoghurt perception and nobody does yoghurt perception in the West much. So it must have been created by Kant or something. I'm going to have to find out who.

[14:12]

Gebzertu. Because it means... fully conscious perception in English which includes also fully includes one's experience which perceives simultaneously uniqueness and relevant experience. It sees what's new and what's old at the same time. Good. It's good if you can do it.

[15:21]

But how one, the average person, how do you do that without some kind of yogic training or practice? Okay, so I'm going to ignore the word aperception, but speak about yogic perception. Okay, okay. So let's go back to the basket. So I create this image of the basket. I create it. I'm talking now my own biography. I created this image of a basket which is actually woven each moment. and unwoven each moment. And with that image, it helped me notice things coming together at each moment and dispersing again at each moment. Held together in the perceptual duration we call the present.

[16:39]

I don't remember saying that. held together in the perceptual moment we call the present the perceptual duration we call the present and I did it I can't I don't know so So when you begin to, when you have a metaphor like this, you can see how in certain moods or minds the basket's bigger and sometimes it's smaller.

[17:48]

Sometimes the baskets are going by like one basket after another faster than you. And sometimes the baskets, you can see them being woven. You can slow down how you are in the world. Ten minutes can seem like 20, you know, or an hour. You can enter into the space of the moment rather than the time of the moment. And in the space of the moment you can feel the basket being woven. And you can feel yourself using the basket. Because the basket carries your past, present and future.

[18:50]

And you can feel things from the past being woven in and the immediate present being woven in. So I found this to be a very fruitful image. And for the image to work, you have to perceive the space in which the basket is created. So you feel the space of each moment in which the basket appears. And you can see between the weave of the basket the space. on which it depends. It couldn't exist without it. So it gives you a feeling for space as original mind or original face.

[20:09]

Okay, so this was Almost 50 years ago that I used this metaphor. 45 years ago. Mick Jagger says, you know, you look away and you look back and you're old. I don't think I'm old, but you know, I must be. You look away and you look back and you're old. It's like that. What happened?

[21:10]

Isn't it like that a little bit, Jean? But you're not old. Oh dear. Help! You don't have to translate that. Okay. But what I didn't Yet, when I used that image, that fruitful image, was really how to hold the mind of space My reference point in this image was still the basket and the weaving of the basket and my participation in the weaving of the basket. But it wasn't really, the reference point really wasn't space itself. The metaphor didn't allow me to to get there.

[22:16]

Now, it wasn't until many years later that I could hold the mind of space as mind. And it wasn't until, you know, and that really arose from working with the field of mind free of contents. And the most useful exercise to realize this, not just a metaphor now, but an exercise, is to go, something I've given you several times, a number of times, a lot of times in the last couple of years, is to get the habit of going from the object of perception to the field of mind.

[23:24]

And make that a kind of pulse, a shifting pulse. So you notice percepts without thinking about them. And then you physiologically shift to the field of mind. You feel it in your body, the field of mind. And then back to whatever perceptual blint occurs. Okay, now this exercise, which after a while you just do all the time so naturally, eventually allows you to, because the field of mind is actually space, as gets you the ability to hold the field of mind as mind itself.

[24:43]

And then appearance is very vivid. Everything appears in this field of mind. And generates mind. Generates particular minds. No. Now, the result of being able... You know, normally this stuff isn't taught except to very experienced practitioners at the end of their life. But I'm running out of time, so, you know... Maybe some of you are. As lay people, you're not in the monasteries all the time, so you've got to act like this is the end of your life. You've only got a few more minutes. Yeah, in Buddhist terms, laymen die early.

[25:54]

Because their total practice moments is less. So the result of being able to hold mind as space is it increases your receptivity. In other words, perception is not just passively holding an object. I mean, you know, you just look at something, it's there in your senses. That's not yogic perception. Now we're talking about the dynamic of yogic perception. Okay, you're holding the mind as space or the mind as space holds you or whatever you is.

[27:17]

You is a very tiny thing in the mind as space. You increase receptivity to immediacy. Immediacy is received with less obstructions. And it also opens you to the Alaya Vijnana. It increases receptivity to your experience. Well, let me give you a simple example. I have reading glasses. So sometimes I look for my reading glasses. Sometimes I need my regular glasses to look... No, I'm kidding.

[28:22]

Where are my reading glasses? Okay. Now, here I'm talking about non-conceptual perceptual, perceptual, non-conceptual perceptual knowing. Now this is at the center of yogic perception. Oh dear. And it's really nothing special. If it's special, it's in its emphasis and its fullness. Wenn es besonders ist, dann ist es in its emptiness. In its fullness. Emphasis. It's in its emphasis and its fullness.

[29:25]

Also wenn es etwas Besonderes ist, dann in seiner Betonung und in seiner Fülle. All right. So I look at my I look at my I look at my desk and there's my reading glasses and I pick them up. So let's stop at this moment. Hold that. All right. When I do the service in the morning, I can do the service basically with my eyes closed. Sometimes I try it. Do I bump into the Jisha? But I also try to keep the eye of consciousness closed. In other words, what I'm saying is I've been doing service for so many hundreds of years.

[30:30]

Dipankara himself taught me. That my body just does it, right? Okay, but... What I try to do, the practice when I do service, is to not know what I'm doing at each moment. So I try to make my mind as close to zero as possible. And I used to use the example that for yoga perception is like one, zero, two, zero, three, zero. I'm using very simple examples here. But they cover a lot. Or one zero, one zero, and sometimes the ones are threes. That's how the world exists.

[31:46]

At each moment, it's basically non-repeatable and unique. How do you bring that into your experience? In other words, the body has to know that. It knows the service, but it also has to know zero. So while my body... My body, I don't know who the hell's body, but anyway, it's a body that I'm responsible for. So the body is heading for the altar. but to the extent which consciousness can touch the surfaces of the service.

[32:51]

In other words, my body can do the service pretty much non-consciously. But when I bring consciousness to the service, I try to bring not knowing at all to it. All right. Of course, there's some sort of, what sounds like a contradiction here, because there's not knowing in the consciousness and there's knowing in the non-consciousness. So I step away from the bowing mat. And I try to let my body not know where the heck it's going next. You might... One day you might find me there for 20 minutes.

[33:59]

Yeah, I feel that way sometimes. Vast eons of time. Oh, I have to go up to the altar. Time for action. Up to the altar, I guess. Oh, ich muss jetzt zum Altar gehen, es ist Zeit zum Handeln, und dann gehe ich zum Altar. And I don't succeed in this all the time. Often before I can even remember to not remember, I've remembered. Und ich bin da nicht immer erfolgreich. Oft ist es so, dass ich, bevor ich mich überhaupt daran erinnern kann, mich nicht zu erinnern, habe ich mich schon erinnert. But what is the useful, that's really the teaching of how you do ceremonies, what I'm talking about right now. That mind should be part of the ceremony. You can see it, you know, if you go to Buddhist temples in Japan, you can see it. Sometimes you can see the person doing the service really is like that.

[35:05]

Most of the time they just do it because they know it. Suzuki Roshi was a master of this. Always looked like he was doing things for the first time. That's why his book is called Beginner's Mind. Okay. So what happens if you practice this, bringing not knowing together with knowing? It's not that you don't know. But you develop the mind of not knowing in the midst of the red dust.

[36:08]

Yeah. Okay. I've gotten too crazy. Okay, so now I'm back to my reading glasses. So I reach for my reading glasses. And I'm reaching for my reading glasses in a mind of zero. But actually I know they're my reading glasses or I would grab a beach stone, which I have several on my desk. And beach stones don't help you read. So clearly in this mind of not knowing, a non-conceptual mind, I know they're my reading glasses.

[37:29]

Okay, so what do I know, actually? I know of, we can say this in English, you have different preposition problems, I know of my glasses, but I don't know about my glasses. In other words, I know the intent of my glasses, which is to read the Dharma. Oder in anderen Worten, ich kenne die Intention oder die Absicht meiner Brille, nämlich das Dharma zu lesen. Und ich weiß auch vieles über meine Brille, nämlich welches Rezept ich dafür bekommen habe und wo ich die gekauft habe und so. Aber die lade ich nicht zum Tee ein. The only prior knowledge that's present, I mean mainly, the only prior knowledge that's present is the intent of the glasses. Now the mind of

[38:30]

intent is a different mind than the mind of discursive thinking. So this mind of mutual receptivity is receptive to intent, not thoughts about. Yeah, this is one of those days when I think I don't have anything to say. Because I don't know how to take this koan to the next step. So I got up and I walked around my room. And I thought, you know, Okay, well, I have to say this or that. And in fact, I may be boring you.

[39:55]

Because what use is this for you? You get your reading glasses. Oh, now I've got this. No matter what, just put on your damn reading glasses. Von welchem Nutzen ist es für euch, dass ich euch erzähle, jetzt suche ich meine Lesebrille und dann passiert dies und das. Dann müsst ihr doch denken, jetzt setz doch einfach deine gottverdammte Lesebrille auf. But if we're going to look at this koan and what really makes this koan unique, we have to look in this kind of detail. So I'm trying to define yogic perception in the particular context of this koan, which is the transmission of the teachings. and making the world safe and making yourself safe and I also want to make it so it's something you can do you can get a feel for

[41:19]

I don't fully believe I can I don't fully believe that I can give you a feel for it. But I fully believe you can get a feel for it. And in between those two points I'm producing the Tesho. Okay. Can you all hold that in mind until tomorrow? If I'm going to follow the schedule. Oh, thank you. For your patience and your wisdom. To be willing to enter the path of wisdom.

[42:21]

I'm very grateful to be entering with you. Thank you very much.

[42:27]

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