If you're all waiting for me to say something, I don't have much to say. If you're waiting or here to join me in exploring how we exist in this world, Yeah, and join me in exploring how we exist with each other. And with this what we call the world. Yeah. Then this motivates me to have something to say. I wish I'd grown up in a scholarly family instead of a bohemian family.

[01:04]

Because if I was a scholar and had linguistic skills I would like to really one thing that would interest me to study is do the grammatical categories of Sanskrit, Pali, English, Japanese, and so forth, influence the categories in which you can imagine the teaching. Did I say all that? Okay. Because I'm sure it's the case. And even if you try to free yourself from the categories of your language and your culture, then whatever you create is in relationship to what you freed yourself from.

[02:40]

And even if you free yourself from the categories of your language and your culture, then your liberation still takes place in relation to what you have freed yourself from. So as I sort of have promised, I will look today at this koan 46 of the Hekingan Roku records. In 1964, I published The Wind Bell, edited The Wind Bell, and edited Tsukiroshi's lecture on Koan 46. 1964 habe ich die Zeitschrift Windbell herausgegeben und habe darin Suzuki Roshi's Vortrag über diesen Chor in 1946 überarbeitet.

[03:43]

And he, I don't remember how it happened exactly, but anyway, he gave the lecture and I did from memory a kind of version of it. And I think I must have shown him my version. And then he wrote on it with a brush. It is difficult to express reality fully on each occasion. And then he put seven exclamation points. Which I thought were more expressive than what he said. I should have printed upside down exclamation points. But in any case, I published it with his calligraphy at the bottom of the lecture.

[05:01]

So this koan has been Dharma reigning in my life for a long time. And it's a classic story and certainly many such cases, thousands of such cases actually happened. And it's a classic story and with certainty hundreds or thousands of such cases have actually happened. I mean, I'm saying that in contrast. Some koans are very particular to a particular situation.

[06:03]

Some koans are clearly constructed as little theater pieces. But this koan, this... type of situation, this kind of situation between a teacher and a disciple within a Sangha is everywhere, always present for centuries. And what I've decided to pronounce a chin-ching which I really don't know how to pronounce it and it's spelled in many different ways in different situations. I'll have to ask the real scholar here, Dieter, at some point how to pronounce it.

[07:08]

Anyway, And Qin Jing was rather famous for this kind of testing question. Now, why do we know it's a testing question? Well, it's in a koan, so probably it is, right? But if you ask, when it's raining outside, you ask somebody, what is that sound? Well, it's pretty obvious you're asking something. That's Robert Redford singing. That's from the raindrop keep falling on from that movie, whatever it was called. It was quite a good movie, actually.

[08:22]

Made Redford and famous, and the other guy, Paul Newman, yeah, was already famous. Anyway, the monk wouldn't have known. Hadn't seen that movie, I'm quite sure. So this wasn't one of his possible responses. Okay, so basically what What Qin Jing is asking is, since they both hear it, what do you call what you're hearing? So this koan, the version, I like Cleary's earlier and his brother's earlier versions of koans and their later translations of the same koan. I was actually asked in the 60s, or whenever it was, 60s, to write the introduction to the Blue Cliff Records, and I refused because I said, I just don't know enough to write such an introduction.

[09:40]

And I did write the introduction to the book of Serenity, and I published it and designed it and so forth. But Cleary didn't want me to write the introduction. Because it presumed I could understand Collins and no American without at least his scholarly skills could understand Collins. I'm just telling you a little history. So, I mean, since he translated the book, I'm not going to force him, because the publisher said, we have the legal right, you can write it.

[10:53]

And I said, no, legal right or not, I am not going to write the introduction if he doesn't want me to. Just a minute more of history. But I did write an introduction to the book that was never put in the book, but it circulates around somewhere. And someone sent that to a publisher and then the publisher 30 years ago asked me to write a book. I've never written anything really, but they gave me quite a lot of money.

[12:04]

I couldn't believe it, which I have long since spent supporting the centers mainly. And every few years the publisher checks with me, how's it going? And I always say, the rest of the money you're supposed to give me, forget about it, just leave me alone. Yeah, so anyway, I'm hoping to semi-retire so I can do this finally with your help. Okay. So the introduction to koan, some of the pointer, I like the pointer as a term for the little introduction, says something, I've shortened it, but says something like at a single stroke completion.

[13:30]

The slightest word can change everything. I think we all know that experience. And then the pointer says sitting in heaps of sound and form Walking on top of sound and form. And then he says, leaving aside wondrous activity in all directions. Let me do the previous one again. Can you now do this one again?

[14:42]

Yes, sure, whatever you say. Leaving aside wondrous activity in all directions... What about leaving the instant on the moment? Something like that. What about leaving the instant on the moment? A non-instantiated instant. Don't worry. Okay. Now, Now, if we were in a winter branches, I would try to bring in other aspects of the pointer, but right now I think these are the sufficient aspects for the time we have.

[16:10]

So, Qin Jing says to the monk, what's that sound outside? And the monk says, yeah, raindrops, the sound of raindrops. Now I've already said we know this guy's an adept. His practice is pretty mature. Because otherwise he couldn't ask a question like, what do you call what we are both hearing? So in the implications of the question, he says, yeah, it's the sound of raindrops.

[17:14]

And Buddha would say the same thing. After all, they are raindrops. All right. But then, Xinjing challenges him. Or, you know, I think we look at this too much as confrontive challenge. This is a culture which emphasizes companionship. And several of you have commented, noticed that I used the word companionship. Yeah, and in the etymology in English, it's obvious.

[18:24]

It means somebody you share bread with. Come, pan, and ship. So it means friendliness, generosity. Someone you, even when it's a limited amount of bread, you share it. So it's comradeship, friendship, friendship. So these koans I'm presenting today emphasizing that it's a form of companionship. Even if it looks confrontive, or challenging, it's confrontive or challenging in the larger context of companionship.

[19:35]

They're doing this together. So, He says, Qin Jing says to the monk, We sentient beings, we're always, we're inverted. And we're always chasing after things. So that's interesting because if he's actually answering the question, what you call the raindrops, that already suggests that he's not chasing after things.

[20:48]

And that's interesting, because when he actually answers the question, how do you call the rain drops, then it's already in there that he's not chasing things. And, okay. So, then if we look at it in that sequence, with that refinement sequence, If you look at it in this sequence or in this refinement, this further level of refinement, then it means that Xin Jing thinks that the monk, and he's been watching the monk for months and they live together and blah, blah, blah. Then it means that Xin Jing asks this monk and he has been observing the monk for months and they live together like this. Although he's answering, I call it raindrops, because you want to be able to express, as the colon says, you want to be able to express things in ordinary ways.

[21:58]

While simultaneously knowing you can't express things fully. So he seems to be saying to the monk, you think you're expressing something fully by saying, I'm calling it raindrops, meaning everything is mind. And he seems to say to the monk, you believe that you can fully express something by calling it raindrops and thus also saying, everything is spirit. So this is quite a sophisticated expectation that the Qin Jing has of this disciple.

[23:06]

He expects him to be able to turn the picture over. And Oh dear, I didn't mean this to sound so complicated. I apologize, I can't be helped. We shouldn't try to do it in 40 minutes. Okay. So he's suggesting, to put it simply, he's attached to the idea that everything is mind. And he's attached to his understanding of that and showing off a little. Okay. So that is a form of chasing after things.

[24:25]

That's a form of self-referencing, being present and feeling good about your understanding. Now I'm speaking about this koan in this way. To actually speak about companionship. So let me divert from, invert or divert from the koan for a minute. And say, now and then I look up something on the, internet, like I looked up various ways to that Chen Jing's name is transliterated.

[25:29]

And then I see Yeah, then I see there's various people who've published their lectures on this koan. And sometimes I look at them. And sometimes I squirm. But usually they're sort of serious and earnest, and earnest means overly serious. But they all are presented with the feeling that there is some understanding to be presented.

[26:32]

Now, can you imagine, those of you who come to the Winter Branches, That you could take one day or the other or something of our discussion and present it as an understanding of the koan. Well, yeah, it might be interesting. but then what about next year I talk about the same koan completely differently and then several times differently At other times. Which one are we going to publish?

[27:33]

Yeah. Well, obviously I don't know what I'm talking about because it's different all the time. But I think of Fermat's last theorem. Fair Matt is a mathematician, one of the most brilliant ever. And in 1637, 299 years before I was born, He, on the edge of some paper on the margin, wrote, I just proved that such and such and such and such, you know, A plus, you know, et cetera.

[28:34]

But he never showed the proof. So everybody is sure this guy, I mean, Fairman was... serious mathematician. So everybody's sure he maybe did, but nobody could prove it. Weil Fermat ein so brillanter und ernster Mathematiker war, glauben alle, dass er das bewiesen hat, aber keiner kann es beweisen. So it should have been Fermat's conjecture, not Fermat's last proof. Conjecture means you say it's like this, but you haven't proved it. Vermutung. But a guy named Andrew Wiles, a young, I think, British mathematician, proved it in 1964. He finally worked it out. They've been working on it for 350 years. Also, die hatten da jetzt 350 Jahre dran gearbeitet und ein Brite, glaube ich, namens Andrew Wiles, hat das im Jahre 1960 oder 64 oder sowas bewiesen.

[30:06]

I had a pure mathematician friend who was pure mathematician's work on problems that no one solved yet. Anyway, he was quite a nice guy and a good friend. And I learned quite a bit from him. And one was his approach to the problems he was trying to solve as part of his PhD thesis. And one is that his approach, when he wanted to solve the problems, for example, the tasks he wanted to solve for his doctoral work, was you filled yourself, he informed himself about every possibility he could think of and what anybody else had thought of, but none of it worked, and then he just filled himself with it and let it kind of incubate. And then I realized when he said I was doing the same thing in trying to work with Kahn's and work with Suzuki Roshi's lectures.

[31:13]

To the point that it became part of our relationship. In other words, when he would do something like in 1964, to understand fully on each occasion is difficult. For example, when he did something like what he did in 1964, to write on it, at every opportunity, to fully understand is difficult. It is not possible. Or actually not possible. I decided to develop a space with him, a mental posture, in effect, which was, we're in the middle of the inexpressible together, and I don't expect more than that except the mutual feeling of inexpressibility.

[32:36]

So I cultivated a feeling of not trying to understand as much as willingly accepting not understanding. Or letting understanding incubate itself through our companionship. Okay. Okay. So, if we imagine Fermat as a Zen teacher, Zen master, We could say that he created the last conjecture theorem proof just to cause trouble.

[34:03]

Because it did stimulate mathematics for 300 years. They tried, they learned things, they created new forms of this and that. Just by trying to solve the problem. So this koan is like that. In general, all of Buddhism is sort of like that. Really, it's the companionship of the lineage which brings the koan to life. And then we have the question, if that's the case, certainly the case in my experience, then how are we going to transmit companionship? In a way, we could say Buddhist compassion is to establish companionship in every situation, not wait for a poor person or a sick person to help, establish companionship in every situation.

[35:59]

The Buddhist practice of compassion is every time you have the thought, well, this person is kind of irritating or kind of dumb or something like that. You counteract that with a compassionate, some kind of looking at the good side of the person. I mean, it kind of sounds sappy, but it's the way it is. Informal... Informal... Tibetan practice, you actually say, this totally irritating person in front of me was probably my mother in another life.

[37:13]

In the formal Tibetan practice, you even say, this incredibly annoying person was probably my mother in an earlier life. So that is the practice of companionship and compassion. Okay, now let me see if I can go back to the koan just a moment, because I don't want to test your legs. My legs are all right, because I keep talking, so I don't notice how they feel. But I suddenly remember sitting in lectures that went, and I thought, oh my gosh, could he please stop? Oh, my goodness, could he please stop? I know none of you have ever felt that way.

[38:14]

Ich weiß, dass von euch sich niemals jemand so gefühlt hat. Okay. Now there's a Taoist and Zen tradition to look at language as to look at the words of language as containers which shouldn't contain. Es gibt eine taoistische und Zen-Tradition, sich die Worte der Sprache als Behältnisse zu betrachten, die nichts beinhalten, nichts beinhalten sollten. Sometimes they were imaged as containers which kept tipping left or right and spilling the contents out in a different direction. And that there was a kind of technical term for it called fluctuating words. Oscillating, fluctuating?

[39:15]

Yeah, I just said the fluctuate. It's not pretty, but it's okay. It's not pretty. This is very aesthetic of you. It's good. So the words have a meaning, but in one way they pour into the context in a different way than they pour into the context in another way. Die Worte haben eine Bedeutung, aber die ergießen sich in einen Zusammenhang auf die eine Art und Weise und manchmal ergießen sie sich in einen anderen Zusammenhang auf eine andere Art und Weise. So this is a way of saying that words are first of all primarily contextual in the meaning that evolves, the meaning that arises in their use. Und das bedeutet zu sagen, dass in erster Linie die Worte kontextbestimmt sind, But even more than that, that they hardly have any fixed meaning at all. I think of sometimes the container ideas.

[40:47]

It's like a pitcher which you pour the water out of. You don't leave the water in the pitcher. So the word is like a pitcher. And you said you don't leave anything in the pitcher, right? Well, I said... The pitcher is made to have things poured out of it. Okay. Now I'm presenting this because I keep wanting to make us recognize that there are different world possibilities around us all the time. And I'm presenting it so we have a better entry into koan practice. And I'm presenting it as a way of showing we need the companionship of each other to look at something so subtle that keeps changing its meaning.

[42:14]

So I won't try to... say too much more about the koan. But just enough to give you some slightest words, which might make a difference. In the various translations, I like the Cleary brothers' first choice of inverted words. In den verschiedenen Übersetzungen gefällt mir am besten die Übersetzung der Cleary Brothers, Brüder, dieses Wort herumgedreht. Yeah, because invert in English means to turn from... Von innen nach außen gekehrt. Yeah, that's right.

[43:16]

It is right. Good. Because invert means to turn front to back. And it means to turn upside down. And it means to turn inside out. Okay. So he says, you know, we sentient beings are inverted, all these possibilities. And want to make something real. And definite. That the raindrops are the sound of mind. I'm a Zen monk. So... But it's difficult. So... And it says in there... leaving aside wondrous activity in all directions.

[44:26]

A euphemism for this is heaven. Because to understand things from the level of heaven is to look at things from all points of view at once. So heaven is a very different concept than our heaven. And one concept of heaven is that heaven and earth work together. And they were pulled apart. And we exist in the middle. And if we don't do it right, it might collapse. So to say something like in a koan, I'm rooted in... How does it go? Heaven, earth and I share the same root.

[45:41]

That's in the context of this concept of heaven. Okay. So then it says in the beginning... At a single stroke completion. But here the word completion is called a detour word. Because it really means incomplete. Because there's no completion. You can practice completion, but you're practicing completion within incompletion. And it's interesting, in contemporary science you have Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

[46:42]

A girdle's incompleteness. Einstein's relativity. And who was it? Complementarity theory. These are all our Western cultures brought us to this point. So here's a word which says, at a single stroke, complete. But it means, at a single stroke, to recognize everything is incomplete. So, just going back to the invert. Because the monk says, well, what do you mean we sentient beings are inverted? Denn der Mönch sagt, was meinst du damit, wenn du sagst, wir fühlenden Wesen sind gewendet?

[48:11]

And Qin Jing says, he says, I almost don't get lost myself in things. Er sagt, ich verliere mich fast nie selbst in den Dingen. That's like somebody says to you, hey, practice period, let's go to the movies. And you say, well, I almost didn't go to the movies, but let's go. So what he's bringing you to, so to say that, let's take a more practice period Sashin example. So we say it's better the rule is not to talk or talk as little as possible in Sashin.

[49:17]

So the monk says to the teacher what do you mean by you almost lose yourself in talking. Well, he means that I'm going along with you who do lose yourself to say that I almost lose myself or I almost don't lose myself. And what he's pointing to, the practice of being on the edge of completion or incompletion. And he's saying to the monk, know the cusp or the edge or the lip. like of a cup threshold where it is mind and yet it's not mind where it's an ordinary way to express yourself

[50:32]

wo es eine gewöhnliche Art gibt, dich auszudrücken. And simultaneously you almost don't express yourself or you almost don't, etc., because the other side is just there between everything. Und gleichzeitig drückst du dich fast nicht aus, weil die andere Seite immer da ist zwischen allem. So the monk could have said, for instance, like I said in the... hot drink statement last night. Yeah, I mean, what is the sound between the raindrops? Or he could have said, oh, yeah, they're so lovely at night on the roof. Or he could have said, yes, they are so lovely in the evening on the roof. There's ways of responding showing you, like Dogen's nice little short poem, black rain on the roof.

[51:54]

Es gibt Arten der Antwort, Arten zu antworten, die zeigen, dass du, so wie in Dogen's kleinem Gedicht, der dunkle Regen auf dem Dach. Well, that's enough, right? Das genügt hier. So I'm going to trust your companionship. Ich vertraue eurer Gefährtenschaft. And I'm sure you will continue to explore this. Und ich bin mir sicher, dass ihr fortfahren werdet, das zu erforschen. Thank you very much.

[52:23]

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