rising from our sick beds, to paddle around in the pools of Zen. Yeah, and I'm just trying to stay healthy enough to keep giving lectures during the Sashim. But I'm pretty healthy. Okay. Yeah. The pedagogy of Zen. Yeah. I've been immersed in it all my adult life. And I'm still always amazed by it and its differences from other Buddhist schools. I would say, although I call us a lay monastic practice, You don't have to be a monk to do monastic practice.

[01:24]

Maybe we just call it adept practice. In any case, the adept practice together I would say is primarily to get a feel for the appearance of appearances. To mutually demonstrate to and with each other The physical engagement with the world as appearances. The physical engagement with the world as appearances. And the classic example would be to bow to your cushion and so forth.

[02:41]

And then, you know, the way it's the same effort is the flow of the orioki practice. And it gives the same effort in the river of the Uriyuki practice. Baoling, I think it's Baoling, was asked, what I mentioned yesterday, Baoling was asked, what is it to eat a meal? And he said, to watch the waves, arms and legs disappear. No, watch the waves. Arms and hands disappear. Yeah, I mean, arms and hands, bowls and raksus, they all disappear into each other.

[03:48]

Not raksus, bowls and chopsticks. Yeah. Hugo von Hoffenstahl. Hugo von Hoffenstahl? What's that in Austrian? Hoffmannstahl. Hoffmannstahl. Hoffmannstahl. I didn't say it right. I didn't say it right. Oh, okay. Hugo Hoffmannstahl. We can call him an Austro-Hungarian, I guess, because he really believed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Yeah, and he was a librettist and a poet and a novelist and so forth.

[04:55]

And librettist, I don't know either. Somebody who writes the text for an opera. Okay. A libretto, a librettist. Okay. And he wrote the texts for operas and an author and a poet. Yeah. He must have been a... He had to be a contemporary of Moussel, who was... very, not very positive about the Austro-Hungarian impact. Anyway, this fellow, who I don't know much about, but a little, He said, we can only know the world through what is already within us. We can only know the world through what is already within us. And then he said, but we can only know But we need the world to know what is already within us.

[06:14]

I think it would be much more convincing in German, but I have no idea what the original is. But I'm happy to sit in front of it. group of people who would know that well even if my two Hungarian friends and Keith don't. So that could be a kind of motto for Zen practice. Das könnte eine Art Motto für die Zen-Praxis sein. We can only know the world through what's already in us. Wir können die Welt durch das kennen, was bereits in uns ist. But we need the world to know what's already in us.

[07:16]

So how do we engage the world so it opens what's already in us? This would be a question of Zen pedagogy. Now, as I said the other day, yesterday, I guess, I'm very fond of Kanadeva. And as we chant his name in the morning, we recite his name in the morning. It's one of the easier ones to say. And he comes after Nagarjuna. And he was a disciple of Nagarjuna and... a co-founder sort of of the Madhyamaka school with Nagarjuna.

[08:19]

Well, a famous story about Kanadeva anyway is he came to see Nagarjuna and he wanted to become Nagarjuna's student. So Nagarjuna sent his attendant out to greet Kanadeva, I guess at the gate. And he brought him a bowl of water. Now, we have to keep remembering the historical context of simple things like a bowl of water. They didn't have a faucet in the kitchen where water just appeared.

[09:20]

They had to go out and get it from a stream or someplace and make sure it wasn't full of bugs, you know, etc. So he brought him this bowl of water and maybe it was a kind of greeting to give somebody, a traveler, you know, a glass of water. Okay, so, but Kanadeva went into his monk's pack and dug out from his sewing kit a needle. And he very gently put the needle on top of the water so the surface tension supported it, so it floated.

[10:37]

Aha. So Nagarjuna says, okay, okay, you can be my student. Now, none of you have brought me a bowl with a needle floating on it. I know you would have if you'd known about it, you know. You might have had an iron spike floating on it. Vielleicht hättet ihr eine eiserne Spitze darauf getan. Aber was ist das? Geht es dann nur darum, Kanadevas Klugheit zu zeigen? And people, you know, I read comments now and then about koans from people and they always say something like, well, this symbolizes emptiness.

[11:53]

That's what most they say about everything. And young men would call that a dead phrase. Okay, so I think, you know, Ivan Illich said to me once. In fact, more than once he said to me something like this. And he was, I would call him a kind of yogic Catholic. And I would call him a yogic Catholic. His sense of how the world functions was very yogic. But he said to me once, you know, I always feel Jesus is nearby.

[12:55]

Jesus is, you know, And he kind of gestured as if he couldn't be more than 15 or 20 feet away at any time. So I think this kind of feeling of the world as presence It's characteristic of the dynamic of a truly religious person.

[13:55]

So here in the last two or three days I've been overlapping a bit with what is the, you know, because I mostly say Zen isn't a religion, but Now I'm sort of saying, in what ways is it a religion? Now we can in various ways have the feeling of the presence of enlightenment or the possibility of Buddha, the presence of Buddha. Somehow we can feel that. And although Sukershi never mentioned it, I do know that Sukershi did you know, have this feeling sometimes.

[15:04]

But I would say, if I'm trying to find ways to express something similar, is that the adept Zen practitioners... had a feeling of the presence of the world all the time. But the presence of the world as... Interactive interdependence. Or a flow of emergence and an emergence which you're emergently engaged with. And if you get a feeling for this, a lot of the koans and statements of Zen Buddhist practitioners will make sense.

[16:20]

Okay. So as I said the other day, again, in Dzogchen it's a sense of the world before... See, if I say the world before us, there's a separation. The world... as us, as a vast expanse. To know what's already in us, Hugo von Hoffman style, to know what's already in us, we need the world. Yeah. And so Yuan Wu says to be immersed in the inconceivable reality.

[17:41]

And that inconceivable reality is an inexhaustible treasury, says Yuan Wu. And how does the... the inconceivable world become an inexhaustible treasure. And one of your fellow practitioners sent me an email the other day. And because he was quite deeply affected by the experience of focusing on in-betweenness.

[19:04]

So the focus not on objects but on in-betweenness opened up a flow of uniqueness. So this would be one way to engage, emergently engage, into emergence. What I say in English is barely comprehensible. It must really be incomprehensible in Deutsch. Sorry.

[20:08]

Sorry. In the future you'll have a German speaking teacher. It might be less interesting. Because you'll have the sensation you understand. You'll probably be wrong. Okay. How are we doing here? Okay. So if you... assume that the Nagarjuna is constantly involved in a dialogical relationship to the world about interdependence.

[21:16]

And Kanadeva comes to see him. And Kanadeva is equally involved in what is this interdependent world, in which nothing is permanent and death is unsure. I mean, sure, but you don't know when. And he too, in the same way, always asks himself this question, what is with this mutually dependent world? Just in the last three days, three people I know have died and two have gotten cancer and didn't know they had it. Yeah. And Kanadeva wants to practice with someone who's engaged like that, so he sees this cup of water.

[22:37]

And what could be more contrasting than water and a little pointed needle, sharp needle floating on it? Yeah, and so, at least as the story goes, Nagarjuna was understood, Kanadeva's engagement, and they then practiced together. Now, Yan Min was one of the Zen teachers most famous for his one word answers or his phrases. And as you remember, we already discussed him because he's the one who asked why in this world is vast and wide.

[23:56]

Why do you put on your robe at the sound of the bell? So, Bao Ling, who I mentioned the other day and yesterday, I guess, in case 13 of the Blue Cliff Records, We don't know historically much about his dates, etc. But he's famous for his three phrases. And young men liked his three phrases so much after Bao Ling presented his three phrases as a demonstration of both his understanding and of how to teach.

[25:15]

And it's a tradition when you receive transmission to give your teacher such a document or such a phrase or something like that. or a realisational phrase. Okay. So, Yan Min said, on my remembrance day, after I'm gone, Please, just recite these three phrases. I need nothing else as a remembrance. And supposedly that was what was done in Bao Leng's lineage.

[26:17]

Now, his three phrases are question and response phrases. The first is, what is the way? And then the response, a clear-eyed person falls in a well. Und die Antwort ist, ein klaräugiger Mensch fällt in einen Brunnen. Might be the source of a Murakami novel. Das könnte die Quelle für einen Murakami-Roman sein. Clear-eyed cuckoo bird. Anyway, the second phrase... Ein klaräugiger Aufziehvogel. Der zweite Satz. ...is... What is the hair-blown or feather-blown sometimes sword?

[27:31]

The image is you have a sword that's so sharp you blow a hair against it and it falls into two pieces. Or you blow a feather across it and it falls into two pieces. It's a hair-blown sword. What about the hair-blown... This isn't a rabbit being cut in half. What about the hair-blown sword? Um... And the response is branches of coral support the moon.

[28:34]

Yeah, and right now I can't think of the third, but I know it very well. Out of context with all this discussion of half-rabbits. Okay, and now, young men as a school is famous for another three phrases. which actually were sort of phrased by or codified by Deshan, Yan Min's disciple, another disciple. And the first is covers heaven and earth.

[29:36]

And the second is cuts off myriad streams. And the third is wave follows wave. Now, what's going on with these kind of use of phrases and one-word responses, again, were characteristic of young men. And these three phrases appear in various disguises and forms in koans repeatedly. So what kind of pedagogy is this? Well, I would say actually it's a way of teaching that's especially for lay people. If the adept practice with each other, we can call monastic practice, is to discover

[31:01]

the world appearing as physical activity. The world appearing as physical activity. And we get the feel for that with others developing a mutual space. Und wir ein Gefühl dafür mit anderen bekommen, während wir einen gemeinsamen Raum entwickeln. These phrases can just be brought into your life in a monastery or in Berlin, even Berlin, etc. Diese Sätze können in dein Leben gebracht werden, im Kloster oder sogar in Berlin. But even though they can be brought into your life anywhere... You have to apply them. If you don't apply them, they mean nothing. And what does apply mean? Apply means at least repetition. Or engaged gestation. engaged incubation.

[32:35]

So, all right. So let's take the phrase hair-blown sword and coral branches support the moon. Nehmen wir nochmal diese Wendungen. Haarspalten des Schwert und Korallenzweige stützen den Mut. So we're, now, again, you know, the word pedagogy is rather negative in English, but I seem to be more positive in Deutsch. But we are talking about a kind of pedagogy, so I'll use the word. We could say that there's a tradition within China of teaching through cases. You know, like cases, situations that you get a feel for and can feel them in your own life.

[33:51]

Also Fälle, Situationen, für die du ein Gefühl entwickelst und die du in deinem eigenen Leben wiederfinden kannst oder spüren kannst. Also nicht so explizit in philosophische Schritte oder Abfolgen ausgearbeitet. And so the style of Zen for lay practice, let us call it for lay practice, is to take, say, a word out of a context. And now it has no context.

[35:01]

And you put it in a context by your practice and your living. Now it's assumed that because you're in a A Zen practitioner, Buddhist practitioner. The context you're going to put it in is a context of always being engaged in interdependence. And not taking refuge in things or past or future. But taking refuge in effect in the flow of the world which keeps appearing.

[36:05]

So if a Zen teacher gives you one word or a move, that's put into that context by the adept practitioner. Now, if your context is self-involvement and worry and concern and it's not right, etc., It's not going to work. It works when you put it in a context of it's all flowing and it doesn't have any reality and what is it and how can I function? It works when you put it in a connection with the feeling that everything flows and it has no firmness. How can I function in this?

[37:07]

And it also has no reality. And nothing else exists for me except to live my breath and to look at my attention. Hugo von Hoffmansthal said, the phrase I didn't repeat, said, and you won't find out what's in you without activity and suffering. sagt auch, und du wirst nicht herausfinden, was in dir steckt, oder was in dir ist, ohne Aktivität, ohne Handeln und ohne Leid. So the constant activity of the world which you're surrendering to, die fortwährende Aktivität der Welt, der du dich übergibst,

[38:10]

includes the suffering of so much of the world that you can't do anything about. So you bring some phrase into it. A clear-eyed person falls in a well. That's the way you really feel yourself. This is the way and I'm falling into a well and how can this be the way? You have to take it seriously and try it. Yeah. Okay. So the hair-blown sword. This is such a funny idea, sort of Japanese samurai number, you know. And a while ago I got some of these layered blades, Japanese blades, for you can get in the kitchen.

[39:20]

And I wanted to try them out. And the first thing I did is the sponge I was cleaning fell in two halves. The water-blown sponge was cut in half. And then my trying to find the knife in the dishwater and... So here we have a hair blown, a sword, so sharp that the blade is so thin it almost doesn't exist. And, of course, again, you have to create a historical context. Government is about establishing order. What price? That's another question, but it is about establishing order. And it's usually established by the sword.

[40:43]

They didn't have guns. So the sword represented order in the world. And here's order in the world which divides us. So you feel the relationship of things like, you know, I look at Jonas. when I look again at Jonas and just by looking at Jonas has changed him and the time that passed has changed and his eyes and blinking is different so The tiniest things change things.

[41:51]

Die kleinsten Dinge verändern Dinge. Okay. So here we have contrasting contexts. Hier haben wir einander entgegengesetzte, kontrastierende Zusammenhänge. One context is the hair-blown sword, feather-blown sword. Ein Kontext ist das haarspaltende, federnspaltende Schwert. Okay, oh yeah, well, the third phrase of Ba Ling... Der dritte Satz von Baulig. We already discussed. Den haben wir schon besprochen. What is the school of Kanadeva? Was ist die Schule von Kanadeva? Snow piled in a silver bowl. Schnee angehäuft in einer silber Schale. Or another version is, what is old lady Zen? Snow piled in a silver bowl. Old lady Zen? Yeah. That's what you're going to be one day. There she is, old lady Zen.

[43:01]

But again, let's historically look at things. A silver bowl, that's extraordinary. Benjamin Franklin, you all know who that is, sort of. Well, Benjamin Franklin, you know, was one of the founders of America, sort of. A scientist, a brilliant guy. A printer. And late in life, his wife bought him a silver bowl, the first one he'd ever had, but it represented success. And if you ever want to know how hard it is to get silver, visit Freiburg's silver mine. Because Freiburg is financially founded on silver. It was hard work to get that silver out of that hill.

[44:17]

So back to the hair-blown sword. And I'm going to end tomorrow. I mean, soon. It hasn't quite been an hour yet. But for you it's been an hour, not for me. So we're going by my hour or your hour? Or our hour? Anyway. What the heck is the relationship of coral branches underwater supporting the moon? Well, you really have to kind of like run over it in your mind, repeat it, think about it. What the heck is that about? Of course, coral is rather sharp, if you've ever... Swarm against it, which I have.

[45:30]

It cuts you as fast as a cooking knife. So here you have a water-borne feather cut by coral. Instead of an air-borne feather, Eine Feder, die auf dem Wasser schwimmt, danke. Eine Feder, die auf dem Wasser schwimmt und eine Koralle. And these kind of things require not working with phrases, but holding images in your mind. Und was diese Dinge brauchen, ist, dass du Bilder im Geiste hältst. Okay, so the image, you know, maybe something like the moon lights on the water. And maybe you can see the coral in the water simultaneously. And the moon and the moonlight and the coral and the water, well, there is clearly a relationship.

[46:30]

It's not a causal relationship exactly, for sure. It's an interrelated relationship. So the effort in this Zen pedagogic style is to sensitize you to how interdependence works in more and more subtle ways. So I could ask, what state of mind mixes the depths and surfaces of the world. Okay, thank you very much.

[47:34]

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