and your ashes will be put into them and that you will wait for us and that you also hope that we wait for you." And she was very touched and it made her cry. And I wanted to know from each one of us in our group how they felt about it because I saw a few more tears in some eyes. I hope you're not going to ask for my ashes any time soon. Patience. Patience. I would like to touch the little statue with a stair.

[01:06]

Like the stair. Like. Oh, I see. Pass it around. I might go get it. Well, let me... Maybe if we take a break, I'll go get it. Yeah. Okay. It's kind of a body banking point. No, no. So... Yeah, I have a question. I sometimes ask myself, since when do I call myself a Buddhist? Since when do I give myself justice?

[02:12]

Or should there be an official law? The question that was in our group, or was my question, is from when on you're a Buddhist, or if there's a kind of certificate or something, or when you're a Buddhist or something. What is Buddhism? What is Buddhism? I told them that we often have little fights whether I'm a Buddhist or not. It's a family. It's not so easy. Sometimes I think of Ulrike as a crab Buddhist.

[03:12]

Now crabs go sideways, she goes into it sideways. But she's very quick. Sometimes I'm swimming on the surface and she's scooting along underneath. Well, I don't know. I think you're a Buddhist before you know what Buddhism is. Ich glaube, man ist ein Buddhist, bevor du weißt, was Buddhism ist. Or before you can express what Buddhism is. But it's really important to recognize, it really helps to recognize you're a Buddhist.

[04:14]

Aber es hilft wirklich, wenn man erkennt, dass man ein Buddhist ist. And that's something you, first of all, and most importantly, do on your own. And that comes usually at the point where you say, well, I'm not perfect. This teaching may not be perfect, but this is what I'm doing, and so I'm going to do it, right or wrong. I trusted enough to do this and it's a kind of relief to enter into something and feel your life engaged with something that is other than your immediate personal history and your immediate personality.

[05:21]

To sort of suddenly stop that decision to say, okay, this is what I'm going to do, is often considered and often is one's initial enlightenment. Because it's not just about Buddhism, it's about deciding something very deep about how we exist. That's also very much in this koan, behind an ass and ahead of a horse, or vice versa. Okay. Yes.

[06:28]

Something funny, it's difficult to explain. I'll start with that. Randy gave us a picture in his talk, going into the... Enter the Kwanzaa Minar is just like going into the lake outside. The bloody part or the... There was one picture, and in our group we spoke lots about the noise, the sound which is going through. And I just now, since this morning, I am feeling the water is inside of me, and I'm in the water, and in some way there's no separation anymore. And I can go on, the light goes through me, and I'm in the light, in the noise, in the birds, and so on.

[07:34]

And in some way I can go around here in the room, I feel the pictures going through me, or the book. What I noticed, it's only the image of the book. There's something hardcover that makes me, that gives me some fear. But maybe it's only fear because I don't know really what it is, that hardcover. But if it would really be true, is that book also going to sue me? My ego asks, is it that I'm crazy now? Or what is it? And in some way, I know I'm not crazy. It shouldn't matter. But what is it?

[08:39]

In German, at least the headlines in German. It is with the sentence of Randy that I heard, this picture of going into the lake, that one picture and the other, in our book, we have talked a lot about it, how the sound, the cry of the bird, we have also spoken about it, how it goes through us. I have always had the feeling since this morning that the water does not pass through me. I am in the water. And if I go on with it, the things go through me, the picture goes through me. In the books I notice that there is a limit, it is probably only the image of the book and there is still something hard, something solid, that does not pass through me, which also scares me.

[09:51]

But when I am honest, the hard book also passes through me. And then I say, my ego, my ego asks, am I crazy now? By the way, just speaking about this point, I guess, you know, legally they can't, after a soon date, bring machinery into it here to do it, to clear, empty the mud and to... And you can't run mud downstream, so now it can probably only be done by hand if they're not going to fill up and return to their previous state. So if we want to help, I was thinking some of us might want to help Frank at some point.

[10:55]

Volunteer to spend a day in the pond digging the mud out. If anybody ever has a day or two, you'd like to come up and help Frank. I talked with Frank about making it part of the work during the seminar, but it's pretty hard to get boots on and go out there and clean up afterwards and get back in the zendo smelling like a mud fish of some sort. Yeah, once you begin to really practice with the sense of giving the designation to the book, for the substantiation of the book, every physical world becomes lighter, more transparent, funny. Yes, to the ponds very briefly, they are filling up again and again like mud and it is prescribed that they are cleaned with time and so far there have been no machines for it and Frank always cleans the ponds himself and if anyone ever has time and wants to, just ask to help on a day or so.

[12:04]

to spend time with him, he is certainly very welcome. And we have already thought about this defecation at the Sushi, to do the work phase, but it's just too short to put on the boots and then clean up afterwards. Yes, and as far as Peter's story is concerned, as soon as you really see that you give everything a definition, a designation, what you perceive, then the world suddenly becomes much easier. Anybody else want to say something? Yes. Yes, I don't know if I can express it correctly. Sometimes I'm a little scared that my body is a little hardened or so dry or that I lose the softness. although I don't always feel it that way.

[13:07]

For example, if I was in a seminar today, I would feel the atmosphere, the flowers, the air, the atmosphere, the sand, the water. But sometimes when I see the rails and what we do there, the whole path, I think I'm sometimes afraid that we're going down a very hard path. Because I am in the process of cultivating my female or female parts. That's why I don't feel it here in the West. That's sometimes my fear. Not that I experience it in Washington, but I see a lot of it in human beings. What goes through my mind is that I experienced Japanese Zen often too hard and tough, and it has nothing to do with you.

[14:09]

I don't experience you like that. Especially in Sashin, I feel a lot of things are too hard and kind of tough, kind of like for Japanese monks. And I'm here in the West to discover my gentleness, my softness, and my kind of feminine, gentle, soft side. And it sometimes worries me a little that it's something that gets kind of not paid attention enough to. OK. But maybe we could talk at some point, like what schedule you'd suggest for Sushant. Maybe we should really talk about what kind of ideas you have for a session, what you would like to change, what kind of schedule you would like to have. That's not it. That's not the schedule.

[15:09]

That's also how I deal with it. That's not the schedule. It's not the schedule. I don't know what it is, but I know at some point fear comes about this issue. And I look at it, what it really does with me also, this fear about that issue, and so far it hasn't happened. It hasn't happened, but I certainly have some fear. Well, I don't know if the fear... The fear seems to me... I don't know about your fear, but some fear or... sense of angst coming up before something that's demanding like a sushin or even Dotson can be for some people, which is not difficult, but that seems to me can be quite natural.

[16:22]

I don't know if this has anything to do with your fear, but many people know this experience that something comes to them, which is quite a challenge. And it can even be, for example, doxan, and that the topic of fear arises. Anyway, it's something, you know, I will try to, I mean, if we could talk about it more at some point, I'd like to know, the last Sashin we did here, we made the schedule at least somewhat easier. It's funny, I mean, it is true. I think Japanese Zen has, particularly often as it's overtaught in the West, has too much kind of young male stuff in it. But I've always... I don't know what Chinese...

[17:24]

Sashins are like, really, but I know some I've heard about where they're not even allowed to go to the toilet. In Taiwan. So I don't know whether it's Chinese or Japanese, but we are Westerners and we're lay people, so we have to figure out something. But I know in general that for some strange reason, the stricter the schedule, the more registrations. But that's, you know, the German nature. It's true in America too. And I don't know, it doesn't make sense to me, you know.

[18:40]

Anyway, I know, I was in a session once with Luki Roshi. And I thought to myself, oh my God, I saw the rest of my life doing sushis, hundreds ahead, but I'm getting out of here. I almost could have walked out. Anyway, but here I am. So anything else we can look at? I'm just going to give you some observations in the koan. There's a teaching device often used in koans of what's called the gathering or grasping way and the granting way. In the simplest way of suggesting this, the granting way is your Buddha, your Buddha, everything is Buddha.

[19:44]

And the gathering in way is emptiness, no eyes, no ears, no Buddha, etc. And there are two different actually movements in practice, one outward and one inward. And that sense is also part of the dialogue in here. And the movement inward also emphasizes returning function to the body. Or emphasizes aroused potentiality. And the granting represents functioning, great functioning.

[21:12]

So, and we can also say in some senses that the gathering in way emphasizes spirit and the granting way emphasizes soul. And these images for this are not always exemplified in each example, but you can see in a number of examples that this pulse has this quality of spirit, soul, compassion, wisdom, and so forth. Okay, so when Yangshan plants his hoe and clasps his hands, it's an inward turning, a gathering, emphasizing returning consciousness. everything to one mind, or to still mind.

[22:27]

And emphasizing potentiality. And this is a kind of meta-structure to the dialogue that's part of this way of talking with each other. And Guishan says something like, on a lot of people, he's saying, just turning inwards or realizing one mind or returning everything to still mind is not enough. So he's saying, now bring forth the mind of gratitude, of great function. So, on the one hand, you can look at these koans as these folks, and the way Dogen usually looks at it, and I think it's generally right, is that all participants are enlightened.

[23:54]

Well, maybe not exactly that, but it's not so simple as the dumb guy and the smart guy. These are people who are committed and involved in the process of realizing themselves in practice. And it's very much a part of a frame, as I expressed this morning, not of karma and reincarnation, but of causality and actualizing in immediate situations. That instead of an elite of enlightened beings or bodhisattvas who supply a continuity from person to person but a very similar continuity

[24:55]

The emphasis is not on an elite of enlightened beings, but the ordinariness of enlightenment in everyone. That through the chancy process of actualization comes into being in a society. And you can see, and this is a a sense of a larger vision than the Bodhisattva vow, as it's expressed in Zen, which comes into play in how you practice. And there's also in China here a kind of political and social dimension to this vision.

[26:14]

China had an aristocracy like Europe did, but it was in many centuries rather shunted to the side. It was considered to be something like the English crown, something where you keep palaces for people to play around and get themselves in messes. And the society was really run by the Confucians. And the Confucians, it was a wonderful system where talent, where status and success, etc., was open to everyone, but through an examination system depending on talent.

[27:37]

So part of the vision of Zen Buddhism in China was it's not even an elite of the talented. Everyone is enlightened. Even the farmers cutting thatch or the people digging mud out of the stream. But still, They don't know this and some people have to somehow bring this into the larger consciousness and that's what Guishan and Yangshan are doing through the equality of their friendship.

[28:43]

So that's the kind of political and social vision that's also in this column. Okay. Turning to the next part of it. We went down to for the first time realizing his whole body is muddy and wet. And having come across, just above that, having come across the bridge, he walks on the shore. Here pretty clearly, the bridge is the path to the other shore. Und hier ist mit Brücke ganz klar der Weg zum anderen Ufer gemeint.

[29:57]

And this bridge is often narrow. Und diese Brücke ist oft ganz eng. Now, these koans also, as I said a moment ago, come out of a tradition in which in the root it's not words, it's sound. Und diese koans kommen auch aus einer Tradition, wo es an der Wurzel keine Worte sind, sondern Klänge. So the sound and the whole idea of a Watto, turning word, is to return a phrase or sound, a word or phrase, to its source in the mind. And the source in sound and silence. That's why really koans are really a kind of development of a mantra tradition.

[30:59]

So the sound and the oral, it's not really scripture as written word, but scripture as sound which brings forth the presence of the dialogue of the teacher, of the participants. And also associated with mantra and with sound is often an image, an image of a deity of Tibetan Buddhism, for example. Image of a bodhisattva. So this sense of imagery that arises from sound is also part of the practice. So Susanna and others have pointed out a feeling of imagery that comes up with this story.

[32:05]

For example, I'm saying this because we happened to talk about this koan in Crestone last fall, I believe. Is that right, Mandy? And Jacqueline was there, and she's from Belgium. And she found this, having come across the bridge, she walks in the shore, she clearly experienced the bridge as her backbone. And she was through energy moving in her spine and through obstacles that were in her body, was coming across through her backbone onto another shore. So she could even feel this mantra, gone, gone, gone beyond, to feel the shore in her backbone.

[33:26]

So these koans, through this sense of being embedded not in the written word, but in sound and images, actually, strangely enough, even in translation, work in us in images. So when you read the koan, there's a sense of the way it's described in it, I'm sure it's clearer in the Chinese, that each of these units is an image, and you can read the text as a series of images with more integrity than as groupings of words. And that's what the imagist poets, Ezra Pound and others, William Krauss Williams and all, tried to, in English, tried to work with images at the base of each unit of the poem.

[34:53]

And Ezra Pound was much inspired by Fenollosa's piece on the Chinese written character. which saw the Chinese written character as an image. So the root of contemporary poetry goes back to this idea of language as image, contemporary English poetry. So the world is not a generalization, the world out there. In this way of thinking, the world has to be an image that's part of you, can be part of you. So the image here of the world is South Mountain, people cutting thatch.

[36:11]

And this image can be part of our vow. And one of the things that happens in actualizing realisational experiences is you have an image comes up which makes you joyful or makes you weak. And that's discovering the world as an image, not as the world as a concept for generalization. Now, one of the most well-known and quite useful books on the Roku of the individual teachers, not the koans, Says this translates, and of course in Chinese there's no singular plural, so person and people are the same.

[37:31]

So particularly in ancient Chinese or older Chinese, I believe, I don't know, but it's very hard to tell whether plural or singular is meant. And he translates, this person translated on South Mountain, there's a person cutting thatch. Now he's translating it not in the context of this Shorya Roku koan, but in the context of the Guishan and Yangshan's Roku. And he translates it as meaning or interprets it as meaning that Guishan is praising Yangshan. Yes, you've shown real understanding in planting your hoe and you are now cultivating the thatch by planting your hoe And

[39:09]

And then to show he's above praise and criticism, takes up his hoe and splits. The book is useful, but I would say that in this, he's completely wrong. And I say this also because I want you to know that you can decide whether these guys and these comments in the books are right or wrong. They are sometimes wrong, these books. As really if you decide inside your own body, you know, you're probably right that your body knows. I think it's just, I mean, you see, it's, I think, a scholarly view of somebody who doesn't practice, a philosophical view, and he just doesn't get that they don't really care about whether they're being praised for, you know, it's kind of silly.

[40:38]

Yeah, but certainly in the context of this particular koan, it's plural on South Mountain, and the whole vision of the koan turns in this vision of the world as these people cutting thatch and spinning. So you can, if you want to practice this way of thinking, you can discover your own non-generalized particular image of the world. It might be a particular person you saw on the street full of misery that you thought of turning around and following and helping during the day. Or it might be a newspaper story.

[41:49]

Who knows? But it's something that you draw and can feel you draw power from or strength from. This image makes you feel connected with the world. So, now the third aspect of this kind of oral tradition, which is also imagery, is that it's performance. Performance. And some of you picked up on this by deciding to perform the koan. So it's sort of like a koan, sort of like a magic pill that turns into sound, imagery and performance. So tian tang, letting out, is clearly a reference to regat, the granting way.

[43:00]

Your Buddha. Everything Buddha. Which is also more so because we have the stalagmite in the cave. Before we had the thousand foot pine way up on the edge of a cliff. Now we have in the cave this delight. What is soul? Soul? Soul. Ah, mehr Seele. Okay. Also, das ist auch mehr Seele, weil vorher haben wir dieses Bild von der Pinie gehabt, die da irgendwo am Berg oben steht, aber jetzt sind wir in der Höhle drinnen und wir haben eben dieses Bild des Dalachmitten. Okay. Now, down here, does the original man attain Buddhahood? And of course, this original man or the still mind or emptiness or the prior to thought of the whole planet in, doesn't even attain Buddha.

[44:19]

So, for example, does the emperor of China... Thatch? Probably not. So then we have the next thing, a thousand-year shadowless tree, the bottomless shoe of the present, etc. And if you're interested in this, again, way of thinking, Thousand-year shadowless tree represents timelessness, of course. And the experience of timelessness we have sometimes. And a clear taste of that is in zazen sometimes. The way we experience time is very different.

[45:22]

Now, then from there we have the bottomless shoe of the present, which is the engagement in the present. So these are two aspects or stages of practice. The engagement in the present and the recognizing or feeling a timeless reality. a silent deep mind. And the third stage here is then the abiding master of the moon over the thousand peaks is Avalokiteshvara from on high looking down on the world through detachment but connectedness. And robe and bowl is the transmission, is Guishan at Yangshan, is the actual... Again, it's not just a concept, it's you actually pass a robe that you...

[46:30]

where and a bowl that you eat from. And this is to be, to, you know, really begin, to, you know, really begin to join the world. And then a valley and clouds, this is to enter the marketplace, to abide in the world. Now, it says in the next paragraph up here, this is not, was first established, you can see this was not first established by Dongshan and Saoshan.

[47:49]

And this means that the founders of, the people who are called the founders of recent the founders of our lineage, established a teaching thing called the five ranks. And you can see that the five ranks are here in this list down here. So again, this story which carries a certain narrative or rather is carried by a certain narrative and a series of visual images has embedded in the narrative and the images one teaching device after another.

[48:57]

So you could take one column like this and make it your study for a year or two and cover much of And now what they imply here is because the five ranks are in the terms of father and son, lord, minister, mother and daughter, of potentiality and actuality is that Guishan and Yangshan represent this potentiality and actuality in their actual reality. Now we come to Mahakavi's point and concern.

[50:02]

Without this interaction and mutual working through the five ranks, through their own way of being, of Guishan and Yangshan, Yangshan would have just reaped of gruel and rice in the gate of shadows of the light. Reisschlein. Reisschlein. Am Schattendor des Lichts. Ahead of an ass and behind... Ahead of an ass but behind a horse means if you're still caught in likes and dislikes, you think you've accomplished something, you're ahead of an ass, but you end up, you're just behind a horse.

[51:19]

In other words, again, if Yangshan, if you didn't have this kind of interaction between Dharma friends, that's the essence of the ancestral lineage, you just be a monk who stinks of gruel and rice, and you'd be in the gate of some kind of enlightenment experience, but you'd be in the shadow of that enlightenment experience, unable to mature it, and to bring it forth and develop it. And I'm sure, as Mahakali would agree, that would have been most regrettable. We must remember the saying about South Mountain engraved on the bones, inscribed on the skin.

[52:52]

Now here we have the sense that people in South Mountain are... doing the work of the world, which we all do in various ways. And there's great effort and sacrifice and suffering in that work. great sacrifice and this is the first of the four noble truths that our life is suffering and this in itself is kind of transmission it's engraved on the bones and Bones were engraved as oracle sticks.

[54:03]

And also were made into seals. And the skin was, originally skin was used, animal skin for parchment. Parchment. For writing on. Has the sense that in our ordinary life we are sealed by and inscribed like scriptures with what we do to make the world work and to make our lives work. The last part? To make our life, you know, work or something.

[55:09]

And so this, what the koan's doing here is equating the work of people with the transmission of the teaching through the seal and written... But that unseen transmission, that unseen enlightenment in ordinary people is in their bones and skin. And But together is a requiting of the blessing. Yeah. So then we have down here the old peasants return to their bundles and their wives spin through the night. I mean, I see that in Japan. The women work in the farmhouses endlessly on their looms spinning.

[56:11]

Well, the men are up. I mean, everybody works in Japan at least. up until recently, starting at three or four in the morning. Also, die japanische Frauen arbeiten wirklich Typically, the farmhouses start around 3.30, often going out collecting vegetables in the fields. And so, They ask here in the koan, but tell me by whom are they empowered?

[57:14]

When you ask them, they don't know. And suddenly they give rise to doubt and confusion. So the sense of it here is then, who knows? And after they know it, and then we have the cutting off the arm, etc., that's Hui Ke, the disciple of Bodhidharma. So here the emphasis in this column is the decision to practice and to practice with others. To know how this transmission exists in everyone without doubt and confusion. is to really know this mind of gratitude.

[58:28]

The mind of gratitude not only for our practice and for Buddhism, but also for everything, the whole being of this world. And how do we answer these many blessings we're continuously receiving? And he says, that's why I've grown old here in this temple of answering the blessings we constantly receive. So that's the vision of this koan.

[59:40]

And we could go on and go through the added sayings and all that stuff. And it playfully brings in other dimensions of the koan. The dharma bombs and the karma bombs. But I think it's good to leave some things not done. So I think that's enough for this. I want to thank you for working together on this koan. And making this really a practice seminar.

[60:46]

And I want to thank those of you who learned how to do the Doan work. So it was somewhere between a seminar and Sashin. Now, my feeling is, and maybe you share it, that leaving time together like this week, one of the things we leave is... feeling a kind of distinctness that happens in our perceptual field. I think during Zazen and also often just walking around in this beautiful park.

[62:08]

We feel the distinctness of each thing, each sound. view the water reflections of the preciseness of the trees, and the ducks with their interrelated movements. Now this distinctness of each perception is a quality of big mind. And when we leave and go back into our usual things, much of the distinctness disappears and we can really only pay attention to things in the immediate foreground of our mind.

[63:30]

When we started out, I spoke about seeing the movements of the leaves this way and that way. Und zu Anfang habe ich darüber gesprochen, wie wir die Bewegung der Blätter sehen können. And how we may notice that this noticing we may discover, notice that to be able to notice the movement of the leaves. Und bei dieser Beobachtung ist uns aufgefallen, dass um die Bewegung der Blätter sehen zu können, depends upon the continuity of mind. Or the stillness of mind. So we have here the contrast of what changes and what doesn't change.

[64:33]

So while everything changes, we notice that two things don't change. One thing that doesn't change for most of us is the way our thoughts are embedded in views. And the field of mind itself, although it's not permanent, for us is a kind of unchanging medium. So through practicing meditation, we begin to see what changes and also to see that our habits of mind, our preconditions of mind don't change. And we notice that the field of mind itself in a way doesn't change.

[66:09]

The stillness of mind on which the movement of the leaves depend. So if you notice this in practice and feel it, acknowledge it, you're acknowledging big mind. A mind that's rather different than our so-called small mind, always caught up in and identified with thinking and so forth. So through this practice, Even through noticing, feeling the distinctness of the wind on the leaf, we are seeing, feeling big mind.

[67:23]

So noticing the stillness of mind is one aspect of big mind. Feeling the extent of mind bigger than the objects of perception. The stretch of mind, this is big mind. That's one aspect. Another aspect is a quality that makes us notice big mind is to begin to hear the distinctness of each perception.

[68:25]

The distinctness without a lot of associative thinking. Just you hear something, you see something. Now that's a third quality or way we notice big mind. And a third way that will begin to happen, if you continue to practice, Is every object of perception makes the mind purr? Almost like anything that causes the mind to come into existence, any object, sight, hearing, felt object.

[69:40]

Becomes a kind of pleasure. Almost like you're being rubbed slightly in a pleasurable way by each object of perception. Each object of perception leaves a little track of joy or gratitude through you. Especially the more you just know it in its distinctness. And as your practice matures, this mind settles into a kind of blissfulness. I think we notice this pleasurable quality of mind or blissful quality of mind probably pretty much right from the beginning of practice.

[71:06]

Ich glaube, dieses erfreuliche, angenehme Gefühl, das bemerken wir also schon ziemlich bald am Anfang unserer Praxis. But most of the time, sitting, we don't notice much. Not much happens. Perhaps we notice in our life it's a little better. Things operate a little more like you oiling the gears of the day if you sit. And sitting may be sometimes a relief and sometimes rather boring, you know, et cetera. But slowly, if you continue, sitting itself becomes a deep pleasure, always, almost such a deep pleasure.

[72:13]

And it's not that it becomes so pleasurable you don't want to do anything but sit. Because the rest of your life becomes quite pleasurable. And you can have access pretty much anytime you want to this hazen mind, so you don't have to go sit just to get pleasured up. But this pleasure or gratitude on bliss really on each act of perception is another sign of big mind. Now I want to say a little more about this distinctness of each perception.

[73:26]

This is, you know, there's a lot of technical sort of study of this in Buddhism. But you can study it yourself. And it's pretty hard to study until you have the experience of distinctness and stillness of mind. We could illustrate it using my example again of holding up something and you concentrate on it. And pretty soon you can, even if I take it away, you can maintain the field of concentration.

[74:30]

And then maintaining the field of concentration, you can bring this back up into it and study it. Then you can dissolve, as a fourth step, dissolve this object into the field of concentration. And this is the no eyes, no ears, no nose, no mouth of the Heart Sutra. Each object is known through the field of concentration and then dissolved into the field of concentration. So some process like that in various degrees, various kinds of emphasis is going on as you practice sasen. Now as you begin to feel the stillness of mind in the midst of the movement of the leaves and of thoughts, you can again begin to study how the mind works and to study the mind itself.

[76:07]

And this study isn't the ordinary kind of study. It's pretty hard to measure, but it's a kind of study. In which you forget yourself and study yourself and so forth. Now the more each object of perception or act of perception can be limited to just what you hear or see. Because it's so vivid and has so much more energy than all the associations that attenuate or diminish a perception. Now this is sometimes what's also called to rest in a desireless realm.

[77:26]

Or signless. Nirvana means to be blown out, but it means to rest, to vacation in the signless. So you hear something and you don't even perceive it, you just receive it, perhaps we can say in English. It's a signal, maybe, but not a sign. A sign which leads you down the road, oh, over there is Hamburg and Lubeck. It's just received, but it's not a sign of anything else.

[78:27]

No, you obviously can't drive a car this way, but you can sit zazen this way. And it's a kind of rest and actually also a kind of power. Because if you just receive each distinct impression, And it doesn't lead to anything else. Each perception then, or reception then, carries a kind of power. Now you hear the wind on the leaf.

[79:30]

But really, you can't know exactly, you can't hear the interdependence of the leaf and the tree and et cetera. But the swaying of these great trees in the wind and the wind and leaf as one sense impression Everything comes through to you with the power of this interdependence. You feel it as a kind of knowing without having to think about it. And this knowing which builds up through distinct impressions that are signals and not signs, is what Guishan and Yangshan mean by great potentiality.

[80:47]

You feel an aliveness in you that's equal to the swaying of these great trees and movement and delicacy of the sounds of the leaves. And you're ready to take action. And that readiness to take action is great function. So this, what Guishanen Yangshan are trying to illustrate here is a bit different way of being. It's like from this distinctness we notice in our koan seminar and our zazen, the more there's a kind of clarity A distinctness to each act of mental and sensory act.

[82:04]

A kind of new person is born in that clarity. That functions in a knowing that isn't conceptual. You can turn it into conceptual knowing, oh, this is interdependence, this is the interacting of the leaf and the wind and the tree and blah, blah, blah, but you also just know it without this conceptual activity. So it's carried to you with a force of recognition that looks through the categories of the world. I mean, we can use the example of a mirror.

[83:12]

When an object is reflected in a mirror, you see the object. And it's indistinguishable from the glass. So you see the object and you see the glass indistinguishable from the image. And you see the glass itself too. But you don't see the paint behind the glass which made the mirror. But you actually do see the paint. Because the image is the paint. If the image wasn't there, if the paint wasn't there, you wouldn't see the image. So the paint is the background of the mind which allows us to see, which allows things to turn into thoughts, sensory perceptions, and so forth.

[84:25]

And although you only know the paint by extension, seeing the image, Just seeing the image, we also know the paint. And that paint in a way, or that knowing is a vehicle for this great potentiality. And the more you have a knowing of the paint behind this image, the image also then becomes naturally more transparent. Sometimes it just passes through the glass and isn't reflected. So you see the solidity of objects without being fooled by the solidity.

[85:32]

The world becomes lighter. You see things, but they don't turn into signs. And in a practical sense, this mind is what is meant by nirvana, to rest in the signless. And as we didn't discuss in the koan yesterday, this bitter feeling, Even though engraved on the bones, inscribed on the skin. And we live in the temple of requiting, of answering blessings. Still the wags of this commentators are kind of wags and they say still the bitterness remains.

[86:53]

And yes, this isn't again some kind of transmitted bodhisattva. This practice arises out of our suffering and our vision of of identity with everyone. So we know this suffering, this bitter feeling that we've gone through and go through with everyone. At the same time through practice we become quite free.

[87:55]

And yet this responding to the blessings we receive through practice and the suffering of each of us and of ourselves in practice Still remains. Still remains. The bitterness still remains. And it's a kind of, you know, this is our human life. The earth calls us to return to earth. And the water calls us to return to water. And the leaves call us to return to wind. And the signless, the emptiness calls us to return to our true nature. This is our life. Thank you very much.

[89:14]

May our intention equally penetrate every being and place.

[89:22]

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