Ulrike suggested to me yesterday that maybe we should do a series of seminars or something on Zen mind, beginner's mind. In the past, when I've spoken about the book, the Zen mind, beginner's mind, I found that people actually didn't like me to do it. Because it seems to me that my feeling was that they felt that I interfered with their experience of the book. Maybe we've all been practicing long enough that we don't have that feeling.

[01:02]

Maybe most of you have never read the book, so you don't have your own experience to be interfered with. I don't know. But anyway, it's an idea, and I will listen to any suggestions or comments about it this week. Also, es ist einfach eine Idee und ich höre gerne irgendwelche Rückmeldungen zu diesem Thema während dieser Woche. Like Koan, it establishes, like when it branches, it establishes a certain level of the discussion. Und ähnlich wie in den Koan-Wochen, wenn wir sowas tun würden, dann würde einfach ein bestimmtes Niveau der Diskussion sich dadurch einstellen. Should we... Should I speak at the level of Dogen and Bodhidharma and Sukhiroshi?

[02:06]

As Sukhiroshi is speaking there at the level of Bodhidharma and he says also we should understand Dogen's teaching as well as find our own Western way to practice. Now can I find a way that is at the level of each of us in our own individual our own our own What word do you use? Life. I don't know. Life way. Yeah. And still at the level of maybe Bodhidharma and Sukhiroshi, etc. Now, Yesterday, during the discussion, some of the discussion groups spoke about, I guess you said, about the rules, what rules we establish.

[03:36]

And I... Yeah, and that concerned me and interested me. The attitude toward rules is the idea about rules. is quite different in yogic cultures, China and Japan, as far as what I know. And I think when Sukershi is speaking about rules, I don't think he quite understands, even though living in the States for quite a while, how different our feeling about rules is.

[04:43]

Now, I mean, he knew it was different. I don't think he knew sometimes quite how. His view was, and he and I discussed it, was you have to find your own way in relationship to rules. So I don't, you know, I feel, sometimes I feel a big tiredness Manchmal fühle ich mich so richtig müde. I can feel something I want to speak about. Ich kann spüren, da gibt es etwas, worüber ich sprechen möchte. And it's so wonderful, I'm rather excited. Und es ist so wunderbar, dass ich wirklich ganz aufgeregt bin.

[05:44]

At the same time, it's impossible, so then I get very tired. Und gleichzeitig ist es unmöglich, und das macht mich so richtig müde. Yeah, and anyway. But I will give it a try. Now, the rules in Johanneshof here are about how to support practice. But more specifically, most of it, it's about how to support practice together, how to practice together. And the rules about how to practice together are not applicable usually to your daily life. No, I think sometimes if you've done a number of sesshins,

[06:45]

If you know a Sashin is happening here, for example, and you can't come, you may feel the presence of the schedule in your daily life. So somehow the rules that we develop in Johanneshof and in Sashin Stay in the background of what we do, sort of like the wake of a fish. Okay. But practically speaking, how do we make rules, rules that support our practice in our daily life? The ideal rule in Buddhism is that the elbow doesn't bend backwards. You want a rule that is that clear. It's so clear, it's like, well, I have a rule, I don't bend my elbow backwards, but that's the way it is.

[08:20]

So you mean those are basic rules like eating, sleeping, and things. Now, it helps to give some order to your eating and sleeping and so forth. In fact, Suzuki Roshi watched me for a year or so. Didn't say much. And then one day he asked me to speak to him. Or I had some reason to speak to him, I don't remember. But he used it as an opportunity to tell me that, yeah, now I see that you've, during this year, got your life in an order so that you can practice.

[09:22]

And he meant I got my life in order, and in addition, I created an order which allowed me to practice. So, I mean, I was married and had a little baby and things, but somehow I created a life which allowed me to make practice a priority. Ich war verheiratet und hatte ein kleines Kind, aber ich habe trotz allem einfach Praxis zu meiner Priorität erklärt. So he said, yeah, so basically said, implied, now I can start teaching you. Und so sagte er mir jetzt mehr oder weniger direkt, jetzt, wo das alles passiert ist, jetzt kann ich anfangen, dich zu lehren. So there was clearly a relationship between my...

[10:23]

creating the possibility of practice and then his willingness to try to teach me. So that's in a wider sense creating rule, a rule or order or something like that. And it was as basic for me as the elbow going, not going backwards. So I'm trying to think about the Asian, yogic, Chinese, Japanese view of rules. And what's practical for you? You and me. Now, there is a cultural difference between Germans and Americans in their relationship to rules. Why are you all smiling?

[11:42]

Are you sure it's true? How do you know that you've been in America a lot? Yeah. Well, Americans generally don't like rules. We don't ever feel they help. Something like that. And they're obviously meant to be broken. So the speed limit in America is really how much you can break it and get away with it. In California, no judge will arrest you for going more than 10 or 15 miles over the speed limit. How many less the speed limit is 20? So the police know this, so they know the judge will throw it out, so they don't arrest you unless you're going 15 or 20 miles over the speed limit.

[12:50]

And the police know that you simply can't get through with a judge, so they let you walk. Of course, there are 50 miles on the side where you drive so fast. Streets are meant to be walked on as well as sidewalks. Red lights, you know, etc. But still... Overall, there's a similarity, a similar view of rules in America and Europe and Germany. Now, the precepts, for example, are not rules to be followed. And... There are rules to be observed. Does that make sense?

[14:04]

You feel the presence of the rules, of the precepts, in your actions. And you notice the degree to which you approach them and the degree to which you don't approach them. And they inform your feeling about what you're doing. But there's not a right or wrong. Yeah. I mean, if your precept is not to kill... which means perhaps to be a vegetarian. Well, so you try to be a vegetarian. But if you eat a duck sometimes in a Chinese restaurant, The attitude is, oh, I ate a duck in a Chinese restaurant.

[15:14]

This is not the precept. There's no feeling that it was wrong. It's just a feeling it wasn't following the precepts. Also es ist kein Gefühl, dass das jetzt so falsch war oder schlecht, sondern dass man sich von den Gelöbnissen wegbewegt hat. Aber ganz klar, man fühlt sich besser, wenn man den Gelöbnissen folgt. Ich erinnere mich mal, ich habe mal zu Suzuki Roshi gesagt, wir waren auf dem Weg nach Tassahara und kurz bevor wir aufgebrochen sind, I said, I don't mind being a vegetarian at all, except sometimes, having grown up next to the ocean in New England, I miss shellfish. And he said, oh. So then we drove south. And he said, I want to stop in Denny's.

[16:31]

Denny's is a fast food place. One of the nicer ones. And we went in and he ordered the largest hamburger they had. Which I'd never seen him eat a hamburger before. I thought, oh my remark, I forced you to eat a hamburger. So anyway, the attitude to rules is different. Okay. Once I was in New York with somebody and he wanted to know what a lobster, you know, they don't, oh, this is too long a story to tell you. But the short and long of it is he got a plate with two lobsters on it.

[17:33]

And he looked at my plate and looked at his plate and he put two lobsters on it. Yeah, okay. Now, we have Bodhidharma... They were good. We have Bodhidharma looking at the... water. Now, in addition to rules, very basic rules, And I think a basic rule you might, you ought to make is to do zazen once a day.

[18:46]

Or to do zazen a certain number of times a week. And as Mahakali said yesterday, you make a rule you can follow. And Sukhiroshi says, once you make a rule, you just follow it without thinking. In the text that we're reading. Okay. So once you make such a rule, and you make a rule that you can follow, Then you just follow it without thinking. But of course, if you miss some time, occasionally, it's okay. But if you miss all the time, you better make new rules.

[19:52]

But the idea of rules is also reminders. You remind yourself to practice. And you find ways to remind yourself to practice. Sometimes the space of a room can ask you to practice. And the more your attention is within the antenna of the spine, The antenna of the spine can hear the space of the room asking you to practice. Yeah, I don't know quite what I mean by that.

[20:55]

But part of what I mean, to have a sort of mosaic here, is, you know, when you're walking, you're not actually walking in your own mind. Because your own mind is creating a representation of the space you're in. And then you step into, walk in that representation which the mind is unfolding, room, floor, door, etc. And you, as I suggested, you step in as if the room might not be there, the floor might not be there. And then the floor says, hello, hey, I am here.

[21:58]

So when you walk in the unrolling mental representation, the phenomenal world confirms that. The representation is accurate. Is that understandable? This is just science. But it's also the way it is. And if you can find a pace, not a thinking pace, but a bodily, spinal pace maybe, You can feel the representation unfolding, because it is you that's unfolding it.

[23:06]

It's a kind of you, a big you. And you can feel the phenomenal world confirming it. This is actually quite satisfying. It's also a way of, it's an expression of no other location. And it's a It's a subtlety of a certain kind of pace which allows mind and body to know itself. And to be nourished and renewed by that. Well, in Buddhism, to find a way to find that pace is a kind of rule. In other words, can you have a life which occasionally that pace, which allows you to know mind and body in this way, can you find that rule or that pace?

[24:34]

Maybe if you work in a big office, you can't walk around like that. They'll say, boys, he's spaced out. Yeah. What's that zombie doing here? He looks half dead. Oh, he's alive. But you can have a reminder, like stairwells. Going up and down stairs, you can find that pace, maybe. Mm-hmm. Or another reminder can be the window.

[25:35]

The window is the space, and if the sky is there, you can feel the mind like sky. So creating reminders like this is also... a kind of practice of rules. And these reminders are not symbols. The window or the sky doesn't symbolize mind. You never want these reminders to turn into symbols. You know about mirror neurons and all that stuff. It's a kind of resonant image. So the sky is an experienceable sense of mind.

[26:47]

Because as I've said, the object arises in the space of, in space. And the object arises in the space of mind. And if the object is anger, then an angry mind appears in which everything has the quality of anger. So what mind, what mind space is generated by the objects that appear? Now I'm talking about rules, but I'm also talking about The territory of practice.

[27:57]

Yeah, and what Suzuki Roshi means by quoting Bodhidharma. In Japan and China and in the yogic culture. Words are thought to be drawn out of silence. Okay. So the feeling there is that silence is already there. And the words are drawn out of silence. Und die Worte werden da herausgezogen. And sort of held there. Und da gehalten.

[28:58]

And when you release them, they go back into silence. Und wenn man sie loslässt, gehen sie von selbst in die Stille zurück. Okay. Now the societal space created in Germany. Nun der gesellschaftliche Raum, der in Deutschland entstanden ist, erschaffen wurde. By using last names. Indem man also Nachnamen benutzt. It looks similar to the societal space created in Japan. I go shopping occasionally with Marie-Louise. And? I'm trying on something, a sweater or something, you know. And I say to the clerk, what's your name? And he says, I don't know, Herr Himmel, I don't know what's his name. Herr Schmidt. And I say, but what is your name? Mikhail. Okay, Mike, I say. Yeah. I don't know, Sandra being that stupid.

[30:07]

But then I say, we'll come back later in the afternoon, Mike, and Marie-Louise says, you can't see that. It's Herr Schmidt. Herr Schmidt doesn't have a first name. You forced it out of him. Okay. Oh, dear. So this creates a certain kind of societal difference, separation, distance. Okay. And I think behind that is the feeling that that distance, that separation already exists. And as you become friendly with somebody, you make a connection. In Japan, it's assumed, like I've given you as a phrase, that you're already connected. In Japan, however, one assumes, and I have already given you a sentence about this, that one is already connected.

[31:25]

But in a similar way, you use last names. And you always add san, which is sort of the equivalent to mister or miss. And you always add san, which is sort of the equivalent to mister or miss. But the sense of it is that we're holding that difference for a while, that separation for a while, to see how our relationship goes. Because you don't have to make the connection. The connection is already there. You just have to relax the connection. Relax the separation and the connection appears. So you don't make the connection. You make the separation. Does that make sense? It's a difference. Okay. So the silence is already there.

[32:43]

And your words make a kind of separation and then are released back into the connectedness, into the silence. And the silence is assumed to be connectedness. I don't know when I first lived in Japan. For some people. Some young man came to where we had fixed up this abandoned house on a beach. And after he'd been there a couple of days, I took the train back with him. And we rode the whole way back to Kyoto, which took two and a half hours or so. And I, maybe he said one or two words.

[33:55]

And I'm sitting there saying, what shall I talk about? Or is my Japanese good enough? And I felt sort of at a loss for words. Then I heard later, what a wonderful trip it was, how connected he felt with me, and so forth. And how Americans, it must be because he practiced Zen, he knew how to establish a connection, and I was sitting there. Yes, so I'm speaking about the rules are different. Okay. I am almost getting at the beginning of the tesha. Sorry, but your legs are at the end and I'm at the beginning.

[35:24]

And she's leaving today because she has a prior teaching commitment of a year, over a year ago, from a year ago. But I think I'll keep you translating a little longer. So Bodhidharma is looking at the water. And what's Bodhidharma seeing? Bodhidharma is seeing not the water as a symbol of mind, But a resonant image with the same quality of mind. So he's also feeling, sorry Bodhidharma, and he's an Indian, not a Chinese guy, supposedly anyway. Anyway, Bodhidharma is not only feeling the water as mind.

[36:30]

He's feeling the wake of the fish which is no longer there. In other words, if you look carefully at the water, you can see the fish that were there because the wake is there. That's a basic ancient Chinese idea from the book of Psalms going way back before Bodhidharma. So there's a kind of, in the water, there's a kind of hidden landscape of what was there and what will be there. And the water is also something we bathe ourselves in.

[37:42]

So there's a feeling of being immersed in the water of mind. And to feel the presence of the fish, even if the fish isn't there. So there's a kind of sense here of the shape that isn't there. And that's in the background, as Suzuki Roshi is saying, when you see the water, you see the fish. The shape that isn't there. Yeah. It's like in the silence you can feel the words that can be drawn out of it. Someone said, some Chinese fellow said, I want to speak with a man who forgets words.

[38:54]

And this comes from another... Basic idea that's in this image of Bodhidharma, if you know much about China. You need a net to catch a fish. But once you've caught the fish, you can forget the net. So words are understood as sort of like a net which you catch some kind of meaning or feeling. But you want to speak to each other forgetting the net. You want to speak to the silence from which words arise. So you want to speak to the silence as well as the words.

[39:58]

Man möchte zur Stille und zu den Worten sprechen. So to try to put this as shortly as possible, Given the time and also given how difficult it is to speak about it. One of the basic senses of how to be alive and practice is to feel this shape which has no shape. Or feel this water before the fish appears.

[41:07]

So you feel the shape which has no shape. And you feel your shape disappearing into it. And your deeper shape appearing or something like that. Or the shape of Buddha appearing. So you practice with the sense of releasing yourself into a shape which could be Buddha. So that's the background of this Bodhidharma looking at the water. Is it actually not only a fish, but a Buddha could appear? Because the mind allows everything to appear.

[42:25]

And allows Buddha to appear. And I always say, pause for the particular. And the use of phrases is one way to insert practice into your daily life. Or to create or to allow reminders to remind you to use a phrase like already connected. I think that's enough. There's a little more in the hidden landscape. But maybe I'll let it be hidden. Do you understand the idea of a hidden landscape?

[43:28]

You don't see the fish, but it's there. The wake is there. When you look at the landscape of your life, the hidden landscape of your life, Buddha is there alive and well. That kind of feeling. So that's one of the rules. Thank you very much.

[43:52]

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