One of the lines in the koan is, let the myriad forms speak for themselves. Okay. And as you, those of you who have studied koan 20, will recognize that this is quite thoroughly related to koan 20 as well as koan 1. In a way, these koans are talking about something like the wisdom of non-doing. But the problem with saying something like that is it leads into sort of clichés about Zen and emptiness and non-doing and so forth.

[01:14]

Yeah, and once it's cliched, it's not easy to get under the cliché. And we basically... It's a way of eliminating understanding non-doing might be about. So it seems to me it's time to try to together look at this carefully. What can it mean? What can it mean, let the myriad forms speak for themselves?

[02:21]

I mean, really, what can it mean? What forms? Which forms? When forms? Et cetera. and so on. And to really understand this or be able to act participate and be able to participate in letting forms speak for themselves.

[03:21]

You also have to really be in the assumed context where forms speak for themselves. Now we found yesterday in speaking together, in the discussion, that there are some differences if you practice and if you don't practice. If you're as old as I am, it's hard to remember what it was like when you didn't practice. Wenn ihr so alt seid wie ich, ist es schwer, sich daran zu erinnern, an die Zeit, als ich nicht praktizierte. But I really do remember that I thought I'd better practice or I'm going to be in deep doo-doo, or trouble at least.

[04:23]

Aber woran ich mich doch erinnere, ist, dass ich fand, ich muss unbedingt praktizieren, sonst wäre ich in großen Schwierigkeiten. Okay. Whatever you said, it's probably all right. And so the question that we had yesterday was, how has practice, how has the larger context of ascending the seat, Johannesof, etc., affected our practice? And although this turned into a kind of testimonials of what's nice about Johanneshof, etc., The core of what we were speaking about is really noticing what practice does affect us

[05:36]

and how the context of practice here affects us. And we don't want to spend too much time on it. We do want to know this. And the residents who practice here They're not just here practicing because it's good for their own practice. But knowing it's good for their own practice, they try to make it possible for others to join the practice. And this basic pattern is called the practice of maximal greatness. Which, you know, it has a flavor of being hubris. Hubris, pride goeth before a fall.

[07:17]

What is the word for hubris in German? Hochmut. Hochmut, okay. Okay. As Achilles' downfall was predicted by the way he treated Hector, his rival's corpse. His pride at victory was pride also too much at destroying Hector, humiliating Hector. And so this kind of, in Greek times, this was quite extreme when pride led to a fall. But my experience, it penetrates Western thinking.

[08:30]

We get a little nervous when things are too good. Or we're a little embarrassed to... to try to be successful in a certain way or something like that. We have lots of nuances, psychological nuances around this. But in Buddhism, it's considered to be quite important to take a certain pride in what you do. In Buddhism, however, it is considered important to have a certain pride in what you do.

[09:30]

Yes, and we do too. If your daughter or son graduates from college, you're proud of that maybe. I hope. Why not? We do that too. If a son or daughter finishes their studies, we are proud of it. But the practice of maximal greatness is that when you do something, you say, well, you know, I did that sashim pretty well. But the Buddha would have done it better. You always add, the Buddha would have done it better. So you say, I've spoken about this before. So you say, well, I was pretty nice to that person, but think how nice the Buddha would have been. Or, you know, you may say, well, I really insulted that person.

[10:33]

But it could have been worse. Etc. So I felt Marie yesterday was practicing maximal greatness. Because obviously she's here because practice works for her. So I hope she takes some satisfaction in that. But she noticed that the I don't know how old, but somewhat old, neighborhood lady who was having difficulty doing things. She had her own practice. Old age is a practice. So we've noticed that, oh, she also has her practice. In this way, the practice of maximal greatness is meant to develop you.

[12:06]

You take pride in what you did, a certain satisfaction, and you say, but it could have been better. Do you take a certain pride or satisfaction in what you do? And then you feel, well, it could have been better. Yeah. I did that, but I could have done it with a little more sensitivity. And it's not like you're criticizing. It's not the psychology of putting yourself down. It's a psychological process of encouraging yourself. It's also called rising mind instead of sinking mind. And I think we as a Sangha are at a point where we've accomplished a lot and we can see how we can carry this practice really into a lay adept lineage.

[13:29]

Because it's clear that the majority of practitioners are lay people. And even the ordained monks are sort of lay people too. It's a kind of fact of contemporary life. But the real question is, as I've said a number of times to all of us, some of us, is can a lay adept sangha transmit the teachings? To put it in a personal context.

[14:33]

I decided to become ordained. Partly because I didn't think Sukershi should be the only ordained person in the Sangha at that time. A Westerner should do it too. But my main reason was that no lay lineage has ever survived. Sort of for a generation maybe, but of course most monastic lineages disappear too. So I'm trying to understand is how can Crestone and Anasoff be part of a lay lineage?

[15:41]

And which the lineages together and through individuals can transmit the teaching through generations. If I have a job description, this is it. Yeah. Thanks for being part of my job description. Danke für Teil meiner Berufsbeschreibung. So how do we let this situation speak for itself as well as we do something?

[16:56]

Wie können wir jetzt die Situation für sich selber sprechen lassen und gleichzeitig auch etwas tun? Now, again, putting it in a personal context. Und um es wieder in einen persönlichen Kontext zu stellen. I have, in my life, probably overemphasized letting things happen by themselves. Ich habe vermutlich in meinem Leben zu viel... I didn't really understand the context enough of when you can let things happen and when you don't. So I'll try to, during this seminar, speak with more with more experience about that.

[17:58]

Okay, so again, we just have this simple statement. Let the myriad forms speak for themselves. How do they speak? Who's hearing them? Wie sprechen sie? Wer hört sie? Was für ein Ohr brauchst du, um sie zu hören? Die allerersten Zeilen dieses Koans sind Augen, Ohren, Nase, Zunge. Jedes hat seine eigene Fähigkeit. The eyebrows are above. Die Augenbrauen sind darüber. That's kind of an irrelevant remark. Das ist irgendwie so eine unwichtige Bemerkung.

[19:01]

And then it says warriors, farmers, crafters. I guess that's the politically correct form of craftsman. Krieger, Bauern, Handwerker. Ich glaube, das ist die politisch korrekte Form der Handwerker. What's the fourth? Warriors, farmers, craftsmen, crafters. Merchants. Merchants, oh yeah. The main occupation of our society. Merchandising. Merchants. Each returns to a job. But the unskilled one is always at leisure. How does a real Zen master find ways to teach?

[20:11]

How do we find a way to listen, to teach, to practice together? We're in the middle of a two and a half thousand year tradition. And the tradition we know supports us. But we also have to find out right here among us how how to practice the teaching and how to continue the teaching. We cannot depend on the tradition. If it's going to be done, it's going to be done by us. Okay. Now, what have we got here?

[21:25]

Eyes, ears, nose, tongue. Each has its own ability. You know, in the Koan 20, which some of you will remember, The mouth, it has this little kind of a riff in it. The mouth, the mouth says, the mouth says to the nose, speaking is up to me, eating is up to me, what are you doing above me? Until I read that koan, I never thought about the problem of the nose being above the mouth. And the nose says, among the five mountains, the central one occupies the honored position.

[22:31]

Yeah, but then the nose said, well, what the heck are you doing above us, eyes? Oh, and the eyes say, like the sun and the moon, we illuminate and reflect. But we have no idea why the eyebrows are above us. And the eyebrows, of course, have a response. The eyebrows say, well, we're ashamed to be above you. We have no right to be above you. So why don't you be above and we'll be below? And then you can look out from above us.

[23:48]

But what kind of funny eye holes you'll be then? I should come to lecture with my eyebrows under you. That's better than getting down and going back upstairs. Okay. And then in the colon 20 it says, an ancient said, In the eyes it's called seeing. In the ears it's called hearing. What is it called in the eyebrows? Who ever thought of that question? What is it called in the eyebrows?

[25:00]

And then supposedly after saying this there was a long silence. And then in sorrow we grieve together. In happiness we rejoice together. We know the function of things, the useful function of things. But what about the useless function? Okay. So now you see why the word, why the eyebrows is in the second phrase of the Quran 7.

[26:06]

Eyes, ears, nose, tongue. Each has its own ability. What about the eyebrows? So here, you know, we have one aspect is the teaching of the six objects. The teaching of the six objects is just a phrase pointing out that each sense functions separately. But our brain puts them together as one impression. But we can separate that and actually activate our brain differently.

[27:26]

And getting used to developing a habit of hearing separately from seeing, etc. And it's interesting, you can hear the leaves of a tree. And you can then look at the leaves. And it affects how precisely you hear each leaf. And vice versa, you can go back and forth between hearing first or seeing first, etc. And as I said in the last seminar, this is a very basic yogic practice. To hear first, and see, and et cetera, each sense in its own context.

[28:43]

To experience each sense as its own context. Okay. And of course, different associations come up With hearing, when you emphasize hearing, which are different than if you are emphasizing just seeing, for example. Yeah, we experience things like that all the time. At night you hear the rain or a bird or something. And that calls forth a realm which isn't a seeing realm. So the yogi, the yogic adept, which is us, which can be us, It's just an emphasis, a way of looking at the world which we can develop.

[30:12]

And to know that every object, each object is six objects. An eye object. An ear object. A smelling nose object. A taste object. And a proprioceptive or body feeling object. And a mind object, a conceptual object. So you see something and you see it, you see the flower as a color, but you also see it as a concept. A flower. And a basic skill is to take the concepts away and just see the flower.

[31:17]

Just see the... It can't be named. Usually it's called a flower. That was a good translation. And just this simple practice You begin to have a sensorial-only experience of the world, which is a non-conceptual experience of the world. And as you begin to know the world, let's say, keep it simple, as sensorial only, you're beginning to, in fact, train the mind to be non-conceptual.

[32:32]

And the non-conceptual mind begins to have a kind of useless function. So you enter into one of these practices. You have all the ingredients. All of you have five senses and mind. So there's the ingredients. And the phenomenal world is always appearing to you. And you can begin to enter into the actual experience, not the habitual experience.

[33:32]

You can peel off the habit of conceptualizing. Yeah, like that. Okay. Okay. Now, if we understand that the phenomenal world, any object, is six objects, that you put together or release into six separate things, Or you might release it from one or two to all. I'm just using words.

[34:35]

Anyway, just... Yeah, you play with this. You get familiar with this. You hold the truth of it in your mind and it begins to affect how you see things. See in the larger sense, meaning understand, feel, etc. In the larger sense of see, which means feel and understand and so forth. Okay. And that leads you to recognize that the world is more... not limited to these six categories. And in this Zen parlance, the eyebrows is used to represent all that's not in the category of the six senses.

[35:42]

What is it called in the eyebrows? What is it called when there's nothing that it can be called? How do you let what can't be called anything or understood in any usual sensorial category How can you let what can't be called anything or doesn't fall into any particular sensorial category how do you let that speak to you? That's the basic point that Yaoshan is trying to bring forth. He says, you want a sutra teacher?

[37:05]

Have a teacher who talks to you about sutras, scriptures. But if you want a Zen teacher, you have to let the myriad things speak to you. Now, I'm the teacher here, or one of the teachers here. And so I can try to let the forms speak to us. And the context, the institutional context of Janosov is to try to let us hear the forms speak to us. But you are the ones who have to listen. Well, that sounds nice.

[38:15]

All I have to do is listen, and there, yeah, the forms are starting to speak. But this is something really, it wouldn't be the subject of this seventh koan. If it was something that was easy to do. Or it's not so much that it's, you know, when you've lost something. You always find it in the same place. Where's that? The last place you look. Okay. So once you've found it, it's easy. It was just there in the last place you looked. So this is actually not hard to understand.

[39:16]

You just have to discover the last place to look. And that's why Yao Shan got down and went to his room. Why? I should probably get down and go up to my room. Even though it's such fun to sit here with you. Thank you.

[40:05]

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