I'm wearing these robes because I've taken the precepts. But if you take the precepts, it doesn't mean you have to wear these robes. Don't worry. Yeah. We're, you know, I'm grateful that you're here because we're making this a zendo by using the room as a zendo. And this morning, I don't know exactly, we don't know in this narrow room how to bow and do the chanting when there's 30 people or more. So we have to find out.

[01:05]

There's no exact way to do it. Hmm. Now in our culture we say something like, in the beginning there was the word. But in comparison, in yogic culture they would say maybe something more like, in the beginning there was order. Now, maybe it means the same thing, but if you, at least as popularly repeated, the word separates us somehow.

[02:11]

Perhaps it separates us from animals and the world in some way. But if we say in the beginning there was order, we already are order. But when we look at the world, you know, like living at Crestown where we are really in the wilderness, Yes, at least as much wilderness as there's left on our planet. And every Zen temple is called a mountain or a mountain gate. And it means that the temple is, even if it's in the city, it is a kind of wilderness.

[03:26]

And wilderness means, the way I'm speaking, is where everything takes care of itself. Und Wildnis bedeutet, so wie ich das verstehe, wo alles für sich selbst sorgt. The deer and sometimes large herds of elk. Die Rehe und manchmal große Herden von Elchen ziehen vorbei. And a friend of mine owns a ranch down nearby, a friend of Crestone's, and he has a few thousand herd of buffalo, bison. And on this buffalo ranch, he created a small restaurant. Anyway, so usually at the end of practice period, we go there for dinner together. So Otmar has been living at Crestone, and many of you know Otmar.

[04:37]

And Otmar grew up on a dairy farm in northern Germany. So Atmar said, could we, if we go to this restaurant, could we see some buffalo? So I called up, he's a Japanese man whose father happens to be on the board of a Heiji monastery in Japan. But he owns this huge ranch just south of us by the sand dunes. Mm-hmm. So I called him up and I said, some of the people here, especially the Germans, would like to see buffalo, bison.

[05:58]

So he said, geez, I don't know, the herd, the main herd is way out somewhere and it's very muddy and you can't even get there in a four-wheel drive vehicle. And they're calving, and they like to find a protected, beautiful place to calve. Calving babies, yeah. So he said, I don't know. I mean, there's only 400 here at the ranch house. Is that enough? I said, Otmar, is 400 buffalo enough? Oh, yes, it's quite... So we went to see these buffalo, and before we went to eat. And what's quite interesting about... Buffalo in contrast to cattle.

[07:13]

Is you can only make a buffalo do what it wants to do. And if you try something else, they are much bigger than any fence, horse. They can go leap over high fences. They can kill a horse in a moment. You have to only get them to do what they want to do. So they're not really wild, they just do, you know, they take care of themselves. So the precepts are something like being a bison, maybe. How do we take care of ourselves? This is not such an easy question. And more than most animals, we lose our way a lot.

[08:19]

And don't know quite what to do. Oka Soten, who was a Zen master, Roshi, who had quite an influence on several lineages in Japan near the end of the last century. And he influenced our lineage. Anyway, when he was quite a young boy, his teacher asked him to go to the store to get some shop, to get some tofu. So he went, but on the way he saw posters for a circus and some acrobats and things like that. And he got very interested in the posters and looking at all the pictures.

[09:39]

And then he heard the temple bell ring. And that meant supper was about to be served. And he was supposed to be back already with the tofu. So he ran to the store and said, give me some tofu, give me some tofu. So he got the tofu and was halfway back to the temple and realized he'd forgotten his hat at the store. So he ran back to the store and said, give me, give me. And the storekeeper, he didn't say what he wanted. He was so nervous. And he said, give me, give me. What do you want me to give you? He said, give me, give me.

[10:39]

So this boy monk said, my hat. Und dieser junge Mönch sagte, meinen Hut. And the shopkeeper said, it's on your head. Und der Besitzer sagte, es ist auf deinem Kopf. So Sukhiro, she told this story. And he said, the precepts are something like Oka Soten's hat. Und Suzuki Roshi erzählte diese Geschichte und er sagte, die precepts sind etwas wie Oka Soten's hut. They're always with us, but sometimes we don't know it's there. Sie sind immer bei uns, aber manchmal bemerken wir nicht, dass sie da sind. So to study the precepts means to study our nature. How we already exist. So what order do we find in the beginning of us? No, I can mention, there's some Zen stories that try to say something about this, but they're not much help, but I'll tell you anyway.

[12:02]

Yeah. Ching Yuan, who was the disciple of the Sixth Patriarch, Jingyuan, whose disciple, Jingyuan's disciple, wrote the Sandokai, which we chant quite often. So a monk asked him, what is the ultimate truth of Buddhism? And a monk asked him, what is the ultimate truth in Buddhism? And Jingyuan gave the famous answer, what is the price of rice in Lu Ling? Well, we don't know. Nobody knows what the price of rice is. It goes up and down. And no one knows what the price of rice is, because it goes up and down sometimes? But still, in this story, we have asking the question, what is the ultimate truth?

[13:14]

And what is the price of rice? You have both there. Yeah. And another typical, similar story is Fa Yan pointed to the blind. Maybe it's the sun's coming in, so I go like this, and two of you get up and you lower the blind. So zum Beispiel, wenn die Sonne jetzt aufgeht, dann zeige ich auf jemanden und die lassen dann die Vorhänge herunter. And so you both go to put down the blind and I say, one gain, one loss. Und beide gehen hin und hängen die Vorhänge auf und ich sage, ein Gewinn, ein Verlust. So, we don't know what he meant.

[14:16]

Wir wissen nicht, was er gemeint hat. Did he mean there was some gain or loss in the way he asked the question or pointed to the blind? Or did one monk fail and the other one succeed in lowering the blind? Or should one of them done it and not both of them? We don't know. He just said one gain, one loss. But everything is like this. We don't quite know what kind of decision to make. You have to decide for yourself. But you also know when you don't feel so good. So maybe you can find some way to tell when you don't feel so good.

[15:23]

Because again, we're talking here about what comes before Buddha. The precepts come before Buddha. It's because of the precepts there's a Buddha. So Buddha had the same problem. What? How do we exist? Now, we can assume Buddha solved the problem pretty well. But so if we can solve the problem, we can understand something about Buddhism and about ourself. Stephen Batchelor is quite an interesting person and writes quite good books, I think. He has a new book out called Buddhism Without Beliefs.

[16:25]

And he tells the story of some person who's circumambulating the temple stupa. And the Geshe, the head of the monastery, where the stupa is, comes up to him. He says, I'm happy to see you with such faith, circumambulating the stupa, but don't you think it would be better to realize the Dharma? Yes. So this guy thinks about it and... So he every day comes and he borrows a book from the monastery library and sits in the courtyard studying. And of course the Geshe comes by after a while and says, I'm very happy to see you studying the Dharma, but don't you think, wouldn't it be better to realize the Dharma?

[17:52]

So this guy, he doesn't know quite what to do, but so he decides to start practicing zazen and realize one-pointedness. So you know, you can be sure what happens. Geshe sees him sitting in the meditation hall and comes by and says, I'm very happy to see you meditating, but don't you think it would be better to realize the Dharma? So this fellow says, What do I do then? I don't know what to do. I thought I was trying what you were suggesting. And the Geshe says, when there is no difference between your mind and the Dharma, this is realizing the Dharma.

[19:28]

And the precepts are about coming to the point where there is no difference between your mind and the Dharma. And what does this feel like? I don't know. What to say exactly? Luckily we have the body. The body tells us a lot. And it's much faster, even smarter than the mind. As you know, one of the truisms of yogic culture is that all mental phenomena has a physical component.

[20:34]

And all physical phenomena, sentient physical phenomena, has a mental component. So I think that I would say that when we, you know, when you're maybe taking a long walk or something and you... Your mouth is quite dry, I say. And you drink a glass of water. And your mouth feels completely refreshed and clean throughout. I think when we, my experience is when we follow the precepts, your whole body, each part of your body feels like it just drank a glass of water.

[21:37]

We call that a feeling of pliancy. Your whole body feels soft. Your whole body feels gentle. Or maybe it's like on a little bit warm day, how we feel when the breeze hits us, a cool breeze. So following the precepts, we know we're following the precepts especially when we feel like a breeze is reaching into us. Well, when, you know, I, when on a nice, on a sunny day, I came, what, two or three days ago, and it was so sunny. I thought it was sunny always in the Black Forest. Mm-hmm. So I'm quite surprised today.

[22:53]

Anyway, when the light is quite even and each thing, the bamboo or the fig tree or the pine tree, Each thing is in its own place and the light itself feels everywhere, equal. And we feel our mind like this. So some kind of feeling like this For you it might be a little different, but some kind of feeling like this is knowing our own nature.

[24:00]

We have not much question about what is the truth. We have not much question about what is the truth. Over a bathtub in China, Tang Dynasty, Chinese bathtub, was a little statement. It says, as the sun makes it new, day by day, make it new. and make it new again.

[25:12]

So this is a kind of statement so characteristic of this Asian yogic Buddhist culture assumes some parallel relationship between the macrocosm, the big world, and are you yourself. And as the world appears every day with the sun coming up, so as last night when we open our eyes, the world appears to us. So in this sense, the precepts are about basically non-attachment. But not so much about some fixed point about how to behave. but more like the banks of a river which let the water flow through them.

[26:34]

So the precepts again are something like how to let things flow through us. So if you want to steal something, you know, or take, as we say, what is not given, this is an extreme form of attachment. So this kind of precept, all the precepts really express, don't be so attached. And don't harm things. If you harm things, you make some kind of karma for yourself, which also, then nothing is very free, easy for you. And if you hurt things, then you create karma so that things are no longer free for you.

[27:40]

So what I would like to do is find some phrase or word that we could pay attention to. Yeah. One would be a non-attachment. No, this is not something that you can... we can make very specific. But you keep in mind, hold in mind a feeling of non-attachment. Now, it's not about saying with secondary consciousness, well, I can't always be non-attached and this is doomed to failure and I know I'll fall back into attachment.

[30:02]

With this kind of thinking, you're doomed. We need to be more innocent than that. If at this moment you can say, oh yes, I will practice non-attachment. In this case, don't be so realistic. And tell yourself, oh, I can't do it in the future and tomorrow I'll forget. Forget about that. There's many kinds of time. And one kind of time is that moment which can turn our whole life. One moment. So we can't grasp that one moment and say, okay, this is the one moment in which my whole life is going to turn.

[31:12]

But if at this moment you can say, like a baby, I will practice some innocent mind. I will practice non-attachment. This is a great thing. Maybe this kind of moment, this fresh moment, making it new, will come back. Maybe... But maybe it won't. That's the nature of things. We don't know. This is why practicing the precepts in a true sense is quite difficult. And yet also quite simple and innocent. At this moment in the purity of your heart you say, yes, it would be good to practice non-attachment. Every moment I can do it, I will.

[32:24]

That's enough. Every moment I can do it, I will. So this would be maybe our first vow. It would be wonderful to practice non-attachment. Every moment I can do it, I will. The food is quite good. And likewise, we could say every moment I can practice non-harming, I will. No, we're not so concerned right now with that it's unavoidable that we harm things. And when we know that and this sadness and the melancholy comes upon us, we accept that. But still, in the midst of that acceptance, we take this vow that whenever it's possible, whenever on any moment I can practice non-harming, I will.

[33:44]

Mm-hmm. And the third, I think, big background precept like this would be to practice interdependence or interdependence. Really it's better translated inter-independence than just interdependence. Can you make that distinction in German? I think so. Okay. I can't. You know, and it's in small ways, like when the dawn is doing the bells.

[34:58]

You are not looking for a fixed point. And we had ten minutes of a non-fixed point this morning, I believe. Because our Dohan let us sit 40 minutes instead of 30. Well, this is quite good. It should happen sometimes. We don't know what the price of rice is in this seminar. Yeah. So a doan who's always looking at the clock is not a good doan. We want to discover the time in relationship to our own feeling.

[36:01]

And maybe out of consideration for everyone else, occasionally you peek at the clock. If you're the Doan. But if you're sitting by yourself, it's better to sit from your own feeling, not by a clock. And when the Doan rings the bell, at the end of Seikin hin, the Doan waits until the Adoshi or Ino or Tanto bows. So the effort of this practicing inter-independence is to try to do things always in some relationship, to discover some feeling of relationship that allows you to do something.

[37:11]

And the life we have here is designed. We have not just a bell, but we have the Han, which goes for 15 minutes, seven hits, and then five hits, and then three hits. And the last three hits are not exactly three minutes, because they're just related to whenever the doshi or the inyo happens to get to the zendo. So in it's very convenient for me so if I'm the doshi so there's some you know it's not it's typical of zen life it's quite ordered but there's quite a lot of flexibility in the ordering and the rules can always be broken

[38:28]

Or stretched. So you're supposed, the people coming to the sender, they don't have to be in exactly, they can be in during the second round. Of course, practically speaking, it wouldn't work if the second round stretched as long as anybody didn't come. So, practically speaking, we give everyone five minutes to get in to the sender. And we only give the leader three minutes. But he can be late. So we let one person break the rule, but we give more flexibility to everybody. There's some thinking like this about how you create an order that has some flexibility in it and lack of rigidity.

[39:36]

And this kind of thinking tries to create flexibility in order and not to be rigid. So I think that's enough for this morning. And I thought during this practice week we should have one more traditional type lecture in the Zendo. As we just did. And this afternoon we'll have some discussion and then a seminar, which I'll join also in the afternoon.

[41:00]

Yeah. And if it's a different room and I don't wear robes and things, then actually it's something else comes up, some other kind of talk appears. But how do we discover, how do we live in the truth? How do we realize, how do we come to the point where our mind and the Dharma is the same? This is the actualization of the precepts. Which is our nature before we are even a Buddha. We already have this hat on. Thank you very much.

[42:00]

Our intentions are the same as that of the Jews and the Orthodox.

[42:30]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_72.14