In fact, I do this quite often, sitting down with you and trying to say something. There's always a certain excitement dread and pleasure in sitting down with you. Yeah, in a way I get used to it, but actually more fundamentally I don't get used to it. What will I discover in sitting with you and practicing with you. And to be open to that discovery, I guess that's the title of our seminar.

[01:10]

To be open, open mind, wide mind, And I asked earlier in the day, in the prologue day, this morning and this afternoon, what could we mean by open and wide? Aren't they nearly the same? And always, what do we mean by mind? Yeah, we all know the adage to know thyself. But really, none of us can define mind or self or being. So what are we knowing?

[02:21]

What is the process of knowing? We have to start somewhere. So let's start with this title. Wide mind and open mind. Where does it lead us? Yeah, sort of follow it. What is open or closed in our life? Is there an open field? or open door in our life? Or as I said earlier today, does it feel so... Is the situation so... So fixed.

[03:32]

Yeah, we want to do something sincerely in our lives. But are we stuck in our habits or stuck in our situation? Yeah, and sometimes we feel so stuck we can world's pressed in on us, we can hardly raise our arms. And is there some open openness or wideness in our life? Could there be? Is it just around the corner? Or if we turned a certain way, could we See it like a door in the air. Could there... I mean, the question I'm asking is, could there be an open...

[04:34]

field, open door, gate in our life? Or is there already, but we don't notice it? Now, these are the kind of questions one uses to explore And a continuous process of questioning is at the center of practice. We are not stressing ourselves over the questions. Letting them just be present in us. Not to disturb us. Or somehow be a kind of criticism or inadequacy. But just to make us more open and more open to the possibilities in our life.

[05:58]

Because there's always possibilities in our lives. And we can see a lot of them. But there's also the ones we can't see. That we have to grow into or grow toward. Now earlier in the day, today I tried to bring up a number of things that might be useful in this seminar. And although some of you weren't here earlier. Yeah, perhaps still they'll be woven into whatever fabric we weave. And one of the things I started to bring up and I never got to it, I talked about the word interest and how it means in the midst of is-ness.

[07:32]

We can say it's actually a kind of condensation of Thich Nhat Hanh's favorite phrase, interbeing. But what I brought up is, what does interest... Where and when do we feel some completion? So much of the time everything is halfway. There are relationships with others. How can we feel our own power? And when you see a beautiful person, it's usually not somebody who's trying to be beautiful.

[08:39]

More is beautiful in some ordinary way. But it's really a beautiful person. I find a person who really feels settled in their own power. There's some subjective object right there. And I want to come back to this sense of a subjective object. But you'll have to come back tomorrow for that. So the words I wanted to bring up when I started earlier today on interest, was the two words in Japanese for interest and for thinking and feeling. The word for interest in Japanese is kiga-aru. Which literally means to have ki or to have chi.

[09:57]

I find that extremely interesting. Yes. Most people in English say inner resting. They say resting instead of esting. Even news commentators say, oh, that's inner resting. Inner resting. I like inner resting, if I can rest innerly. I think it's the most unconsciously and commonly unconsciously mispronounced word in English. So let's have some inner resting and some inter-esting too.

[10:58]

No reference to Werner Erhardt. Interesting. Yeah, okay. But some, you know, I do have some Werner Erhard fans who come to some of my seminars. Okay. I got carried away there, excuse me. Wasting time. Okay. Okay. But ki, you know, we don't have a way to translate ki or chi. Sometimes it's translated as energy. I think that has to be part of the translation, but it's really not very good. Yeah, it's maybe presence. Or... connectedness or something.

[12:22]

But what's interesting about the word kiga-aru and the idea of ki, is that ki or chi is not something you're born with. Well, you're born with. Yes, you are born with. But not really. Really, it's something generated in each situation. Discovering your posture, your posture which you can feel with energy, or chi. As I said, the four noble postures would be that posture in walking, standing, sitting, or lying, which can be each cell fully alive. So to be interested is to have chi.

[13:36]

To be physically engaged in a situation. So you feel the kind of larger somatic body of a situation. And kigasuru means to do ki. But that means to think and to feel. So to think is to bring presence, energy, engagement to things. Engagement. That didn't sound German to me.

[14:37]

That's what we say. Oh, you do? Okay. It's a phage of energy. Thank you. And ki, again, as I've said before, is something you can measure with needles, you know, and make happen. So this is a very physical idea of thinking and feeling. So now I'm also asking, you know, each of you are here. You got here somehow. You got in the door. You came here for some reason. And I think you came here. I feel you came here to look at the

[15:38]

deepest or most serious aspects of our life. What a treasure that each of us brings if we bring this to this situation. Yeah. Johannes Schatz's house. No, I can't help it. Johannes Schatz. Anyway, that we can have this place to do this, it's fantastic. deeply satisfying, an opportunity. So, but you can ask, you can say to yourself, well, I came here for this or that reason.

[16:52]

Yeah, I'm not sure that a who did come here. But also a what came here. And Buddhism clearly says the base is what you are, not who you are. The Heart Sutra is a recipe for what you are. For discovering what you are. Yeah, the sense is that eyes, ears, nose, etc. First we have to know eyes, ears, nose, etc. before we can know no eyes, ears and nose. The Heart Sutra presupposes an earlier step of knowing what we are in each sense.

[17:59]

What we are, as I call it, maybe initial reference mind. What do we... How do we check up as we come in the door and sit down? Sit on the... cushion or our stool. We're involved in, you know, sitting down, finding, feeling the sensations of sitting. And hopefully finding not a position but a posture where you can feel Aliveness, chi in your posture. This is all what you are, what we are, not who we are.

[19:07]

There is, of course, also who we are. But first, let's look at what we are. baseline of what we are. as this reference point. Now there's a koan I brought up last February and February of this year when I was here. Number 12 of the Shoyoroku. And as Dijang asks Shushan, Where have you come from?

[20:07]

Xu Shan says, from the south. Yeah, how are things in the south, Di Zhang said. Xu Shan said, there's extensive discussion. And this was a time, yeah, maybe somewhat like our time. And when people are exploring, what is wide mind? What is open mind? As I've said, there's no heresy in Buddhism. You can't be a heretic. And in Buddhist sanghas and communities, Sincere views are always respected. They're supposed to be. They should be. That's the idea. Because sincere views are how we explore. The kind of exploration we're engaged in.

[21:10]

What? What is our existence? What are we? Who are we? How do we know what we're doing? What do we do with the next decades? We might only have one year left. We might only have one decade left. We might have five or six decades left. Yeah, it makes a difference. At any age, we might have a long time or a short time. And what is a long time or a short time? This kind of question was the extensive discussion in the South.

[22:15]

How do we practice? How do we practice in our daily life, etc.? So, anyway, Di Zhang said, what's going on in the South? Zhu Shan said, there's extensive discussion. And Dijan said, well, how does that compare to my planting the fields and cooking rice? And Shushan said, well, what can we do about the world? And we all have this question, I think. What can we do about the world?

[23:17]

Part of me is deeply discouraged myself. I've been... living a pretty long time. And I was alive in the 50s, which weren't as bad as people say. I was also alive in the 40s and 30s, but I hardly knew what the 40s and 30s were. In the 50s, I sort of knew the world. It was pretty boring. But it was okay, actually. But the 60s, they were full of hope. We're going to change the world.

[24:19]

It's possible to change the world. And, you know, a group of us even in the 70s and 80s started going to Russia because we thought, hey, we changed California, let's change Russia. And it felt like we did. We met the people later, you know, it was the Gorbachev group and so forth. And so many things happened. I watched the environmental movement start and then become... Part of the world dialogue. Yeah, but so much of the dialogue is deceptive. Deceptive. Fault. And if anything, things are getting worse. We know the problem and we And before we didn't know the problem, but now we know many of the problems and we just ignore them.

[25:33]

Forget about them. In life. Yes. So we're that stupid. So much for the human race. It's our own stupidity. Or our naivete. Or the youth of our civilization. But what can we do about the world? So even if we're discouraged, we ought to ask this question. And see if we can find, in any instance, with any person, how can we, in our family and with our friends, how can we bring in light into our own world.

[26:38]

As I said, the word phenomena means to bring into the light of the senses. How do we bring one thing at a time, a simple object, into the light of our senses in life? Light of practice. And the light of how we'd like the world to be. So all of that's in the monk's question. It comes out of the D.G.R. saying, Yeah, how does that compare to my planting fields and cooking rice? This means this baseline of this initial reference mind.

[27:41]

The what we are. The what we are is, yeah, we cook rice, we clean the building, etc. And you know Gary Snyder went to see his Zen teacher, just the poet Gary Snyder went to see his Zen teacher just before he died. And he said to Gary, Life is practice and life is two things. Zazen and sweeping the temple. And no one knows how big the temple is. This is also this initial reference mind. How we locate ourselves. We do zazen and sweep the temple.

[29:00]

So anyway, he says, what can we do about the world? Even if we do zazen and sweep the temple. And Dijon said, what do you call the world? How do we call forth the world? If we're going to do something about the world, What is the world? And the koan starts with an introduction. Scholars plow with the pen. Isn't that a good description of scholars? To plow with the pen. And orators plow with the tongue.

[30:08]

Luckily, I'm not an orator. Translate that. But we patched robe mendicants. Yeah, mendicant, beggar, monks, travelers, wanderers. And this is the patched robe it's made of. It could say we adepts as well instead of patched robe mendicants. We, what do we do? We lazily watch a white ox on an open ground, an open field. I know people who would say, yeah, that's what I'm afraid of, you guys. You just sit around. I know.

[31:21]

It's all you do in Johanneshof. You sit around and lazily watch Holbrenner's house. And not even paying attention to the... auspicious, rootless grass. What the heck is he talking about? Auspicious, rootless grass? That's even worse than watching the White Ox. And then the commentary says, how to pass the days? Frank Sinatra said he'd forgive anyone anything that got them through the night. How to pass the days.

[32:42]

Well, what is rootless, first of all? You know, I'm bringing up this koan. Just to kind of put some seeds in the... cooking pot. An incubator. Rootless. Well, rootless means without cause, not uncaused. Without cause means not interdependent. Not interdependent. Yeah, that's right. I love my translator. I love my t-shirt. I wish I could have translators in America. into Swahili or something.

[34:04]

I mean, you saw the sculpture I got out of there, me and my translator. We should have put it right here. Yeah. So not interdependent means then emptiness. So everything is interdependent, everything is caused, that's the basic teaching of Buddhism. But actually just now you can have without cause. They just appear in the senses. And you know them in this momentary, blinding almost appearance.

[35:08]

Completely independent of everything. A center. A center among many centers. Each of these statements in this koan Represents a state of mind, a mode of mind. So what mode of mind does rootless, auspicious grass describe? Well, it includes this absolute independence, uncaused. And grass is a word for the 10,000 things.

[36:12]

Grass, 7th grade. Thousands of blades of grass everywhere. So as typically this way of thinking is in pictures and images and metaphors, Because metaphorical thinking, image thinking, can be carried by intentional mind, doesn't have to generate discursive mind. And metaphors and images have so much more information in them than language, than sentences.

[37:14]

And as dreams... as images float in dreams and dreams float in images. But it all collapses when it touches consciousness. You wake up and the dreams disappear from sight or collapse. But to the extent that you can keep an image... or intentional mind present, you can keep a dream alive.

[38:21]

You can hold a dream alive. And let it be present in your day. Talk to your day. Talk to the phenomena that appears in the light of the senses. So that's the 10,000 things. That which appears. The rootless, auspicious grass. And what does auspicious mean? Auspicious means auspicious. favorable circumstances.

[39:27]

So it means always favorable circumstances. It means always... When something is auspicious, it's favorable. Okay, I think that's right, günstig. Agreed. Maybe I should start pretending I know what's going on. So if we see that why does this lazy mendicant What is the mind, the lazy mind, the mind that watches, lazily watches a white ox on open ground? And what is the mind that doesn't? pay attention to the rootless, auspicious grass.

[40:49]

Yeah, once we see the word auspicious, then we know plow means ripening time. The rootless auspicious grass is every day is a good day. Each moment is an auspicious moment. But farmers only plow at certain times of the year. They have to wait for the right time to plow. I mean, just like around here, they have to wait for the right group of nice days to plow.

[41:53]

Hay. And they get about two crops a year of hay, isn't that right? Don't they hay about twice? Two, yeah. Some places you get three, right? In Germany. So the plowing refers to ripening time. It's not always auspicious. You have to wait for the right time to do things. When is the right time in your life? And what kind of time are you living in is part of this assumption? Oh, and I want to talk about the future. Well, it's already the past. It's nine o'clock almost. I didn't say that.

[43:16]

Yes, you did. Almost not. Tomorrow we'll talk about the future. What? Why not? What is that in the Irish bar, the sign which says, tomorrow drinks are free? That's what I heard in bars in Ireland. They have a sign saying, drinks are free tomorrow. Doesn't cost them a cent. But tomorrow we'll have to look at another way to look at the future. I want to do that. Yeah. We're going to know what we are, who we are. And we're going to imagine the possibility of an open, wide mind.

[44:23]

And some kind of opening in our life, perhaps. Where can that opening be? Thanks for translating. You're welcome.

[44:43]

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