It gives me great pleasure to be discussing this koan, The Woman of Taishan, with you. It's one that perplexed me years ago and still perplexes me. The koan I love and the other koan referred to in this, the three and three or three by three of Manjushri and Vujo, I've always been perplexed by too. And I asked Yamada Mumon Roshi, who some of you met his disciple, Shunan Roshi in Japan.

[01:14]

And I asked Yamada Mumon Roshi, and some of you met his disciple, Shunan Roshi in Japan. When Momon Roshi, the first time it was, he visited my temple in Tassajara. I asked him this little bridge, which somehow is a good place to have a moment of... encounter kind of brought the paths together. Going across this little bridge to this cabin we'd fixed up for him and put in tatami and so forth for his visit. And I asked him about this little bridge that leads to the hut that we made for him and laid out with tatamis. And such a bridge is always a good moment to bring two worlds together. Isn't the cabin you said you stayed in when you were first there years later?

[02:19]

I asked him, what is three by three in front and three by three in back? I don't remember exactly, but he said something in Japanese like, oh, three by three in front, three by three in back. I said, thanks. But wouldn't you consider lecturing about it, I said. Oh, it's not necessary, it's clear, isn't it? I said, no, Roshi. I think that he then lectured about it, but not directly in lectures he gave at Tassajara. Now this woman of Taishan, Rike said to me, finally there's a woman in the koan, she has to get checked out by a man.

[03:48]

Yeah, sorry. So you can check me out anytime you want. It's like a library book that you check out. We use the same phrase. Do you use the same phrase in German? But the feeling is not that... I mean, certainly it's a woman, but it's any person, any anonymous person who happens to live along a road. It's like, say, there was somebody across the street here, one of these houses, and people kept getting lost in these roads here.

[04:49]

And people would ask the way to Lubeck. And this woman in her house would say, oh, straight ahead to Lubeck, go straight. But when she said it, some kind of brightness got inside them, or they felt a little funny. And then after they left, or as they were leaving, they heard her mumble something like, Oh, another good citizen. You just go straight where you're told. So somebody talks to Angelica about it and Frank. What is this? And then they mention it to Randy. And Randy says, I'll go check her out. So he knocks on her door. How do you get to Lubeck?

[06:29]

He says in English. The woman's really perplexed. But she gives Randy the same answer. Straight ahead. And then makes the same remark. There he goes, another good citizen. Cool. That's sort of the story. The koan begins with the phrase gathering and release. And as some of you know, this is a technical Buddhist term for the practice of emptiness and the entering of form. Sukhira, she used to call it grasping and granting, but gathering is probably a more neutral word.

[07:30]

Gathering and granting means to bring yourself into emptiness or into detachment or into non-conceptual, sealed mind. And releasing or granting means to... Enter into situations to engage yourself, to integrate emptiness with your actions.

[08:46]

There are many ways that this practice of gathering and granting expresses itself. So the koan anyway starts with this emphasizing this practice. So you can ask, is this gathering, is this practice going to talk about gathering or granting or both or something that's not either? Now, it might help you to know that the Nanshuan or Zhaozhou's enlightenment story He asked Nanchuan a very simple question, what is the way?

[09:57]

And you could ask, anyone can ask, what is the way? So Nanchuan said, ordinary mind is the way. Ordinary mind is the way. So, Zhaozhou said right away, how do I turn towards it? How do I aim for it? And Nanchuan said, if you turn towards it, if you attempt to turn towards it, you miss it.

[10:58]

And so Nanchuan said, if I don't attempt to turn towards it, how do I practice the way? It is not in knowing or not knowing. It is knowing is false consciousness, not knowing is insensibility. Now, you've heard this kind of story before in Zen. But this is a wonderful story to practice with. If you turn towards it, you miss it. So in a way, this woman of Taishan, this story is a kind of version of Zhaozhou's enlightenment story.

[12:28]

We don't really know what happened here. It's not clear. And it says in the koan, the tortoise who augers 92 times, augers means predicts the future. It also has a pun because an auger is a bit that you drill a hole with. I can't believe they're related, but they might be. But anyway, to predict the future with tortoises' shells, they had to kill the tortoise and drilled holes and made markings on the shell and things. I think they also cooked or put the turtle shell in a fire and the patterns it made told things.

[13:33]

So this is stories quoted here in reference to Confucius, which is it's dangerous to know a lot. And there's a limit to your knowledge because they take all your guts out and they drill holes in you and at a certain point you stop being useful. So the question is here, did Did Zhaozhou know anything? Did the woman of Taisho know anything? Did the monk know? What's going on here? It's a little bit like you're reading a book and somebody's torn the middle pages out and you can't figure out what happened in the story.

[14:48]

There's not enough details. And the word doubt is used quite a number of times. So you can see why I'm still perplexed by this story. What happened with Zhaozhou and this woman and the monk? We need to find some sort of appendix or additional commentary that tells us what happened. But I've been looking a long time and have found no additional commentary to help. So what happened? And the story of... It's a very curious and wonderful story about Wuzhou and Manjushri.

[16:00]

And if some of you are interested, one, the story is told briefly in the appendix to the Book of Serenity. And it's also, if you have the Blue Cliff Records, it's Case 35 in the Blue Cliff Records. But he lived on Mount Tai. Tai Mountain, and this is where this, and it seems like this woman must have studied with him. And he was hiking on Mount Tai traveling, passing through one afternoon, late evening and he had no place to stay and Manjushri magically manifested a temple for him to stay in

[17:30]

It was really quite nice of Manjushri. And we don't know if he had a dream or actually Manjushri did this. It's not clear. But we do have dreams like this sometimes that someone like Manjushri speaks to us. Why do we even have dreams sometimes that some of you speak to me? So Manjushri asked him, how's the practice around where you're coming from, from the south? And Wuzhu says, well, in these latter days, people aren't following the precepts anymore.

[18:45]

And how many, but still the congregations have 300 to 500 monks. He looks at Manjushri and says, where you come from, or around here, how's the practice going? He says, I guess he's, I don't remember, he says it's going okay, and the congregations in front, there's three by three, and in back, three and three. So the next morning after spending the night sleeping, he's leaving and Manjushri sends a kind of young boy attendant to take him to the gate.

[19:47]

And would you try this again and says to the boy, what did Manjushri mean by in front three by three and back three by three? How many is that? And the boy said, oh, worthy one. And Vujoo said, yes. And the boy said, how many is that? And then he pointed past the statue of Vajrasattva.

[21:10]

Toward the road. And when Vuju turned around, the boy was gone and the temple was gone. It's like a fairy tale. But in any case, this phrase three by three in front and in back three by three has remained as something valuable, a treasure to practice with. And this woman of Taishan was practicing with it. Oh, excuse me, I forgot. You said, how's the practice going here to Manjushri? He said, ordinary people and sages mixed together.

[22:11]

And sages, no, and snakes and dragons are mixed together. So here in this, this woman is a sage or an ordinary person or snakes and dragons or three in front and three behind. It's quite a magical view of the world. This mountain where ordinary people and sages and snakes and dragons all are practicing living together. So the woman was trying to was expressing her understanding, her feeling of this kind of world.

[23:22]

You know, I don't know if you can understand the actual pleasure it gives me to be meeting with you about this kind of story. I think it's really extraordinary to be able to discuss this together. And it gives me a chance to put on my robes which I always enjoy. Again, I can't explain it exactly, but it reminds me of being with Suzuki Roshi. So, you know, like when I put on robes, I'm submitting my identity to his and to this practice.

[24:48]

I feel the same way actually writing, because I'm submitting my thinking, my thoughts to language. And the language makes things happen that just the writing, writing, writing, makes things happen that wouldn't if I just thought thoughts. So submitting my thoughts to the discipline and story of language makes something beyond me and my own thoughts happen. I don't know if you can have the same feeling, but for me it feels the same to submit ourselves to these stories and to practicing together with them.

[25:58]

It makes me feel something deeper than us individually or together. And again, very grateful for this opportunity to be with you. Thank you very much. May your attention equally penetrate every being and place. Some of you know about the Jiaojiao. I think Roshi told us a little bit about it. As they put it in the commentaries, a towering figure in the history of Zen. He may in fact have been tall, I don't know.

[27:42]

Another amazing guy experienced awakening profoundly, quite young. As a student of Nachuan, Roshi told the story today of his awakening. At that point he could have left and set up shop somewhere as a teacher. But he decided to stay and study for 40 more years And then he decided to travel And in those days travel meant walk.

[28:58]

He's famous for his travels as much as anything, because as he traveled, he spread the teachings. If you can imagine just wandering around China in the 700s or whatever, Tang Dynasty, just wandering around, meeting whoever he met. It was his intention, as he put it, to search out and encounter all the Dharma grandsons of his teacher's teacher. And he did this for about, I don't know, another 20 years.

[30:22]

And you can imagine that he met a lot of people. I mean, this was wild country. It was a deeply civilized country, but it was a wild country. Dragons and snakes intermingling. Ordinary people and sages living together. Then he was about 80 and he found a little village named Zhaozhou and he decided to stay a while.

[31:35]

And he began to teach in a more formal way, and he taught for 40 more years. It's said that he had some 13 enlightened successors. But nevertheless, his lineage died out after several generations because nobody could equal him, let alone surpass him. So when one of his monks one day comes up and says, there's a strange old woman living nearby.

[32:48]

Let me tell you what she does. You can imagine he was eager just to take a walk, just get out of the monastery and go out and check her out. Who knows what actually went on? I mean, at that point he might have been 90 or 100 or 110.

[33:49]

And this woman, she might have known all about him or she might have been completely crazy or I don't know. I mean, if Roshi is perplexed by this koan I'm not going to say much about it So I'll just let it go there. There is actually a woman living in this neighborhood that I met yesterday.

[34:58]

Not far, actually not far from here. If you remember yesterday, the clouds were sort of thinning a little bit and the sun was maybe a full hour of sunlight pouring down. And yet the atmosphere, the air was just, for the most part, water, mist, and just everything went. And the way to this woman's house was kind of through backyards and breaks and fences and past

[36:13]

rotting heaps of vegetation. And the sun coming and going, but definitely warm. So I met this woman, an old woman And I asked her her name and she told me and I told her my name And she said, oh, do you live near me?

[37:36]

She said, oh, no, no, I live far away, far away. She said, oh, no. I hope I remember your name. She said, I hope I remember your name. And so I said goodbye to her, and she came outside with me. And she looked around, she looked around, and she said, Oh, the cat is gone. And I came back home. When Manjushri and Wu Zhou were having their little encounter.

[39:31]

Manjushri brewed up some tea. And he produced a crystal bowl. And he said to Wu Zhou, do they have this in the south? Wu Zhou said, No. And Manjushri said, what do they usually use to drink tea? So I think we'll do the same as yesterday, except it's the woman of Taishan.

[40:59]

And Roshi asks you to also really read the koan first. in the group where we start discussing. I am the king of the world. I am the king of the world. I am the king of the world. May the Lord bless you and your family, and bless you in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[42:30]

Amen. It's raining and we're sleeping in a hundred thousand million covers, heading into the sea and it's too, too remembering except, I want to taste the truth of the tracer's words. No, I don't wear such a bright rock suit, but I said to Rika, what shall I wear? And she said, you old fox, wear your red rock suit. So, I'm a red fox today. Or a road sign saying, men at work.

[43:39]

Well, how did you get along with the old woman of Taishan? Has anybody met her? So, please, give me some good words. Give me a few good words, please. Yes. When I read it two times, I didn't get any handle, because I was fixed on this question, and then... Fixed on what question? Well, whether the woman... the examination of the woman... Yes, yes. ...through whether I can find something to answer the question. But then the sentence, right straight on, came... into my eye, and I remember this.

[44:46]

You said in another lecture, a shortcut to the roundabout. The mind first knows its way. And then I looked with this on the whole, on the colon, and I have a feeling the whole colon is instruction for different levels. And the same discussion was in our group, and there were many things we found which underlies this view. To read this as Zazen instruction, meditation instruction for your state of mind in Madagascar. Yes. Good. I'll try it for one minute. Yeah? Oh, you didn't say that in German, did you?

[45:50]

Yes, well, after I had been in the church for 200 years, I absolutely did not find a way to get in there. Until this one sentence came to my mind, it was straight out. And then I thought of another chapter, where it was said, the shortcut is a way around, or that Martin Filipe himself knows the way. I know more and more of you speak English, well, at least our goodest English that we're learning here. But two things.

[46:57]

One, I feel at least still, anyway, it's the layering process of the koan. It's good to keep hearing it in German and English. If you can. And And also, you know, you're not just speaking to me, we're all hearing this together, so it's good if we can all hear it in the language we all share. My comment to the woman from Taishan is that the monk and the Chao-Chu should not ask you about the direction.

[48:02]

They should not check you. They should be more one-pointed or concentrated on their own path. And they should know their own direction from within, from their own inner intuition. My feeling is that the monk and Zhaozhou shouldn't check out this woman, shouldn't ask her about the way they should follow their own inner path with conviction and the feeling and intuition So as the Buddha said in his last sermon before he died, you must trust yourself and stand on your own light to show yourself the way In a way like Buddha spoke in his last sermon, you have to stand on your own feet and go your own way. And then follow your own light.

[49:03]

For me, in this Quran, there is also an interaction between the female and the male aspect, and the space in which the female and the male enter the spiritual path. Because this Quran is very much intended to include that it is embodied in the form of a woman. And for me the koan also shows an interaction between men and women and the feminine and the masculine and embraces the kind of dialogue between the two and the dialogue on the spiritual path and for me it has a lot of importance that it is a woman in the koan. After he had checked the chart of the women, how many men are manly? These men are not more manly than women are manly, or women are not more manly than men are manly, in order to have an understanding of themselves, because both forms are important to us.

[50:10]

Men and women appear to us, and this is common in the great world religions, and also in Buddhism. Difficult to translate. Ingrid refers to this line, how many men act manly. Like, I mean, men can only act as manly as women are feminine, and both men and women play an important role, and that has been denied in the big world religions and also Buddhism. In the past, the monks always lived and practiced with their male colleagues in the monastery and were never confronted with the female psyche and therefore did not know how to survive. I imagine that women would have had the opportunity to participate in this koans. In the past, the koans would have been completely different today.

[51:12]

And in the old days, the time when the koans were written, men only practiced together in the monasteries, and they didn't know much about the women and women's psyche. And I think if women had had a chance to also practice in those days, the koans would look differently. How would they look? It would be written differently. There'd be more women in them, for sure. I don't know if they'd look different. And the one sentence that touches me very much is, don't judge others by yourself. And we do that a lot, I mean, every day of our life Yeah, and to express ourselves in language is only one aspect of our being expressed, and it doesn't really convey the totality of the wholeness.

[52:44]

I think of the girls when the name of a person is on the newspaper or on the screen, and he or she is pointed wrong or wrong. It's like if your name has been in the media People are judged and it's hard to... Yeah, one thing that It appears to me that one center of the koan is monastic and lay enlightenment, that both Zhaozhou and the woman are enlightened. And she's living a lay life outside the monastery.

[53:46]

He's teaching inside the monastery. And much of it, much in the commentaries refers to living an enlightened lay life, like with the torturers, which... The sorcerers? The torturers. The turtles. The torturers. The torturers, I mean. Living a day life, one shouldn't... bear the Buddha's and Patriarch's words on the forehead and not showing so much. That would be like a turtle having the... predicting its own death on the shale. It's like... A core of the choir, I think, is the monastic and the lay enlightenment.

[54:56]

Zhaozhou is a teacher who lives in a monastery, is enlightened, and the woman is an enlightened woman who lives outside the monastery as a lay. And a lot in the comments also refers to For example, that you should not wear the words of the Buddha and the Patriarch on your forehead, that you should not wear the light in front of you too visibly in lay life. And then there is also this part with the turtle, that it would be like the turtle Okay. You asked if I met the lady from Taiwan, and I think... Taishan.

[56:13]

Taishan. And I think I meet her, I met her in a discussion every time when I was having a question, and we had that giving statement outside, and looking... to somebody in order to get an answer. Is it right or is it wrong? Confirmation, something like that. So in that moment, I think I made or the man, to this woman and wanted an answer for me. And I think what the koan wants to tell me is to go backward and see this woman within me and looking for all the process to get confirmation within me. That means to accept doubt and all that stuff that's coming then and then. That means also to leave that story, to leave the story of the turtle, yeah.

[57:17]

And it might be very painful. So I think every moment when I start to look at somebody in a questioning way, please give me the answer, yeah. also to a teacher, making me that, and don't see the process. I have to go back to myself, because there is the answer. There is not looking through, but there is give me the right or wrong. So I have not to go that way. And I have been meaning the turtles. Yeah. Yes, so what I was saying concerns the experience of the discussion that we had or the experience in the discussion, namely every time when I had a question and a contribution,

[58:18]

and my eyes on the other person. You should leave a conversation partner hanging to get an answer. Is that right or is that wrong? Because I say, I think everyone knows that, that you stay hanging with half a breath and you want confirmation. Is that right or wrong? In that moment I make the other person or the other person to this woman and And my experience has often been that no answer comes, that it is annoying for other people to get into my system, my thinking system, rather than my system, how I think. try to get an answer again, but the way actually goes backwards to myself, I need to find out and thus also to allow all this to happen, the answer that belongs to me to find myself, namely the doubt, the uncertainty, and possibly also the whole box, the koalas, the sparrows, the turtles, so everyone feels at ease with every question, And to stay alone with everyone, the question of dying comes to me.

[59:25]

And that's already in my mind, that dying comes to me. That's a tough thing. And that also applies in the relationship with a teacher, which I also make to this woman. And that I have to come to her, at least, to experience love, to be with her. Okay? We also had this point, this distinction between a wild woman and the world, and being on the way. And there was also the other point, which also came with this body, That's why it's dangerous to carry these signs in front of you, so to speak, that you can't be so sure with the knowledge. If you're just on your way, so to speak, you're always limited to a certain point, and it is then dangerous if one reveals it too much, because then the other beings, as you also said, can take it as a means.

[60:38]

And that happens to you, of course, when you are on your own path, because then you have no processes that guide you, so to speak, and can also show you the right things. is we also had this point about wild monks and patriarchs and also... Wild monks? Wild nuns. Wild nuns. Oh, it's okay, it's the same. But the spirit turtle... That point of the spirit point, in my opinion, was there that, you know, if you are alone, then you never can know how far your knowledge reaches and you never can be sure anyway. But then if you stick in one point and you show it to other ones, then it is very dangerous because if there is a weakness, then such a weakness is very severe.

[61:39]

that it has very severe consequences. And if you have some point that makes your life very dangerous, but if you follow such a way that has been done by many teachers and predecessors, then there is some kind of probability that your personality is maybe somehow fined up. Refined. Refined, so... Fined up, I like that. So you are not... We are not in too many traps. We don't go to too many traps. Yes, Sukhriya, she felt that strongly. The kind of refinement of the personality was important in the way we rubbed up against each other in practicing. And we get to know the mutuality of being beyond friendship and likes and dislikes. Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt.

[63:05]

I'm wondering whether this woman is practicing so long and so wide, as you mentioned before, because... I mentioned? No, the people who spoke before me. Because there is this three-by-three thing, and yesterday we had this five... And we connected with the five skandhas, and I was thinking, what is the teaching about three? So there are only, I would guess, the three treasures. So is she really so alone with her practicing? Hmm? Also, ich stelle es in Zweifel, dass sie wirklich so alleine und so wild ist, wie das meine Vorredner gesagt haben, sondern gestern haben wir über diese fünf Kristallschmelzen gesprochen und wir haben das verbunden mit den fünf Skandhas und ich würde einmal raten, das Einzige, wo ich diese Dreizahl kenne im Buddhismus, sind eben die drei Schätze, Buddha, Dhamma und Sangha, und dann würde ich sie nicht mehr so alleine praktizieren, wie es bis jetzt dargestellt worden ist.

[64:20]

Anyone else who's gotten close enough to this woman and this koan to want to talk about it? I miss something in the koan. It's the fear that the man has to miss the koan and to ask for his motive. What I miss in the koan is the fear of this monk to get lost, which leads to asking the question. The fear of going crazy. And then one sentence was very important for me. Buddhas and patriarchs gain powers through the path. No, the essence. The essence. So to get to the essence, um,

[65:44]

And to gain your essence you have to fight for your pride. And then you have no possibility to ask for good. But you have angst, so you want somebody to use you, reconfirms you. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, you're still in German. Thank you. Somebody else? This poem didn't engage you as much as the cat, or we just hadn't had as much time with it?

[67:01]

No, it's a pleasant poem. It opened up more quickly. I don't want to exaggerate, but it made more sense to me right away. I think it was less emotional. Aha. Well, can I say something? Yeah. I don't agree with you because I think there's one passage which says, most monks ask for the way and they don't realize the mud under their feet. And I didn't think it is very easy to look through.

[68:10]

For me, it's a complete puzzle. Okay. German. There is a sentence that says, most monks have always followed the path, but they were not clear about the path. the mud under their feet, or the depth of the mud under their feet. For me, this is quite a mystery. I find it difficult not to concentrate on the Qur'an, because it is the other Qur'an. In my opinion, it is the sword, I have the feeling that it always cuts off the comments. If something comes to my mind, it cuts something through. We were working in a group. It was a lot of fun.

[69:12]

It was more fun than the other one. It was funny. We actually talked more about ourselves afterwards than about the woman or the choir. That was nice. It was difficult to engage in this new koan because the other koan still walking, cutting inside me. So the sword just kept cutting all the commentaries. So it was difficult to really enter into this new koan, but talking about it in the group was fun, and we ended up talking a lot about ourselves, and I enjoyed that. Okay. Yes, this call reminds me of other situations which I had several times of somewhere in the city meeting some old alcoholic or blonde or some crazy woman who said something to me which struck me and I thought, is she a wise person hidden as a bum?

[70:17]

Or am I a wise person making something wise out of what a bum says? So this problem of determining what's really going wrong is something very familiar to me. that I happened to have met a white man or a black woman in the city who said something that I don't see, that has touched me and meant something to me. They asked me, The wisdom that lies in it, does it come from this person, so to speak, a wise person who is dressed like this, or appears in this form, or does the wisdom lie somewhere in me that I make it out of? For me, the sentence, he will determine the eye of the source of this somehow touched me.

[71:23]

For me, somehow the three natures come in here. You said this morning that all those people are living on the mountain, mixed turtles and snakes and... Dragons. Bears. And so these three natures somehow play in every point. Maybe it's not the point to check out someone's wise or not. And for me, somehow, I wonder if it's possible to determine the eye of the source and what is the eye of the source anyway. Well, somehow the turtle and this phoenix that is caught in the net, the golden net and wants to

[72:54]

It's difficult to fly towards the sky. Yes, somehow this also relates to the three natures being caught in form. German? For me, I have the sentence, So, the three natures come in here for me. Today, Roger told me about this beautiful society that everyone lives on the mountain.

[74:05]

And for me it's like when these three natures play everywhere.

[74:10]

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