Okay, greetings everyone, whoever is here with us. Grüße an euch alle, wer auch immer von euch hier ist mit uns. We keep solving problems every week. There seems to be a new one, but now we're, and I can hear you this week. Last week I couldn't. Suzuki Roshi asked once, when is a tree a tree and when is it a poem? Suzuki Roshi asked the question, when is a tree a tree, and when is a tree a poem? This isn't really a question that you try to answer when it's said.

[01:11]

Yeah, it's more, again, a huado. sondern auch das ist wieder ein Wardo, ein Wendesatz. Ein Satz oder ein Wort, das du in den Strom oder in den Prozess des Lebens hineinstellst. So it kind of rests with you. When is, how can it be that a tree is sometimes just a tree and sometimes a poem? And so as a Wado, it's something that you start to, in the stream of awareness or consciousness, in the mind, it begins to talk to every tree you see.

[02:24]

Yeah. Now let me go back to this process of what we're doing here. live streaming Dharma Talks. And we've had some requests for couldn't I give talks just in English without translation. But I wouldn't have my translating partner. It wouldn't be as much fun. But anyway, maybe I should try it. No, I'd have to do it on a sort of someday schedule that works here at Crestone Mountain Zen Center.

[03:41]

And since, you know, as I'm mentioning again, speaking to a microphone and camera, I'm getting somewhat used to. And it is influencing the content of what I speak about. Because I'm not only speaking to the practitioners here in this room, But I'm speaking to a lot of practitioners I know who are on the other side of this camera. But again, I'm speaking to, you know, assumed new people or people I don't know well at all.

[04:45]

Aber gleichzeitig spreche ich auch zu vorgestellten neuen Leuten oder Leute, die ich noch gar nicht kenne. And that's making me feel like I should try to give a complete picture of Zen Buddhism as I know it. Und das gibt mir das Gefühl, dass ich versuchen sollte, so ein vollständiges Bild des Zen Buddhismus zu entwerfen, so wie ich den Zen Buddhismus kenne. So I'm not only speaking to what maybe we feel we ought to recognize and practice here in the Creston Mountain Zen Center. But I'm also speaking to those of you who have no idea of little idea of the kind of Dharma, the Dharma Sangha lineage is developing.

[05:57]

So on one hand I'm inspired or motivated to try to give a complete picture of Zen practice in the West. And I find I also am reviewing many things that I have evolved ways of speaking about over the past 60 years. But I speak about them newly, but still it's a kind of reviewing of teachings I've evolved and practiced over the years. So it might be an interesting fun, a challenge and a kind of fun, if this process goes on through the week with what am I going to do on Sunday.

[07:26]

Das wäre vielleicht eine interessante Herausforderung und würde auch Spaß machen, wenn dieser Prozess weitergeht, nämlich immer diese Frage mir zu stellen, okay, worüber spreche ich am nächsten Sonntag als nächstes? So I might just give the same talk on Wednesday, but of course it wouldn't be the same talk because I've never been able to really give the same talk. Yeah, or I might give a different talk and partly the same talk. And this is interesting because I don't know what I'm going to do. So I create a situation or the situation is created and I participate in it. And it makes me like throwing the I Ching. The yarrow stocks suggest, hey, speak about that.

[08:44]

I speak about this maybe at the beginning of almost every talk of the process of what we're doing here. And because it is a process. And I want you here in the room and wherever you are in your living rooms to practicing rooms to share the process. And one thing I notice when I watch myself on one of these videos from the previous Sunday,

[09:53]

I can experience very directly, which I don't notice so much as I'm speaking now, I can see very directly, I'm phrasing what I'm saying so that it can be translated. And I find I phrase differently for whoever the translator is. And so I have to know Nicole's capacity for translating, and I speak to that capacity.

[11:13]

And I notice, because also German requires a verb at the end, of sentences usually, that I have to speak in a way that gives Nicole a verb. When I used to be translated sometimes into French, Und manchmal, wenn ich ins Französische übersetzt wurde, usually took me half an hour or so to get a feeling for the phrasing pattern needed in French. Da habe ich zu Beginn normalerweise erstmal eine halbe Stunde gebraucht, um ein Gefühl für das Satzmuster oder den Satzbau im Französischen zu bekommen.

[12:19]

So I notice again watching myself speak and watching Nicole translate. I see, I feel, that I stop at a point for the German translation where actually there's two or three more ways I might say it in English which I know can't be translated easily into German. So if I did a weekly English talk too, it would be interesting to see how I let English lead me instead of needing to be translated, lead me. So if you're really interested in this process of how the Dharma becomes language, you might want to hear the English version and the German version.

[13:31]

Wenn ihr wirklich daran interessiert seid, wie Dharma in Sprache übersetzt werden kann, dann interessiert es euch vielleicht, sowohl die englische Version als auch die deutsche Version zu hören. So of course I'm speaking about this because it's also interesting to me, what the heck will, how can I, I feel these things and I don't know, and when they come into language, it's a process I watch myself bringing it into language. Yeah, so that was quite a lengthy little introduction there. I'm losing my time. Anyway, last Sunday I was speaking about wados and kinhin.

[14:55]

And I realized, I didn't really, I assumed that you understood the difference between a an instruction and an attitude and a mental posture and a huadou. And it became clear to me that you all know and understand the difference between an instruction and a spiritual attitude and a Wado. Yeah, these are very... The other... There are very small differences, I mean kind of small differences.

[15:59]

But this is a small difference between my forefinger and my thumb. But by the time it's at the Zendo wall, it's already quite a few feet. So small differences, repeated or extended, really end up making huge differences. So Suzuki Roshi used to, I remember when I was first practicing with him and I'd sit in the lectures and I'd remember saying to myself once, what the heck is he talking about?

[17:06]

And it just popped into my mind, well, everything he says practically is an attitude. When is a tree a tree? It's an attitude toward a tree. When is a tree a poem? It's an attitude toward the tree and yourself. And in English, attitude also means in an airplane, you're a pilot, so you know that, is the angle at which you're approaching the directionality you're flying. Oh. I don't know what that is in German.

[18:26]

It's the angle. Yeah, I understood what you said. Oh, it doesn't exist in German. No, I'm sure it does, but I'm not a pilot. I'm not either.

[18:37]

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