He decided he wasn't going to pay attention during this lecture, so he wanted to make sure of the recording. Yeah, this is the ultimate note-taker. Note-taking was traditionally forbidden in Taishos. But I don't see any of you taking notes. Hi. Okay. So I'm surprised and wondered why you're all still being here. Ich bin überrascht und wundere mich darüber, dass ihr alle noch hier seid. You stayed the course.

[01:00]

You stayed the course. Yeah, you stayed with the course, the plan, the way. Ihr seid an Bord geblieben. You stayed the course. I mean, I more or less expected you to, but still it's surprising and wonderful. Now, last night we had a... I was partly a participant. We had a practice council meeting. Yeah. And I think both the practice council and what I call the outside financial advisory board We have a name for it. I can't think of it. What should I get mixed up with Feldenkrais? And I think these guys are all in there kind of massaging each other.

[02:19]

I don't know what they're doing. Yeah, okay. But I think this is very important that we do this, these two boards, and we'll see what happens as we continue to develop as a Sangha. Because this is about the transmission of the Sangha to the Sangha. And, you know, it's natural if I, you know, the first person here and start practicing and people join me. That for a while I'm sort of the... center of the practice.

[03:20]

When I was all by myself, I wasn't the center, but slowly I sort of became the center. But as the center develops, the center should shift away from me into the Sangha. Or into a number of centers within the Sangha. Into a number of ways in which the Sangha functions and in which the Sangha continues itself. Yes. So one of the ways, of course, the sangha functions is by our practicing together. And studying together. Yeah.

[04:21]

And it's happened that the winter branches has been a big part of this practicing and studying together. And after listening to the discussion last night about how the winter branches could continue, you know, recognizing the reality that we only, you know, in a year we only meet a couple times a year together, really. So I, that right now I think, and I would like to hear from any of you, if you want to send me a note or send a note to the practice council,

[05:25]

I think we probably should continue with koans. I think anything else requires too much prior study. I'm not doing a seminar which requires you to have done 50 hours of study before you come. Fifty hours is a lot in the life of a lay person. Fifty hours is nothing in studying the Dharma. So koans allow us to enter fairly directly into study. And koans carry the central flow, the central core of the Zen lineage.

[06:58]

But still, there should be some, there ought to be, or there can be for some of you, more study. Yeah, so I think some of you might form, I don't know what I call in my mind, autodidactic groups. You have the same word in German, autodidactic. To self-study, to study through yourself, by yourself. And Zen as a lineage is primarily conceived and assumes a great deal of autodidactic study. But maybe we could do it together. For instance, one of we did the Abhidharma for a while. Okay.

[08:01]

We could take some people interested in taking the Yogacara. So we could find, you know, five or six people, maybe, I don't know how many, through the practice council. We'd like to study together in some reflexive way. Reflecting, it's all right. Say the Yogacara. Some else might want to study the Manjamaka. these would be three important ones or Nagarjuna in particular or Dogen in particular so if five or six people or whatever wanted to agree this is what we'd like to study

[09:12]

You could share by email or espresso cups. Or green tea, I mean, excuse me. Books you've discovered that are useful. And the points that you find interesting. If some of you did that, not necessarily all of you, but just some of you, to the two or three meetings we have a year, it would bring a richness into the call and stuff. Because in fact, these teachings, schools I mentioned are inseparable from koans. Okay. So that's my suggestion.

[10:13]

Now, I think this is the last lecture. And we have 25 minutes left. That's not enough time, so let's skip it. No, no. Maybe tomorrow, no, we can't do it. Creeps this petty pace. Okay, so we have this wonderful koan. And focusing on the transmission of the Dharma. In fact, the moment of the transmission of the Dharma.

[11:13]

The experience of the transmission of the Dharma. So, since we know that this koan is about the experience of the transmission of the Dharma, Then we can look at some, you know, like another teacher, like Dogen. And his famous phrase, Shinjin Datsuraku. The sloughing off of body and mind. and other of self and other and realizing the myriad dharmas now that phrase let's call it a phrase it is a phrase is a location.

[12:31]

And it's a location in the sense that he heard Rujing, his teacher, say it. Yeah, and this phrase made a location That Dogen filled. Now Mencius, one of the foremost successor of Confucius. Yeah, maybe some people think he studied with Confucius' grandson. Speaking about the flow between teacher and disciple. He said the flow of a river, a river only flows when it fills all the hollows in its course. In other words, it fills its course first before it flows forward.

[13:57]

And that's what some of us do when we read for information or have a habit of reading for information or content. And so we don't fill all the hollows. We don't fill the location of each word. And if you study Dogen, you see he's always filling all the hollows, contours, possibilities of each word. Yeah, I mean, if he uses the word world, for instance, as I mentioned earlier. He says, we must examine this word world.

[15:01]

As one of you brought up this very point in our discussion. Yeah, examine the word world. What does it mean in our experience? What do we mean by it? What does it mean in the context of the Dharma statement, etc.? Okay. So, Rujing said this. Dogen found mind and body pouring into this statement of the sloughing off of mind and body. And through that pouring mind and body into this location, shape created by Rujing's statement,

[16:07]

He found that mind and body didn't actually fit in this shape. His mind and body didn't fit in this shape. And it didn't slough off when it was his body. Yeah. It's sort of like you put a caterpillar in the shape of a butterfly. So a Schmetterling sort of, what is this funny shape I'm in? It's got wings and things like that. I don't fit in this shape. So the caterpillar starts trying to feel like a Schmetterling. And he fluffs off his cocoon. Now Zen stories are supposed to do something like this.

[17:45]

You don't quite fit the shape of the koan. Now sometimes this experience of Dogen's of sloughing off body and mind is translated as dropping body and mind. That's a much easier understanding. And it's more calm because it's a... Yeah, in Zazen we often drop Lose the feeling of our body boundaries. And have a very spacious feeling. And we may feel, yes, this must be what Dogen means. Maybe this is what Dogen means by dropping body and mind. And then we have the feeling, yes, that must be what Dogen means when he says, let body and spirit fall.

[19:00]

And maybe that's it. Like I say, when you can't find your thumbs, where the hell are my thumbs? They're about a mile apart. You lost your usual sense of a body image. Now, to notice that and to enter into that itself is very important. But Dogen used, I believe, a word which is more accurately translated as shed or slough off like a snake sheds its skin. Aber Dogen hat ein Wort gebraucht, wovon ich glaube, dass das eigentlich genauer übersetzt werden würde, mit abstreifen, so wie zum Beispiel eine Schlange ihre Haut abstreift. Und Dogen betont jetzt, wenn er dieses abstreifen benutzt, is emphasizing this experience not simply as an enlightened experience, but also as an experience of the transmission of the Dharma.

[20:22]

Now in Zen we have the idea of a Pratyekabuddha, the Buddha who is enlightened by accident. A tile falls off the roof and hits a bamboo and, you know, whoa, hey, I'm now a Pratyekabuddha. And we do have enlightenment experiences that don't arise either through Buddhism or through a teacher. But a Pratyeka Buddha doesn't arise through the lineage, nor does he transmit the lineage. And usually it's not a Pratyeka Buddha, it's just a Pratyeka guy. care anyway so but to dignify it we give it uh the name buddha okay oh it's wonderful i mean if you're going to be enlightened or what the heck you better take whatever you can get

[21:55]

I don't know, you know. I'm not as clever as others, but I'm just a pratyekabuddha. But the point is that there is a difference when enlightenment occurs through your relationship with a teacher and a sangha. Now Dogen calls says initial enlightenment is when you complete when your initial decision when your decision to practice. He says that When you completely make the decision, I'm going to practice.

[22:58]

This is going to be my life. As a lay person or as an ordained person. You may not, you just may feel clearly like I did that time when the iron door came down. This is what I'm going to do. But usually, commonly, this initial enlightenment experience actually occurs within the shell of the personality. It actually makes some cracks in the shell of the personality. That just means your way of functioning through a personality is just a shell. But in the sense of the three worlds, which I hope I'll come to before we stop, personality is often a shell created by attachment.

[24:15]

through a self-including world. But some cracks appear. And if you keep practicing, those cracks get wider. And we eventually see through. You know, there's one of the examples of transmission is pecking in and pecking out. Or enlightenment with a teacher. You can hear the teacher can hear the chick pecking out. And so the mother hen pecks back.

[25:37]

This really happens with chickens and hens, isn't it? Out comes a chick. So sometimes the relationship between teacher and disciple is called pecking in and pecking out. So wird die Beziehung zwischen Schüler und Lehrer manchmal von innen klopfen und von außen klopfen genannt. Sometimes the teacher gets impatient and doesn't wait to hear the pecking out. Manchmal wird der Lehrer ungeduldig und wartet nicht darauf, dass das von innen nach außen klopfen kommt. And says, okay, I'll wait another year or two. But never stops listening to the egg. Okay, so now Dogen with this phrase Shinjin Datsuraku is emphasizing the enlightenment experience as simultaneously a transmission of the Dharma.

[26:40]

And that's again what this koan is about. Okay. Now another of Dogen's phrases is the human body is the entire world of ten directions. Now again, a statement like this is not a descriptive statement. For example, I would say, you know, I'm not a I'm a reader of Heidegger, but not a student of Heidegger. But I'd say like in English, Heidegger's phrase, being in the world, is a kind of, at least translated in English, is a kind of descriptive statement.

[27:55]

There's this unit of being in the world, this entity of being in the world. I would say what this koan is talking about is something more like being the world. A prescriptive statement. A Dharma prescription. You get from Apotheker Buddha. I see them all over the place around me. In what sense is it a prescriptive statement?

[29:23]

I would call it... What's the word for prescription when Neil gives us a prescription? It's the same word? Yeah, but it can't be used as an adjective. Oh, it can't. Okay. Sorry. It's great. It's so interesting, this translation. The translation is so interesting. I like it so much that when I get to Crestone, I want somebody to translate. I invited Neil, but I said, we're going to translate everything into Swahili. I invited Neil and suggested to him that we translate everything into Swahili. Okay, now the prescription here is also the host in the dust. The guest from outside creation.

[30:29]

Now this statement, the human body is the entire world in ten directions. Now if we think of that as a location not as a description but a prescription or a location how do we take this medicine? How do we locate ourselves? Now I would say it's a two-fold location The first, the human body is the entire world. Now that's a mental posture. Mental location. In other words, you arrive there through conceptual thinking. Yeah, you keep reminding yourself in various ways that everything is interdependent.

[31:48]

And interpenetrating. You see the world in a grain of sand. The ocean in a drop. You pick up a grain of sand and the whole world is lifted up. You get to feel that. I move this stick and something actually happens in China. You know the butterfly effect. So that's the mental posture. Das ist die geistige Haltung. Now the ten directions part of the statement, now that we know more about what's meant by ten directions, is that the ten directions create a center joined to heaven and earth.

[32:49]

So the ten directions is not a description of the compass, blah, blah, blah, but a practice. We call it, we can call it a practice. Oh. We can call it a zero point or zero moment, zero mind. The center where all directions flow into you and disappear. A non-position. The impasse, the impasse of openness. The non-position of all positions.

[33:53]

So the prescription here is to know that the world of our visual and mental senses of all of our senses, is interdependent and interpenetrated. And you actualize that by sloughing off body and mind. Like dropping, we can say too, dropping body and mind. So again we have here with Dipankara Buddha and Indra and so forth,

[35:09]

The enlightened transmission of the Dharma. And the imperative that we continue it. And the koan being an example of the continuation of it. The koan is a blade of grass. And the talisman that points to the way of the verse of Tendang is a blade of grass. And the prescriptive dynamic again is to get the key of the host within the dust and the guest from outside of creation. Okay, now the three worlds.

[36:33]

The world of usually desire, form and formlessness. Die Welten, so wie sie normalerweise genannt werden, von Begierde, Form und Formlosigkeit. Now, why are these called worlds? Warum werden die Welten genannt? Because, now the Huayen Sutra says, the three worlds, Triloka, Tridatu, are only mind. Normalerweise, oder sie werden Welten genannt, weil das Huayen, welches World Sutra? The Avatamsaka Sutra, which is a Hwayen teaching. The Hwayen teaching of the Avatamsaka Sutra says that the three worlds are only spirit. The three worlds are only mind.

[37:33]

Okay. Well, we all know that. Yes, but from three mental postures, possible mental postures, we generate the worlds we live in. Okay. So let's try to create for ourselves a formula for these three worlds so we can begin to inhabit these three worlds. Okay, now, the second form is not the form of the five skandhas. This is not the form of form is emptiness, emptiness is form. This is the form of either or.

[38:36]

This is the form of mutual exclusion. This is the form of the distinctions. Yeah, so, okay. I don't want to keep you sitting here too long. So I'm trying to simplify these three worlds. Not to make it simpler in in its power as a teaching. But simpler so you can act within these three worlds with clarity. So let's call the first one the world of self-inclusion. It's the world joined through desire, through self, etc.

[39:49]

It's the world merged with self, merged through self. Okay. Yeah. Now, what's the so-called second, the form world? This is the world of, let's call it, self-exclusion. Where everything is separated and distinct. And you don't feel included. You feel thwarted and resisted. So there's this dynamic between the two of trying to possess more of the world and control more because then you kind of reduce the second world of form to the world of self-inclusion.

[41:05]

So the first is the world of self-inclusion. And the second is the world of self-exclusion. The world of form as separateness. And third, the world of formlessness is the world of non-exclusion, where subject and object are merged. It's the world of non-dualism. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I think you'll find that you actually live primarily, most of us, our world defines itself that way in the first two.

[42:12]

There's the dynamic of trying to join the world through self, And then there's the world which is actually a step in practice, a positive step in practice. To see the world as form. But free of self. But free of self is a kind of advanced step because first you feel it as a world that excludes self. And the world of formlessness of non-exclusion of when you come into the world of indeterminacy Of an impasse.

[43:26]

Or where there's no shapes for the caterpillar. And even the shape of the butterfly is not there. And you struggle around trying to find a shape in formlessness. And Dogen actually calls this an implosion. And it's a shattering now, a sloughing off of mind and body. And this is the mind of the transmission of the Dharma. the mind of the fullest possible receptivity from past, present and future in which you transmit yourself the Dharma transmits itself the world transmits itself

[44:27]

And Buddha transmits itself. Him, herself. Yeah. Thank you, Koan. What a gift you've given us. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.

[45:09]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_71.85