There's some fruit or plant that has become popular recently that more or less reverses your taste buds. Have any of you read about this? Oh, my goodness. Anyway, they have parties in New York and things and some African plant or something, I don't know, it costs a lot of money. But anyway, when you take it, radishes taste like honey, things like that. And people buy the plant and organize a party. and they invite people and you have to pay quite a lot of money to come to the party.

[01:11]

And then you have this experience of your taste buds being reversed. This article I read about it. I've read about it several times now. This article I read about it. Yeah, that people sometimes go almost a little crazy. This guy who was in his apartment said, people start raiding his refrigerator and throwing pepper in their mouth and all kinds of things in their mouth to get the excitement. Like if I had some of that and I could give it to you now, you'd all be happy if Turkey wins tonight. Anyway, I think probably why people get so excited by it because it actually is something isomorphically like an enlightenment experience.

[02:35]

Isomorphism means it has the same form but different causes. Okay. Because enlightenment is a shift. And that shift Where is it? It's right here in front of us all the time. But we can't see the shift and there are many kinds of shifts we can call enlightenment experiences. And we can't see the shift because the shifts are simply hidden from us. And when you experience such a shift it's an accumulation of factors.

[03:55]

And I think for most of us our practice is the path of our practice is numbers of such shifts. So the shift itself can't be described. Because it's the result of an accumulation of factors. And that's one reason you want a teacher and a sangha which has some experience of and taste of enlightenment.

[05:05]

Because if the people responsible for the practice don't have such knowledge of, an experience of, a taste of enlightenment, They won't know the accumulation of factors that create the possibility of enlightenment. In other words, there's a whole lot of things lying on the floor. Like in our house where Sofia is playing. For Sofia, she sees a pattern in all these things.

[06:06]

There's a relationship between ones she knew and ones she had when she was here two years, last year, etc. And there's one she's given names to and one she hasn't and et cetera. She sees a pattern in those things which I don't see. There's no way I could see it. I could figure something out. Another kid her age might see more of the pattern than I would. But in all the various teachings and the practices we do and how the kitchen is and how the work time is, etc.,

[07:07]

are all the ingredients of our life here at Johanneshof. And if Those putting the practice together have some experience of enlightenment or taste of enlightenment. Then they see which of these ingredients should be emphasized. So the ingredients are there And they may or may not generate that mind which can make a shift.

[08:29]

So the ingredients of the practice And the ingredients are also the entirety of your life. Now, as you practice and you begin to bring attention to your life, the details of your life, the ingredients of practice then begin to interact with the ingredients of your life. And this kind of shift can occur. Okay. Now, my version of an early Mahamudra practice is staring into space staring into space, releasing seeing, involuted thought ceases, and mind ceases.

[10:00]

returns to itself. Or mind views itself. And to end this little number, you would add, attain realization. So this, this, this These four lines, five lines, encapsulate an immense amount of practice and teaching. And if I were to make a commentary on this koan, you know, say one song, can I add something too? A final song? A swan song? Do you have a swan song?

[11:18]

Do you know what it means? It's when you say goodbye. So there's Tian Deng and one song and then me, swan song. I can't resist these things, I'm sorry. You don't have to translate it. I might add this. Staring into space. Releasing seeing. Involuted thought ceases. Hören auf. mind returns to itself. Attain realization. Now if you could keep that in your peripheral mind, it might help accumulated factors

[12:29]

Now I like the word involute, involuted, involute. Yeah, yeah. Because in English, at least, it means itself, so a geometrical term. It means things fold, the margins, the edges, curl in, fold in on themselves. Like a jellyfish. Yeah, maybe like a jellyfish, yeah. That's good because one of the ingredients of the koan is the jellyfish as well as the turtle. It shows that your peripheral mind is working. And that's, you know, it's elaborate, elaborated thoughts, but involuted thoughts, thoughts begin to fold in on themselves.

[14:12]

And then you don't see alternatives. Sometimes how it makes me think of the dikes of Holland. You know, you've got to keep the water out, but it does keep the water out. And in practice, you don't want to get well in, located in, identified primarily through your thoughts. Now what I'd like to try to do this morning is to say something, show something about how a koan is put together. and to show how you already know much of what this koan is about.

[15:16]

Okay. No, it says in the koan the rhinoceros, the cloud rhino, the cloud rhinoceros. In the koan heißt es das Wolkennashorn. The light engulfing radiance. Engulfing means flooded. Durch das Licht durchflutende Strahlen. Okay. Now, to know something about this phrase, if you know virtually nothing about Buddhism, it's pretty kind of peculiar.

[16:25]

Wenn man fast nichts über Buddhismus weiß, dann ist dieser Satz äußerst merkwürdig. Yeah, how the heck did a rhino get in here? You know, it was bad enough that there was a turtle. And then a jellyfish. Also, wieso ist jetzt dieses Rhinos, das Nashorn hier, schon schlimm genug, dass da eine Schildkröte und eine Qualle dran vorkommen? But, you know, if you say that you, some of you are therapists... And if in some context the couch is mentioned, you don't have to be very scholarly to know that the couch refers almost for sure to Freud. And Sofa, I guess. I don't know.

[17:26]

Couch. I've seen the replica several times in Vienna. Supposedly the original is in the British Museum. Why it's there, I don't know. Anyway, the word couch would refer to Freud or would refer to a state of mind, the kind of mind, a way of free associating, etc. Or if someone said animal magnetism, you'd know that was early stages, the development of psychological theories, etc. Well, Buddhism assumes, in reading these koans, Buddhism assumes sort of that level of understanding familiarity with Buddhism.

[18:31]

And if you're not a therapist, you still might know about couches and animal magnetism. So a certain amount of knowledge is helpful, but it's not really a lot. So a little of that knowledge is useful, but not very. It's what they say in the con is sufficient, you know. It supposedly comes from an ancient song of the rhinoceros who horn is formed by staring at the moon. And if you want to know a little more, or it can be helpful to know a little more, There's actually something called, believe it or not, the Rhinoceros Horn Sutra.

[20:03]

Which I believe, a version of it was found written on birch bark, not oxide, but birch bark. From the first half of the first century CE. And they were preserved, written in Gandhari, preserved in Afghanistan. They were found stored in clay pots buried under an ancient monastic site. And it goes back to an idea of the very early idea in Buddhism of the, by the way, it was supposedly the work of the

[21:05]

Dharmaka Gupta, something like that school, which was an offshoot of Theravada schools. And I'm mentioning this, you know, to kind of bore you. Why not bore you? Buddhism says, Suzuki Roshi says, Zen isn't supposed to be exciting. But I want you to see that a column like this accumulates and epitomizes the stories of Buddhism. But I want you to see that a koan accumulates and epitomizes the stories of Buddhism.

[22:26]

And the idea of the rhinoceros was the hermit, the renunciant. Und die Idee hinter dem Nashorn ist der Einsiedler, der Waldlebende, aber der Renunciant ist jemand, der Entsagende, genau. Who eschewed, eschewed, rejected. Eschewed what? It's not trying on shoes. Eschewed householder life. And lived like a rhinoceros. Walked alone like a rhinoceros. And it came to represent also that like bodhisattvas are also sometimes identified with elephants.

[23:51]

As we saw in this koan. as we have seen in the Quran. Lots of animals in this Quran. Is that to be fully concentrated and still like a rhinoceros. Have you ever seen pictures of that? So to be fully concentrated and to be calm like a rhinoceros. We have seen certain pictures of that. You can almost imagine staring at the moon and this horn appears. Okay. And the sutras say, if you happen to be in town, and anyone notices you're a rhinoceros, UNESCO wrote a play about that. Go ahead. And the sutra says, if you happen to be in town, then you should never stray from your cave and forest mind.

[24:56]

Okay, so let's stay. The idea of the rhinoceros is that you are independent and you don't stray from your cave and forest mind. unabhängig ist und nie von seinem Höhlen- und Waldgeist abkommt. Okay. Now, this is a cloud rhinoceros. Das hier ist ein Wolkennashorn. And the word for monk in Zen practice is unsui. Und das Wort für Mönch in der Zen-Praxis ist unsui. And it means cloud water person, unsui. So a monk is a cloud water person. You live freely like a cloud. I remember once, you know, if you look up at a cloud, you know, the cloud's there.

[26:05]

But from over there it's there, and from over there it's somewhere else, and from over there it's over a house. That kind of feeling. If you have only one point of view, it's right up there. If you can feel a kind of sky mind, the spine supporting the sky. And you can feel the cloud from several points of view, suddenly it has no location. hat die Wolke plötzlich keinen Ort mehr. There's no fixed point. And this alone, to suddenly realize no fixed point, can be an enlightenment shift.

[27:18]

Und dann gibt es plötzlich keinen Fixpunkt mehr. Und dieser kein Fixpunkt, nicht Fixpunkt, kann so eine Erleuchtungsverlagerung sein. No, I can say this, but next time you see a cloud, probably you won't be enlightened. Ich kann es sagen, aber vermutlich das nächste Mal, wenn ihr eine Wolke seht, werdet ihr nicht erleuchtet sein. But the sense of it's there, it's there in every cloud, in every leaf. Okay, so now we have the cave... a renunciant hermit identified with the bodhisattva or the monk, the cloud water person. And the monk. The cloud water person. Okay. So this is a key phrase in the middle of this koan.

[28:28]

The rhinoceros gazing at the moon. This is also Mahamudra space yoga. The rhinoceros gazing at the moon. The light engulfing radiance. Okay. Now, I've given you the practice numbers of times in the last year or two. which I call yogic seeing. You focus on particulars and you shift then to the field of mind. And the more you mature this experience, pretty soon you only, you always feel the field of mind.

[29:45]

your object of attention is always the field of mind. And this could be one way to understand what's meant by concentration and the eightfold path and so forth. And then, If the object of attention is always the field of mind, continuously the field of mind, if your object of attention is continuously the field of mind, then the particulars float in and out of this field of mind. Now, I'm talking about your own treasures. You have perception, you have particular things you look at, see, hear, and you have a field of mind in which these occur.

[31:34]

You just have to put them together in a slightly different way. So the jewel is hidden in your clothes, as this koan says. But you don't know, where the hell is that jewel? Whoa. Anyway, so... So if you... Again, you know this practice already. You can diese Praxis bereiten. And you can make this shift to the field of mind. And it's not very different from

[32:50]

The initial practice of going from the particular to the field, particular to the field, just creating that as a habit. And by doing that, you establish the field of mind as an experienced mind, as a mind. This is a way, from the Buddhist point of view, of refining the mind. Now sometimes you can say, well, we weren't born that way, so why the hell should I do that? If God or Mother Nature had intended this, we would do this from birth.

[34:01]

Well, I do think that kids up to three or four, no, up to, yeah, two or three anyway, probably do some of this. Yeah, that's how current kids survive pretty well, no matter who they're born to. I've missed her a while. Now, in Buddhist terminology, I would say, but we live within our coarse senses. And why do we live in our coarse senses? I don't know.

[35:07]

I'm not an anthropologist, but I would say because our first job is to survive. To avoid tigers and deer ticks. But somehow built into our experience is the possibility of wisdom. And wisdom is not, as I'm defining it, in what I'm calling the core senses. Oh, I'm running out of time. Time waits for no man. Anyway, yes? Not even for the dharmasangha. Okay. And someone mentioned the other day my example of staring or looking at this, focusing on this and taking it away and making the field of mind the object of attention.

[36:30]

Okay, these practices you already know. And they are emblematically presented the rhinoceros staring at the moon. Because what happens when you shift to the field of mind is you block involuted thinking. Now, I'm going to stretch your legs a little bit longer, for your patience with your legs, because I want to read you something from Sukhya Shastra.

[37:56]

I have a rabbit in here. And when Buddhists pull rabbits out of their sleeve the rabbits have horns. When we practice Zazen our mind always follows our breath. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitless. Die innere Welt ist grenzenlos.

[38:58]

And the outer world is limitless. But the outer world isn't limitless if you're engaged, involved in myriad circumstances. Die äußere Welt ist nicht grenzenlos, wenn man mit den myriaden von Dingen involviert ist. So if you read this, then you say... How do I experience, not know the world is limitless? That's, excuse me, nothing. I almost swore. This only has meaning if you experience the world as life. And you experience the world is limitless when the mind is focused on the field of mind.

[40:05]

We say inner world and outer world. But actually there is just one whole world. And in this limitless world, our mind, our breathing is like a swinging door. Obviously it's the same image as in the koan. If you think I breathe, the I is extra. There's no you to say I. What we call I is just a swinging door. And your mind is calm and pure enough to follow this movement.

[41:30]

There is nothing. No point of view. No eye, no world, no mind. just a swinging door, or just everything changing. Okay. You means to be aware of the universe in the form of you, and I means to be aware of the universe... No, you don't have to translate. Because I don't want to take too much of your time here. Then he says, so when you practice Sazen, there is no idea of time or space. You may say, I must do something this afternoon.

[42:33]

But actually there is no this afternoon. We do things one after another. That is all. There's no such thing as this afternoon. Or one o'clock or two o'clock. At one o'clock you'll eat your lunch. To eat lunch itself is one o'clock. Mittagessen in sich ist ein Uhr. This is the same as in the koan where it says hang the sun and moon high in the shadowless forest. Das ist das gleiche wie im koan wo es heißt hänge Sonne und Mond hoch in dem schattenlosen Wald.

[43:36]

So Suzuki Roshi here again is speaking about like the koan that this experience This kind of breathing comes into an experience of timelessness. A mind without the reference point of time, or space, But you can shift into the reference point of time and space. Okay. So let me just say one thing more. When the mind, when attention is on the field of mind, a subtle concentration occurs.

[44:52]

Which blocks or releases you from involuted thinking. And coarse sense impressions. And what is meant by coarse sense impressions? Is it at the first kind of coarse recognition of sense impressions? Before the deepening of those sense impressions through a still mind? the mind immediately starts seeking for patterns. Consciousness seeks for patterns to protect you from ticks and tigers. But if your mind, if this kind of coarse sense impression and involuted thinking is released or blocked, a subtle movement is part of the field of mind.

[46:31]

a subtle movement is part of the mind. The field of mind. Somewhat like the light moves across fields in the countryside. And if it's filmed in time-lapse motion or whatever they call it, You see the field change quickly from dark to light and so forth. But if you're there in the ordinary sense impressions, The field looks lit, that's all. But if you have this more subtle sense of the field of mind concentration, you feel these changes in the field of mind. And mind returns to itself.

[48:01]

And is set up through itself. That's the stage of breathing practice called returning. And when the mind is set up through itself, which is like the rhinoceros walking alone, another kind of knowing occurs. Radishes taste like ambrosia. Thanks a lot. Sorry it takes so long.

[49:05]

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