That's why I always like it that we start with chanting that we mostly don't understand. You like it or you don't? I like it. Yes, that's the right tone. And then? Even when we understand it, 100,000 million kalpas, that's a good scale. Because certainly the feeling is and should be that we're reaching into something in our speaking here, the gateway of speech. Yeah, reaching into something in the gateway of speech and in our experience that is beyond what we can grasp. Yeah, and remember from the koan, the unique breeze of reality.

[01:26]

Do you see? Do you notice? Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle. weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. Yet no one can do anything about Manjushri's leaking. Mm-hmm. What I'd like to say this morning is that this vision of the Mahayana, which we have again as a topic, is essentially really a maturity of Buddhism as something like a science.

[02:28]

Wissenschaft. That's a science. Because, you know, it's a science in that it's rooted in experience. It's not just studying the nature. Nature is something, so-called nature, is something separate from us. Or some separate creation that we happen to inhabit. As if we arrived from another planet or something. Or a separate creation that was here before us by God. But it's rooted in our case, in our science of practice, it's rooted in our personal experience.

[03:45]

But in our case, in our science, it is rooted in our personal experience. And when the science of, let's call it science for today, this morning, let's call it science for... When it looks back at, you know, from the Song Dynasty, when it looks back at an earlier time, It's looking back at a teaching still rooted primarily and confirmed through experience. Mm-hmm. And I sometimes, since I'm interested in societal processes, I sometimes wonder how it was generally accepted by at least thinking people, practicing people in those times.

[05:10]

Maybe, probably I would guess that the whole society was more rooted in experience than our society, which has been primarily rooted in belief. Much of our history is the... is the... yeah, is the fight between... belief and science and social, societal development. And I think, in fact, Of course, the oil in the Near East is important, but the biblical importance of the Near East and of Israel to Bush's theology is probably more important.

[06:37]

And I believe that oil is important in the Middle East, but the biblical meaning of Israel in Bush's theological world probably plays a bigger role. Okay, so I mean, I'm just thinking about it as a science. Let me just say, you know, with... Excuse me for the little, tiny review. With Copernicus, we get, you know, the sun put in place of the Earth as the center of our little universe. Yeah, around 1500. And then the other guys, Tycho Brahe and Kepler... Galileo. They still kept the idea.

[07:45]

The universe was finite and the stars out there were lights at the periphery or something like that. They still kept the view that the stars were peripheral and that the universe was fine light. But a few years later, when Giordano Bruno appeared, And he said those lights are actually other suns. And probably the universe is actually infinite. He got burned at the stake. The other guys were, you know... I mean, the myth is that the church was after them, and that's true, but boy, with Bruno, they really got him.

[08:51]

But still, up until Newton, which is, what, 1700, about, So you have this revolution, 1500, 1600, 1700. And still there was still a view that there was one understanding there was one like an Aristotelian unified view of the world and the universe. Yeah, but what we have now in 1900 with Einstein we now have two theories actually. Both of them produce good results, but they don't fit together.

[09:57]

So we have relativity, what's that, about 1916, and quantum theory, 1926. And quantum theory can't explain gravity. And relativity theory can explain gravity, but it ends up with a view of matter that's pretty much Newtonian. What it means that we have two theories that don't fit together, that are the biggest theories of what all of this is, This is in varying degrees sinking into the general consciousness. Yeah, but if we can come up, as Einstein tried and he failed, and others are, everyone's trying, well, not everyone, but physicists, theoretical physicists, to come up with some kind of way to unify these two incompatible theories.

[11:32]

And if we can do it, or if it's done, some kind of unified field theory. It's either going to change both of the present theories, or it's going to be so different that we're going to think about the world and ourselves very, very differently, probably. Now, Lee Smolin, who's a theoretical physicist, Lee Smolin, he thinks it's really important that we speculate about what a unified theory might be, even if we can't know what it is.

[12:45]

Because if we can't even make approaches to something that we can't at least speculate about or imagine. Some such idea like that is part of this Mahayana vision. What's interesting about science is also this immense complexity that is before us at all moments. Reduces to very, pretty simple laws and ingredients. Neutrons and neutrinos and electrons and, you know, there's a fourth anyway, yeah? Yeah, and, you know, four main ingredients.

[14:06]

And four forces. Yeah, sort of gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism. Okay. Now, I'm not a reductionist for sure. But in this Mahayana view and trying to create a territory of our practice... A similar dynamic of trying to look at what are the simplest ingredients is part of it. So the overriding fact of all of Buddhism Is that everything's changing?

[15:18]

Now, how does this change exist for us? Practice emphasizes four aspects. Appearance. Disappearance. Continuity. And connectedness. And how do we experientially enter into these four? And we can understand much of the crafter practice to try to find ways to get us to notice these four. And as you know, we have to go against the habit of consciousness whose job is to make the world predictable. And the habit of language to generalize and so forth. How do we find ourselves really in the midst of our experience?

[16:19]

Now one of the phrases in this koan is gathering in and letting go. Now that's a relationship to change. And when Suzuki Roshi gave his lectures on the 100 blue cliff record koan. Which was the first year or two or three, I don't remember how long, of my practice with him. Over and over again, he brought up what he called the grasping and granting way.

[17:48]

Which I think is more, in English it's better to call the gathering in and granting way. Gathering in and letting go, if you like. Now, if we're going to speak about change in our life and in the world, continuously creation runs her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade The world as we see it, that keeps reappearing. But it does keep appearing, and this is weaving in also the forms of spring, incorporating the forms of spring.

[18:49]

Now here they are rooted in an experiential, an experience of the world. Yeah, an experience of the world, experience in our usual consciousness and also experience in our Sambhogakaya or bliss consciousness. Or the consciousness we can sort of get to know through practice. And it's interesting, this realm of the Nagas. It's the closest Buddhism comes, I think, to a real idea of the unconscious. It's an Indian idea connected with serpents and water and so forth.

[19:53]

Supposedly a six-headed Naga made a parasol over the Buddha. And Nagarjuna is called Nagarjuna. Arjuna is the archer who could shoot the swiftest arrow. And Naga is one of these serpents. And Nagarjuna is called Nagarjuna because Arjuna is the one who can shoot the most targeted arrow. And Naga is the one who can preach to the snakes. And also six of them or something made an umbrella for him. But there's this idea that the teachings are sometimes hidden in the realm of the Nagas.

[21:01]

Well, it's pretty close to the teachings are hidden in the unconsciousness and the liquid, the undifferentiated liquid of experience. So, okay, so if what they're trying to do here with Nagas and Manjushri and all this, is they're trying to take the vocabulary available to them at the time And the concepts available to them. I mean, there's Manjushri, but Manjushri is clearly somebody we create as a more subtle or wisdom voice, not our usual voice. Manjushri is certainly someone whom we create to represent something like our more subtle or more wise voice.

[22:10]

Okay, so this gathering in and letting go is in a way bodhisattvified or personified. by Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara. So Manjushri is the bodhisattva of wisdom. And the teaching here is that when you draw in When we do what we do in zazen, I've often seen it when you're trying to, you stop and ask somebody who's jogging for directions. You're driving and somebody's jogging along. It's like you've interrupted Manjushri.

[23:18]

They don't want to be interrupted. They don't want to think about which direction. They just want to keep ministering. So when we're sitting, you're kind of drawn in much more than jogging. And you may notice that sometimes when the bell rings, you actually would just rather stay there. So the teaching here or the point here is that when you're in this, you're actually a little bit different kind of human being. It's a little bit like, you know, you're a different person at work than you are at home.

[24:21]

Well, these differences are really emphasized in Buddhism. I mean, you really are a different person at work than at home. You have different values, you behave differently, make different compromises. You expect ethics of your child that you don't expect of yourself at the office often. Okay, so in Buddhism we emphasize this kind of difference much, you know, we emphasize it a lot. So, in a sense, the fullest expression of this drawing in, in which you are often more wise, It's like a common thing we say.

[25:26]

Somebody has a big problem and you ask them a question. Let me sleep on it. Well, this is a general recognition that thinking about it isn't going to help, but if you sleep on it, yeah, maybe you'll have a new idea in the morning. That's a kind of intuitive recognition that some other kind of person that thinks, knows differently appears in the sleep. Okay, so we could even understand zazen as a kind of sleep in which you stay awake in a new kind of mind. Oh, sorry.

[26:45]

That you stay awake. Wake in in a new kind of mind. Yeah, so... So Zazen, in a way, is just developing this, I will sleep on it to a much higher, to a fairly high degree. So the inward movement is called Manjushri, the gathering in. And we've developed that skill. So even now I can feel a gathering in or I can open up. You know, in general and usually in Zendos, you don't have the Buddha, you have Manjushri.

[27:50]

Because Manjushri is the personification of wisdom. And the altar sits out in the middle of the room. And we walk around it when we do kinem, like in Christians. And we sit on platforms because the real Buddha in the Zendo is each practitioner. So Manjushri is sitting on his or her platform right in the room. Now, this altar is conceived of quite differently. I mean, we have it this way. This is a traditional form of an altar. But when we moved here and there was a rug on this floor, this was a storage area for chairs.

[29:04]

And they put chairs out. So we took the chairs out and put the Buddha in. Gave him a seat. And now we, you know, to clarify, I didn't prove it a lot. But this conception of an altar is a parallel universe to us, but in a different realm. A little higher floor and so forth. So in that time, since all of their view of actuality, reality, there was no idea it was created by God.

[30:31]

That was, you know, very vague ideas. It's somehow a mutual creation that we're all part of. And we know it through personal experience. So change is also our personal experience. So how do we relate to this personal experience? And yogic experience or zazen experience and ordinary experience. Yeah, and so there was a dialogue between the individual and all people. And individual and all people and whatever the world is, which is also us.

[31:34]

And so then what's our relationship to you and me and us and this? The key is our relationship. The exhale in which we disappear. The inhale in which we appear. The breath joined to the body so it no longer moves with anger, anxiety, etc., And an experience of all at once-ness or wideness. But we can't quite explain. So it's called sometimes the dark merging. Or it's called Darth Vader.

[33:02]

Anyway, the dark merging. Or a black lacquer bowl which you can't see the bottom of. Or it's sometimes called steep. Like a steep hill. Yeah, or it's, you know, you can approach it, but you can't enter it. Or you can enter, but you can't stay. So these are all meanings, it goes way beyond Saindhava, all meanings of a word called li, a lie. We can have a relationship, but it's a contradictory actuality. But we're also this contradictory reality. Two theories are ten.

[34:17]

We can find a mode of mind that somehow we can, you know, as one famous poet, Dung Shan, says, I'm always close to this. Do you know this? No, but I'm always close to it. And that's a phrase we practice with when every situation you say, I'm always close to this. But you can't quite grasp it. In jeder Situation kannst du sagen, ich bin dem immer nahe, aber ich kann es nicht ganz greifen. And, you know, this is full of a kind of science, this koan, like the insects living on wood, just living on wood, still make patterns. Es ist auch wie eine Art Wissenschaft, dieses koan, so wie die Insekten, die auf dem Holz leben, die leben einfach auf dem Holz und dennoch schaffen sie Muster.

[35:22]

And the cart made behind closed doors, when you take it out, it still fits the ruts. Before paved roads, the roads were ruts. And if your axle wasn't the right length, you couldn't drive on the roads like a railroad car. So remember behind closed doors, receiving people, closed doors and sleeping. In the beginning, the best way to receive people is... Closing the door and sleeping. So the cart made behind closed doors or us in the middle of the Zazen of Manjushri. Entering into the world is the compassionate Avalokiteshvara. The cart still fits the world.

[36:47]

Now the business about the field of the depository consciousness and Sao Dong and the lifelong, maybe we get to that later. But anyway, the point I'm making here is this is a kind of science rooted in personal experience. So, yeah, so I've said enough. I've said enough. The unique, everything's changing, it's unique, the unique breeze of reality. Einzigartigkeit, alles verändert sich und die einzigartige Brise der Wirklichkeit. Do you see it? Siehst du es? Kennst du das?

[37:54]

Continuously creation runs her womb and shuttle. Fortwährend lässt die Schöpfung ihren Webstuhl und ihr Schiffchen laufen. Weaving the ancient forms, weaving the ancient brocade. Incorporating the forms of spring. Yeah, but nothing can be done. They're still leaking. Doesn't all still even fit together? How are we going to exist? Yeah. What kind of universe do we live? Yeah. Was there a beginning of time? Yeah. And if time began, what made it begin?

[38:56]

And if time didn't begin, what's on the other side of time? Or at the edge of the... Does the universe infinite or does it have an edge? Is it a whole system? Is it the sum of its parts? No. These are the questions contemporary theoretical physicists face. Das sind die Art von Fragen, die zeitgenössische theoretische Physiker sich fragen. In various forms, there are questions all cultures have asked. Und das sind auf ganz verschiedene Arten und Weisen Fragen, die sich jede Kultur mal gestellt hat. And there are questions we see trying to be answered in this koan. Und das sind auch Fragen, von denen wir sehen können, dass sie versucht werden, auch in diesem koan beantwortet zu werden.

[40:03]

Thank you. He's lost. He's still in Christ. He's lost to me.

[40:13]

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