We're going to try to, I guess, end around five. Is that right? So we don't have much time. So maybe I should say something about the koan. And I think both these koans will have some role in the sashin coming up. And I think you're right that it's probably a little quick to go into this koan when the other one is still working. But the problem is You can only go so far in a public discussion about a koan. Mostly it has to work in yourself.

[01:01]

So if we went any farther with the cat koan, I would have to explain too much, or we would have to have more time to just meet together and slowly poke around in it together. But first, before I say much about this, Caroline, I'd like to say that I want to thank you, and I thank you for helping me, and I thank you for supporting me working on finishing this manuscript of mine the last few days. I discovered last night about midnight or one o'clock when I was stitching the various parts together so that I'd written and not put it together in one manuscript. I'm supposed to have, according to the agreement with the publisher, between 70,000 and 90,000 words.

[02:16]

So in the middle of the night, there was a big section I hadn't put in yet even, but in the middle of the night what I had stitched together I found out was over 85,000 words. So I felt quite good because I can fulfill the contract. They can decide what they want to do with it, cut out or add or something. I still have two things I have to write, but it's pretty easy to do. It won't take me long, a few weeks. I can send that later. So last night I went to where Rika was sleeping and shook her... 85,000 words! She said, I'm asleep.

[03:35]

That's 85,000 too many. She didn't say that. It's the first time you ever walked me up to tell me something. Yeah. Okay, so let's look at this koan, maybe. Okay. First of all, the kind of general feeling of the koan is, well, you know, a... metalogue, the idea of a metalogue works two ways.

[04:39]

The idea of a metalogue is close to the idea of a sacrament. The sacrament... When you perform a sacrament, it creates the feeling the sacrament represents. And koans should, and through, you understand a koan when the teaching the koan is presenting. Begins to teach you. Or the experience or state of mind that the koan is trying to realize, you start to realize and then you get a sense of feeling for the koan. or the experience or the state of mind that the koan should convey, so that you really learn it yourself and therefore understand the koan.

[05:43]

The idea of a metalogue is pretty fundamental in Zen practice in the sense that while you speak about something, you experience what you're speaking about. You're not talking about it. But what I meant by saying a metalogue works both ways is that when you first read a koan, before you understand anything, the first thing it makes you feel is probably intended by the koan. Or you can assume it's intended. It's a little bit like a scientist I know is being sued by some people for possession of his intellectual scientific ideas which they think can have commercial value.

[06:54]

And he said, this whole thing is just striking fear into me. And so what he was doing was looking at the merits of the case in his own legal stand to try to reduce the fear. Or he was looking at his own psychology to see why he was so fearful. And I said, first of all, I think he was asking me for my feelings about it. I said, the lawyers are trying to cause you to feel fear. So you're doing just what they want you to do when you look at the merits of the case.

[08:06]

What you really have to do is look at how they're causing you to feel fear. What is the merit of the case? Merits? Whether he has the sufficient legal stance to win the case against them in the courts. And they're not concerned with the courts. They're concerned with making him afraid. Yeah, so can you say that again? They're not really presenting. Often lawyers, particularly at the level at which he's doing, aren't trying to really deal with the case. They're trying to intimidate you or make you feel afraid. So instead of dealing with the merits of the case or his own psychology he has to deal with what they're doing to make him afraid. So if a koan makes you uneasy for instance or bored you might say hmm What is the function of boredom or uneasiness in this koan?

[09:13]

So this koan, one of the things I think that the structure of this koan does is it presents very little information. And tells you an examination occurred. And you can't figure out what the examination is. So you start feeling examined. Why not, you know, etc. So... And whatever way this story engages you or you see it, you should take seriously, even if I present a different view of the koan. Because your engagement in it, however you see it, as a Rorschach, as a projection, or how it acts in you, this is the key to your working with the koan, is your engagement.

[10:31]

So is exactly your own work with it really the key to the koan? Exactly what I'm telling you, because these feelings are like a kind of Rorschach test and thus an access. It doesn't mean you don't also look at the koan from a number of other points of view, but you keep working into the koan over time through your own engagement in it. So, like you brought up, you brought up, told me a little earlier, the role or the feeling about women in Buddhism is a way of looking at this koan. Of course, since monastic practice was almost entirely the province of males, and in general, often, particularly if you look at Dogen, the monks looked down on everyone who wasn't a monk. Women or lady.

[11:55]

They were all something. It's like Bobby Fischer was putting down the chess player. He was being interviewed and he was putting down every other chess player as being stupid, not very good, etc. And so finally the interviewer said, well, geez, you put down every chess player known. What about people who don't play chess? He said, oh, those wikis. So from the point of view of the monks, the lay people were wikis, you know. Let's look at it from another point of view. I think in those times, people had a lot more power than we have now. I mean, if you weren't in a famine and starving to death,

[12:58]

And you weren't intimidated and living in fear, as I think a lot of people did. I think a large percentage of the population, the more intelligent ones, the people with more energy or character or guts, were probably much more powerful than we are. I mean, they're probably like being with racehorses in comparison to the horses you see in parks that take people around. We're more like the horses in parks. You say, uh, kind of spring-wearing horses. Brewery horse. The power of alcohol. Yeah. In which way exactly more powerful? Yeah. You're preparing yourself.

[14:17]

Nothing. Well, let's say that... First, let me just simplify. They probably ate food almost always it was grown somewhere. I mean, it wasn't from shops. And in Europe, you eat better food than in America. Second, everyone walked everywhere. Just imagine if all of us had walked here. And walked back. And the entire population out there wasn't driving in cars. As much as I like cars, they were all walking places. Not only would everybody be healthier,

[15:19]

But as Randy did a lot of hiking with people and alone too in the mountains around Crestown and other places, walking nourishes you. When you move at that kind of pace in the world and with people, it gives you energy. And this is not a koan, by the way, but women were expected to read. weren't ever expected to read. It's a view of women seen by monks. And women were often seen as sorcerers and more naturally powerful than men. And there are these references in the koans to sorcerers.

[16:48]

And to weird powers and psychic powers and drug powers and so forth. And you also didn't have such a conformist culture as we have. I mean, everybody more or less spoke Chinese, but they didn't have television and books, and most people just were out there on their own. Everyone was pretty wild, I guess. And the world was seen as populated by dragon powers, snake powers, people who could perform magic on you and so forth. So this woman, they, you know, it's again like meet somebody in Yukon down here or something. We all come back and say, there's this waitress. Every time you see her, she... Remember that waitress, Martin, that we met in Española?

[17:52]

who, after we talked with her for a while, opened up her shirt and had... What did she have? Do you remember? The cross. No, no, some kind of crystal or some kind of spiritual... non-Christian number going on under her shirt. So in the middle of the night, we were driving to Crestown, to the Sashina. What time? Two o'clock in the morning? Three? We were trying to get there before the wake-up bell. We went into this bar called the Cowboy or something like that, right? Something like that. In the middle of Española on a Saturday night, I think. So there were drunks and policemen and fights and... Espanola is a pretty rough town, particularly on the weekends, and there's almost one or two policemen in every eatery and every bar just to stop the fighting.

[19:17]

So here was this waitress that looked like a pretty tough woman herself. We started having this kind of unusual conversation with her. We thought we were a little far out for this place. Why are we having this conversation with this woman? Could she possibly understand what we're talking about? But she was leading us on. And then she came over to the table and said something like, or replied something like, you may think I don't understand, but look. and showed us her secret signs from another world. So I went back to Christ, you should check out this woman.

[20:35]

Yeah. I remember when I came back from Japan, I found a lot of the students at Zen Center in the late 60s were seeing two different psychic readers. Fortune tellers? So anyway, they wrote. So I've said I would check them out. So I didn't, as far as I knew, I wasn't a teacher yet, I just had come back from Japan, and I don't think the two women knew anything about me. So I just assigned, I mean, I just made two appointments. I went in and asked for a reading.

[21:44]

Now it's out there in the meeting. You had 12 guides who were surrounding you. They're wearing robes. Are you a Buddhist? I had long hair and a beard. So they got me right away. And they understood pretty quickly I was related to these other people who come. So in this story, I think the situation is not so unusual, which is that there's some kind of unusual person. Is she a sorcerer? Nobody knows. So having read this story in other circumstances, I believe there's a number of monks who came back to Zhaozhou and told her, you know, this is quite an unusual woman out there.

[22:50]

And get inside all of us when we talk to her. So he went to see if she's a sorcerer or, you know, who is she? And probably Zhaozhou had nothing to do that day and he said, well, I'll go talk to her. It sounds interesting. So he poked out and asked her the same question. And she told him the same thing. And that's of course the examination. She didn't see him. If she'd seen him, she would have told him something different. So there's three movements in the koan if you look at the structure of the koan.

[23:56]

One movement is the direction toward Taishan. Ordinary life, the granting way, we're all Buddhas. And then there's the other thing. She's not pointing to the Taishan. She's pointing to the capital. And where's the capital? Capital means enlightenment. It's right here. So the other movement is right here. Because what she's really saying when she's saying this, oh, go right ahead. But I'm sure she's saying with the feeling go right ahead but don't you know it's right here under your feet. In this piece of karmic ground.

[24:58]

So she's speaking in a way which is both again granting and and gathering or representing form and emptiness. But none of the monks hear her. They feel something, but they don't respond in kind because they don't expect it or they're not as alert as she is. So that's two motions, to Taishan and just to be here. The movement, there's no place to go. And the third movement is seeing. As you said, the eye of the source. Now, to see the eye of the source can mean like the eye of the storm, the center.

[26:15]

But here it means to see the eye of this woman. The source of this thing the monks are talking about. So presumably she is seeing the monks. And if she really sees the monks, she'll see Zhaozhou. Or is she just seeing her own values, her own ideas or something, seeing her own self? The implication of koan is that she's not a sorcerer, though she may have those powers, and it was expected of Zen people in those days, often were expected to have the powers of sorcerers. But not to use them, of course, because they're good Zen people. Except in emergencies.

[27:33]

Or to understand your student better. Okay, so there's a discussion in the koan which we could spend more time on, on special powers and so forth. And what is seeing? And here, what the koan is implying is that you see a person's practice, in a sense a person's nature too, and you also see dragons and snakes. The spirit powers in each one of us. Which I suppose now we'd mostly say are people's psychological dimensions and powers. But it's more than that. It's a kind of energy with which you act on others and in the world.

[28:35]

And of course, dragons and snakes also means white and black kundalini magic. So there's three movements and there's three seeings. Seeing somebody's practice or realization. Seeing their spirit or sorcerer or dragon and snake powers. as in this case seeing Manjushri or seeing the presence of the Bodhisattva working in us. And seeing also the person who's seeing you. So we have those different kinds of seeings present. And the implication is that this woman was able to see in the sense of see people's powers and practice and level of understanding.

[29:54]

But really wasn't, but saw still in terms of her own practice. And in terms of this embeddedness in three and three in front and three and three in back. And by the way, the numbers don't mean anything. It just means the situation you're in where you're immersed in the details without generalization. So, but she didn't seem to have seen Jaojo. She didn't recognize Jaojo like the two psychic readers recognized me as a Buddhist. So that's looking, first we're looking at the story, now we're looking at the structure, the kinds of movement in the koan, the kinds of seeing in the koan.

[31:10]

And this brings up for you the basic kind of archetypal posture of the koan. is to be in a situation where you don't know what's going on where the people around you are trying to create doubt and yet you see what's going on and the deeper thrust of this column is the practice of seeing To see another person and to let another person see you. Because Zhaozhu's skills were also that he prevented her from seeing him. So this is the kind of... mesh of the koan that if you're practicing with, you put yourself into and practice seeing.

[32:24]

And of course, practice seeing your own practice and own nature and being. Almost as if right now you felt a clear clarity around you and in you. Almost you felt you were transparent. And then it's very easy. We're brought up to not let people see us. So the practice here is to let other people see you. So your question is, what did the woman see? What did Zhaozhou see? Okay, now we should stop. Sorry, I went a little after five.

[33:39]

And I feel, you know, on this schedule, I've been working a lot and having to make meals, but I feel that there's been a kind of... It seems to me maybe there's been less chance for people to know each other and talk with each other in this schedule. The same time I feel that the schedule has made a deeper stream in us. And I think, maybe I'm wrong, but it feels to me like the koan has entered more deeply into us together and individually. And I hope the deeper stream through the banks of Zazen that we've been doing will carry this koan work into the Sashim and into your life if you're leaving now. And what I'm thinking of and what I'd like feedback from you guys about is we have scheduled for next year a full week before the Sashim.

[35:07]

And I'm thinking of presenting that week with a schedule something like this one. And have it not tied to the sashi. You can do both if you want. Or one or the other. I'd like to somehow present this, maybe the schedule should be different, you can let me know, but present this as an alternative to Sashin practice for those people who want to do something in addition to seminars. And you can of course make suggestions now. Okay. Yes? Perhaps it's a little bit too early to really... But this is very spontaneous, and I thought this was perfect.

[36:14]

I liked it better than last year. And for me, it would be all right if it stays like this also next year. Okay. And I don't have the feeling that I didn't come to know people. Oh, good. Okay. I thought it was very intensive. Okay. Thank you. For me, I'm leaving today, and so I don't want to say anything about what goes on and the content of the seminary. My experience was a deal that I'm grateful for being here. I felt welcome. That's always the way she got to seminaries or wherever you go. Also had the feeling that I can experience. So sometimes when I get to mind stage and I experience with that, I have to find out who I am. And only afterwards I know what was going on.

[37:16]

And I can do that here. So I did not control my process. And I had the chance afterwards to learn from what was going on. And that is quite a new experience. I know, for instance, from Vitasana, when such a lot of ideas, of ideas, when reading this call, came up, you say, forget that all, forget that all, forget that all. And the way of experiencing is one that meets me just now. So I was right here, and also with this mixture of sitting And we also see the process of going to court, going to the text. Also reading you, having the teacher, both around you.

[38:23]

That is also very experiential for me. It touches me, a lot touches me. Also this morning you were telling about your lineage, in a way that you remember when putting on your robe, you remember your teacher and your lineage, because that is also something that I'm going through in my life. Because my father has died some time ago and I start in some way going through the grave too, you know, and start seeing quite a different view of what is going on. As if I get close to my father in a way also. He was a tailor, no matter what. Really? Yeah. So I would like to stay with that and continue with that, also as the structure changes, but the way I am here is, for me, constructive.

[39:33]

Thank you. So we have the evening off and tomorrow is Saturday, is that correct? And the Sashin starts tomorrow evening, more or less? Those of us who are doing the Sashin, what time are we supposed to be back here? At five or six or something? Five? And there'll be dinner at 6.30 or...? If that's wished, yes. What do we usually do on Saturday? Well, let's aim for 6.30. And everyone has their eating bowls with the zendo and karaoke cloth.

[40:37]

We have to still work on that tomorrow morning, so help is appreciated. Is there a karaoke presentation before or after? You have to lead it. There will be, yes. I went through all these koans with Suzuki Roshi and it's wonderful to share them with you. Yes? When people will be there for breakfast tomorrow morning. No, I asked, don't have to eat. Thank you for translating, Ulrike. Thank you for translating, Ulrike. Nine.

[41:51]

Nine. Not too late, we want to go to Möln. We have to go to Eintracht. We have to go to Eintracht. We have to go to Eintracht.

[42:00]

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