So you chew toward, you know, there's a secretion to say, in every food there's salt. He didn't mean that scientifically or something, but he meant, because salt is a general word in Japan for quality or flavor or something. So chew toward the salt that's already in there. Also, we don't have to feel we don't know. Chew toward the knowing that's already present. Now, someone asked me or I said that zazen mind is an attitude of acceptance.

[01:13]

So, you know, what is zazen mind? Zazen mind is acceptance. An accepting attitude. By the way, I'm going to try to finish pretty soon, but if you want to change your posture, I won't look. And Suzuki Roshi, he sometimes spoke for one or one and a half hours, that sometimes became really hard. Because I was young and, you know, sort of gung-ho, so I wouldn't move. Gung-ho means, I don't know, you know, macho.

[02:17]

Sometimes I couldn't hear anything because my knees were in my ears. Dogen says basically that Zazen mind is fundamental mind. What can be meant here? What did I mean by saying Zazen mind is fundamental mind? An attitude. You can have an attitude, for instance, toward violent movies. You don't like gratuitous violence in the movies. Gratuitous means unnecessary in this context. That's not what I mean.

[03:30]

But a movie director could have an attitude that movies are the best way to move people. And that attitude might affect all his movies. Now, the attitude of acceptance is the activity of zazen mind. So you could say... I'm trying to define sasa in mind, obviously. You could say... I'll give you permission. Sliding off my cushion. Zazen mind is... All right.

[04:37]

If zazen mind is acceptance, what if you don't have zazen mind? If you accept it as zazen mind, isn't that a contradiction? isn't to say that zazen mind is accepting everything as it appears. But what if what appears is not zazen mind? Are you still in zazen mind by accepting it as zazen mind? Absolutely. Why? Because if you can't accept whatever comes, you'll never develop zazen mind. It's a little bit like saying, do you make yogurt from milk or cream or something like that, milk? Milk, right?

[05:48]

Okay, it's like saying milk with one culture in it is yogurt. It's not yogurt yet, but it won't be yogurt unless there's a culture in it. So the only mind that becomes a mind is a mind of acceptance. And not a mind that accepts some things, accepts everything. So the activity of acceptance is what produces zazen mind. And the activity of acceptance is also the underlying conception of zazen mind. The big absorbent mind that accepts things as they is. Okay, that's the activity or the attitude of That's zazen mind as an attitude.

[07:15]

And if you don't have this attitude, you won't have zazen mind. Zazen mind is also the condition of a mind which knows, which observes mind. Sorry. So when you define zazen mind as a condition or function, its function or condition is that it notices mind, not just the objects of mind. So now you'll have more directly the experience, not just the activity, but the experience of zazen mind, when your mind observes mind itself.

[08:17]

So that's zazen mind as a function, shall we say. Now, the third definition I'd give of zazen mind is zazen mind as capacity. Somebody told me the other day that My lectures are okay, except sometimes I paint six fingers on one hand. Yeah, I know, it's true. Editing my book is like that. I see six fingers everywhere. Mm-hmm. But, you know, I try to paint a third eye, might as well paint a sixth finger. So I hope this isn't six fingers. Okay, the third is Zazen mind as a capacity. And that is, okay, now we have a mind which observes objects of mind and observes mind itself.

[09:21]

Okay. If you shift your identification, your sense of location, from the objects of mind to the field of mind, you immediately create a somatic mind. you immediately create a field of mind in which the objects may or may not appear. And that field of mind is the root of the Dharmakaya. And the Dharmakaya means the mind as the truth body. So if the stupa represents the truth the Buddha as the truth and the everything in its all at onceness interpenetrating and interdependent is space itself identified with emptiness

[10:38]

then when you identify with the empty field of mind, you are realizing the truth body of the Buddha. So this is the whole thing of how the Mahayana tries to make the Buddha as the truth accessible to us. So zazen mind, you can now see why Dogen emphasizes zazen mind. Because it's the gate and root of all our capacity, all of our mind. And all of you have a taste of the truth body of the Buddha. Perhaps you don't know how to stay with it or emphasize it.

[11:57]

Perhaps you don't know how to let it develop. But the secret of letting it develop again is this word appreciation. You can't bring intention in so much. And you have to keep to a minimum self-regarding ideas. You know, self has a bad name as selfishness. And we know that all self is not selfishness. So deep down we don't see the problem with self. Of course it's darn hard to do without it. No one would give you a job if you came in and said, no one's here.

[13:06]

Yeah, so... But you can see that energetically, ideas which are constantly self-regarding, thinking about yourself, deflate the mind. So the more that you can be free of self-regarding habits, and can trust appreciation, not try to direct your practice through yourself, can find yourself in this in-betweenness of, say, zazen mind and mind as objects,

[14:11]

Any such situation. And you can trust this feeling of what you appreciate. Appreciation leads you into more accuracy and deeper, more inclusive minds. Okay. I think that's enough for today. I'm getting close to, we're up almost to the sill of Manjushri's door. There's four main obstacles now between us and the door. But we have to have something to talk about tomorrow. Did you understand? Does it make any zazen sense?

[15:12]

Peter says, no, dear, I try harder tomorrow. I mean, no, I appreciate more tomorrow. Mögen unsere Absichten gleichermaßen jedes Wesen und jeden Ort durchdringen. Mögen wahlen verdienstes Bruderweges. Schüch, schüch, schüch, schüch, schüch. Good morning, I'm Seyban Erdogan. [...]

[16:14]

Good morning, I'm Seyban Erdogan. [...] Good morning, I'm Seyban Die Waben sind heißenlos. Ich gelobe, sie zu beherrschen. Wer erlebt es, wurde es unübertrefflich. Ich gelobe, ihn zu erreichen. Megawakuranyorai, holoshinjutsu nyo deshikate matsurai.

[18:22]

May God bless you and your family. May God bless you and your family. May God bless you. It makes me happy to hear the Dharma in German. And we're chanting better, I think, in German than at first. You're chanting better, and I'm chanting a lot better, even if it's a little.

[19:25]

Now, how to proceed? This is the last day. Yeah. And how to continue and finish what we've been talking about in some way And to speak about it in a way that becomes your present memory. By present memory I mean memory that's at hand in your present moments. Because what's usually available to us in our present mind is not the Dharma. What's available to us is the karma. Hmm. Now, again, I think we've understood pretty well the use of practice to discover edges.

[21:04]

Sounds right. For example, with the mudra, you... through maintaining the mudra you see the edge of your mind and of course this maintaining of the mudra as a practice includes the whole body how your neck is your chin and so forth and the alignment throughout your body. And the more your outer alignment is in tune with the inner alignment of the energy body, your practice will be

[22:13]

And your ease of mind will be much greater and much easier. Now we also inevitably saw that pain can also be practiced with like a mudra. You can see how pain is changed by a slight difference in your posture. Or by a difference in the mind that's receiving the pain. So pain can also show you a great deal. Adjusting to pain. It's a, you know, a demanding teacher.

[23:28]

And I think we need demanding teachers sometimes. Yeah. Now, I translated yesterday. I said... The world cannot hide it. Her capacity stands fully revealed. In situations, she doesn't get stuck. When there's movement, her full power is revealed. And the last phrase I translated, in her phrases, there is, her phrases are pivotal, pivotal phrases, I said.

[24:29]

Now, actually, what it says is, in her phrases, there's no partiality. Partiality? Help, she's impartial. You're quite impartial, so you should know this word. There's no partiality. Now, that partly means you don't have a mind which holds grudges. That holds anger and so forth. You can put anger in the mind, but it just sinks out of sight. There's a couple of bubbles, but then it's gone. The bubbles stink, but you know.

[25:45]

But then when you try to get down there to find it, it's gone. It's not there in the unconscious anymore. But partiality also means, no, partiality means the sense of a pivotal mind. a mind that sees both sides, a mind that sees emptiness and form, absolute and relative, sees distinctions like practice based on phenomena, practiced based on mind, which is most of what we've been talking about this session, and practiced based on thusness or sameness. So you feel these edges. Let's say we feel the edge between ordinary reality and non-ordinary reality.

[27:03]

Now, ordinary is a good word for this. Und gewöhnlich ist ein gutes Wort dafür. It comes from to order, of course, and to ordain and, yeah. Das kommt von ordnen und von ordinieren. Yeah, and to weave. Literally, ordo means the row of threads on a loom. So ordinary reality is woven a certain way. Mm-hmm. And when you're ordained, it means you begin to reweave your reality. That's one reason we make our own raksas, we sow. The word sow is also sutra, sutra.

[28:05]

And that's also the reason why we make our own raksas. In the word make, in English, there is also sutra. So these words like weaving and sewing are words rooted in our basic sense of reality. Okay, we've got this door of Manjushri. So now we're working with the image. It's Manjushri's door. Now what I'm saying here is the texture of mind... When the texture of mind is determined by images, it's much more accurate and refreshing than when the texture of mind is determined by ideas and generalizations.

[29:39]

Like seeing this again as nature is pretty dead. To see it as the sight of particular greens has much more vitality. To see it as an image again of, say, cicadas or the water sound and smells, this is an image, something put together. So now the unique practice of Zen is to bring phrases, pivotal phrases into your present memory. We could say mindfulness, but I'm saying present memory.

[30:40]

And I try different ways of saying these things to give us more access to what's going on. So what's unique to Zen practice among Buddhist schools is the mnemonic use. Mnemonic means memory-based or repetition-based. I could say mantric or mnemonic. Use of pivotal phrases. And use of pivotal images. Like you bring a phrase, like moo, to your mind. Now, I use present memory again, emphasizing today.

[31:41]

Because when I look at something, the stick, I see the word stick. I see that it's very much like the stick Suzuki Roshi always carried. And And I see it as Mu. So my present memory brings several things to it at once. It's crucial what your present... The constitution of your present memory is your reality. Now, we can do something about that. That's why I'm putting it this way. You can re-weave your present memory.

[33:00]

So, by repetition, you bring into it some phrase. Just now is enough. Already connected. Or Mu. Or Mu. Or, you know, like in the first case of the Blue Cliff Records, on the other side of the mountain, when you see smoke, you know there's fire. Now here the image we're working with is Manjushri's door. First of all, it's Manjushri's. Second, it's a door. It's an edge. And third, what's on the other side of this door? Or what's the secret to enter this door?

[34:00]

Is all conditioned things. wood, earth, tile and stones and they will help you awaken your potential now Avalokiteshvara's door through which we discover our potential as this Master Chu says is to know all sounds and echoes. Even clams and spiders. Yes, next session we'll work on clams and spiders. I listen for your clams and spiders.

[35:12]

Okay. Now there's various parts of me. One part of me is very accepting of you. I don't want to use schmaltzy words, but there's a good deal of affection I feel for you guys. And I really appreciate you just as you are. But I also, another part of me expects great things of you. I expect greatness of you. I expect intelligence. Vision. Intention.

[36:12]

Effort. Yeah. And when it's not there, one part of me tries to murder you. I'm sorry, I can't help it. It's out of my control. So this thing, this... You see, you know, great master Ma, Matsu, brought Baizhang to Manjushri's door. and said, what is it, what is it? And Bai Zhang, great Bai Zhang, he only saw geese.

[37:19]

So great Master Ma grabbed him by the nose and pulled him through the door. So sometimes we have to do this. Or at least push you through the door. Or sometimes just trip you. Like when somebody's walking, you put your foot out and they follow. Because sometimes we don't discover ourselves, we stumble across it. So it says, her phrases are always impartial. Everywhere they intend to kill people. This means the mind that sees both ordinary reality and That mind that sees both, that mind that's impartial, can't help but try to push you through Manjushri's door.

[38:36]

Yeah. So sometimes I see, you know, I know when you are actually saying goodbye to me. You think you're saying it's only going to be different, but I know you're saying goodbye. Or I know when you've been standing on the Manjushri's doorstep for eight years and you'll never go through it. And I know when your practice is to stand on the doorstep and you will eventually go through. And I know when you say hello to me. Because you've seen that We, I and others in the Dharma Sangha and the Dharma Sangha itself knows what's on the other side of this door.

[40:02]

So I can hear you sometimes when you say hello and you have made the decision to go through this door. Now do we have the capacity though Do we have the strength? Now there's a number of obstacles before this door. Now Manjushri himself or herself is there as the gatekeeper. Don't forget it's Manjushri's door. So she's giving you the look over. Looking you over. Yeah. Sometimes, anyway.

[41:17]

And so if it's Manjushri's door, you have to become Manjushri to go through it. This is no fooling around. This is do you put your life on your decisions? You know, most of us think we have a lot of lives. It's the delusion of permanence. You think you can do several lives at once right now. And not only do you think you have several lives at once now that you can follow, you also think you have quite a few additional lives. Und ihr denkt nicht nur, dass ihr gleichzeitig mehrere Leben habt jetzt, sondern ihr glaubt auch, ihr habt noch mehrere zusätzliche Leben. Die alle folgen werden von diesen verschiedenen Leben, die ihr jetzt lebt. Aber einmal wacht ihr auf und stellt fest, dass ihr nur dieses eine Leben habt.

[42:20]

Und dass es kurz ist. And that death is near. Because you're not sick and suffering, you don't think death is near. Death is near. What a relief. Death clears things up quite a lot. Mm-hmm. When you know you have only one life and it's short, particular circumstances become your life. You can't fool around with generalizations and ideas anymore. You want what really nourishes you.

[43:22]

What really utilizes your power. You know, this Kawafi has a wonderful poem. He says, we come to the point where we are faced with the great yes or the great no. And we say no. And we affirm that no. And there's no going back. So this is Manjushri's door where you are faced with the great yes or the great no. Where the particular... What does he say? What does it say? Earth, wood, tiles, stone. All conditioned things.

[44:36]

And it's quite interesting. Earth is so-called natural. Wood is something with a human history. As is tile. And then stones are something so-called natural. But in this mind of Manjushri, they're all similarly conditioned things. They're all impermanent. So on each conditioned thing, you see impermanence. and your own impermanence which means to know death is near always near in this space I like, you know, Philip Whelan has a nice little poem It's called Haiku for Gary Snyder.

[45:51]

And it says, just says, is. The place where a dragon fly. The place where a Dragonfly. One of those little sticks with four wings. Is the place where a dragonfly totally was is no longer there. The place where a dragonfly totally was is no longer there. But that place is still there.

[46:53]

It's ready for a wild goose. Or it's ready for a wild Gerhardt. Or even Peter Oechsle. Or even Peter Oechsle. Or an untamed Geralt. Yeah. Peter, you told me I was a clown. I'm trying to... I'll have to hold it back. Yeah. So... So all conditioned things It means to know your particular circumstances. Not ideas.

[47:54]

Your particular circumstances and you see they're conditioned. They're impermanent. They interpenetrate. They're space itself. Their mind itself. And they echo with, as stone echoes with our own solidity. These conditioned things are also us. So this opens us to see the particularity of conditioned things. It's also the mind, this big mind of wisdom. It's to re-weave our present memory. To re-weave Make your present memory, your present moment embedded in particular things.

[49:00]

So to practice with the particularity of eachness Yeah. is to enter Manjushri's door. And we realize, awaken our potential. Now, these obstacles, first of all, as I said, Manjushri is there. And you have to know Manjushri's mind. Which is a mind which knows emptiness on form. In other words, knows emptiness through conditioned things.

[50:06]

This is also zazen mind which sees mind, observes mind as well as the objects of mind. But in observing the objects of mind there is a turn of direction toward mind itself. That's the door of Manjushri. You see objects and they turn. And when you see objects, you see mind at the same time. And the direction is away from objects toward mind. So we say, no eyes, no ears, no nose, etc. Okay, so this is the door of Manjushri. And you can practice with conditioned things in this way.

[51:34]

embedding your mind in the particularity of conditioned things. And seeing them as conditioned. It means to bring teaching into your present memory. So you don't just see the stick. You see it conditioned by all the associations. And that someone made it. It's both wood and trees. It will eventually disappear. And so forth. Okay, I said I would discuss the obstacles. The first obstacle are basic views.

[52:41]

Deluded views. Views that arise, they're basic because they arise from the senses and are three-dimensional externalization. Through the senses, we tend to see things as permanent. I open my eyes and I close them. I open my eyes, the tree's still there, etc. I tend to see it as permanent. It's a habit. It's a habit in our present memory. And every time, all the time, the senses are reinforcing this habit. And we tend to see things as outside. So there's this three-dimensionality that we know things are, as I say often, this is far more complex event than three-dimensionality.

[54:02]

But we have a seemingly three-dimensional world. So that's the first basic views that are obstacles. As long as you see things that way, you won't get through Manjushri's door. And second is what I'd call conditioned or cultural views. And that is the habit of society directing attention outwards. Society has to control us by controlling our sense self-worth. Our sense of self-worth is the way society controls us.

[55:09]

As you probably know, India has exploded five nuclear devices. And Pakistan has responded by exploding supposedly five, but probably less, but they're saying five. And in India and Pakistan, the streets are filled with jubilant people. It's elation. It's a super World Cup. It's one thing to get elated because Liverpool wins. Yeah, it's fairly harmless.

[56:10]

Unless you're not next to those British fans. But that a whole country is jubilant Because they've built nuclear weapons and now they're going to mount them on rockets. They're going to put them on the tips of missiles. I mean, it doesn't take much intelligence to know this is stupid. And the issue is largely Kashmir. And you didn't expect a little political talk in the middle of this, did you? But India would be much better off just to give Kashmir to Pakistan. And then trade with it. I mean, AT&T didn't want to be split up into small telephone companies.

[57:31]

But there's much more wealth when there's a lot of small telephone companies than one big one. I mean, who cares who owns cashmere? There are a lot of other things that are more important. But India and Pakistan control their population through nationalism and identifying nationalism and self-worth. So our self-worth is our attention directed outward. And our society just does it in a more sophisticated way in terms of degrees, jobs, career, and so forth. Yeah, it's still manipulated self-worth in the service of self-governance. modern societies are too complicated to be run by an elite so they've got to get you to control yourself and what do they want?

[58:50]

your attention your most precious commodity is your attention This world is determined by what you give attention to. The media's job is to get a hold on your attention and then sell your attention to companies. who narrow your choices, no, increase your choices, but, I don't know how to say it, they give you an infinite number of choices, and you get, well, that's great, but none of the choices are wisdom or compassion.

[60:00]

So the whole technique of modern government is to control an outwardly directed attention. And we are in a very fundamental way held in place by our attention. Our sense of self. Our sense of up and down. Our body image. Our sense of what the world is, three-dimensional and so forth. And the sense of what other people is as sentient and separate. All these are the ingredients of our present memory. And the problem is, they're reinforced by fear. If you really start having experiences which throw this into doubt, You can think you're going crazy.

[61:25]

You can think you're losing your place in the world. You can feel you're losing what's up and down or where the ground is or what your body is. So you need a lot of strength to face this. So part of the problem is we also don't have the capacity to go through Manjushri's door. For example, one of the things that happens to us is that in general, spiritual experience and psychological experience get mixed up. And insights, wisdom, enlightening experiences get mixed up with psychic phenomena and there's no place for it to go. And it goes into a mental space.

[62:37]

And it's not grounded in the body. It's not grounded in wood, tile, earthen stone. It's not grounded in any interior space. And basically it becomes difficult to practice. So to practice, you have to increase your capacity to distinguish between psychological and spiritual. And you have to have the interior space to allow this expression. And you have to have an integrated energy body so that you can move through the door. Because in general we're frozen in our present memory. And this simple exercise I gave you of separating the sense of place from the witness It's like a shuttle which can begin a new weaving.

[63:54]

Because your witness is almost completely frozen in the present memory, basic views, cultural views. It doesn't think it can go anywhere. Doesn't think it changes. It thinks it's permanent. But if you begin to notice your sense of place can be different. You begin to discover your power to move. To begin to weave, reweave your life. To weave into your life other, to weave into your life wisdom. To actually take up a practice with the consequences of that practice.

[65:13]

To discover the effortlessness of one-pointedness. When there's no hindrance, there's no fear. When there's no fear, there's no hindrance. These obstacles create fear. When these obstacles are gone, there's no fear. So the main obstacles are basic views, cultural views, which are primarily determined by the direction and text of attention.

[66:17]

your capacity for experience, and your actual strength to change yourself. And last is self, selfishness, ego, etc. And what most people talk about is the hindrance, but it's the least important. If you can face the first four, self is a pushover. And if you look at the first four, then the last one is simply pushover. Pushover means? Yes. Yes, I don't know what I just did, but there it is.

[67:22]

It's the jubilation, the elation in India and Pakistan which worry me, not the nuclear weapons. They're dancing in delusion. Delusion of how they define their present. how they discover their self-worth and how they join their sense of self-worth and it's dependent on others and how their self-worth is determined through others that's not much different for us This is the real barrier to penetrate through these cultural and basic views.

[68:57]

And to develop our capacity and strength. To go through Manjushri's door. to realize how things exist and discover this power of being in accord with things. To be in accord with all beings also means to be in accord with you, yourself. You can't be in accord with others until you are in accord with yourself. How you actually exist. This is our practice, to come into accord with how we actually exist. To have the courage of that. To not get stuck in situations.

[70:12]

To when we move, move with our own power. And to be able to act with impartiality. Which means to be able to see both sides of things. Yeah, I feel I haven't made this very clear. And I also feel I've made it too clear. So you think it's something understandable. This is not understandable. This is something you have to put the heart and whole of you into. Möge unsere Absicht in gleichem Aussehen...

[71:17]

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