to repeat what you said this morning or tell it again, what you said this morning to me driving over here. Want to translate? I'll tell you in a minute. About seeing your younger brother and what Berlin was like before the seminar And seeing your younger brother in Berlin after the seminar. Yes. So in the evening I had a soft with my brothers, younger brothers. And then I wanted to, actually I thought, oh my God, why do I always have to go to seminars and what's the point of that at all? And then I went to the U-Seminars and I found the people there very attractive. difficult and I didn't like the room.

[01:03]

And it was actually, yes, it was actually more than that. After two hours, when I was there, I went out and there was the work machine and the food and so on. And then there were also two Turkish workers who had cleaned up the subway. They then helped me and somehow it suddenly came about out of nowhere, so really a very busy afternoon, where I was with the work machine. And yes, suddenly I'm an Uber and then someone who makes music comes in. And somehow it was really a different film that I was involved in. And that happened to me more often, but it was very blatant. And afterwards, it went on like that, too. This is the important part that we actually have. This turning around suddenly into a completely different perception and into a different communication, too. Can you hear in the back there? Well, of course, there's a lot of factors here.

[02:05]

Berlin may have actually been a different city after the seminar. And maybe she just happened upon a really bunch of nice people who were dealing wonderfully with this inconvenience of the tickets not working. That's clearly possible. Yeah. Well, not that Berlin would be an entirely different city, but... But it's more likely that the determining factor was your state of mind. And that your state of mind also contributed to the good state of mind of the other people. Or if one of those persons had a good state of mind, you helped communicate it. Hmm.

[03:09]

Yesterday, coming back on the U-Bahn from hearing the Dalai Lama, there were very large streams of people trying to get into the U-Bahn. And at one point, Micheline and Ulrike were almost entering a train. And I was blocked by a bicycle and a guy with a big backpack. And I tried to push by this guy and sort of turned him and his backpack. Because the doors were just closing. And I thought, here I am in the center of nowhere. I mean, I've cultivated helplessness and I do not speak a word of German.

[04:29]

And I didn't know where the address was. I didn't have a phone number. So I kind of was trying to get by this bicycle. Almost lost him. It creates a kind of interesting danger all the time for me. And I had a feeling I'd be wandering around in no-name U-Bahn station. Saying, hello, V. Gates. Hello, V. Gates. And not understanding the answer. And not understanding the answer. Anyway, we all got on finally to one of these trains. And it was quite full. And everyone was very cheery.

[05:47]

I mean, this train had hundreds of people. As far as you could see, every car was packed. And there was a wonderful feeling of ease in the train. And one guy you could see was not part of it. And he was in a grumpy state of mind, which I hear is occasionally common in Bavaria. And he got up, and I don't know what he was saying, but it was like saying, I can't get out of here, get out of my way. And he was as afraid as I was that I couldn't get on the train, that he couldn't get off. Except he knew where he was.

[07:02]

Anyway, at one point, Micheline again mentioned, she said, I could be on a train sometimes and all these people would be very upsetting for me or annoying to have all these people pressed in on you. But she felt very comfortable. And think about it for a minute. Many thousands of people went to this talk. They weren't Buddhists. They were some version of Protestants. And they were in a wonderful, relaxed mood. And they were changing the whole area of the city where they were. Und die haben den ganzen Stadtteil, in dem sie waren, verändert.

[08:19]

And that was some thousands of people doing it, right? Und einige tausende Menschen haben das getan. But who changed those thousands of people? Aber wer veränderte diese tausende von Menschen? The Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama. And he did it without them understanding Buddhism and he just talked and scratched his head. Ja, der hat es ohne, dass die etwas vom Buddhismus verstanden haben, der hat es ihrem Kopf gekratzt und Like a, what did, you didn't translate chipmunk. Yeah, wie ein Streifenhörnchen. Streifenhörnchen. Do you have herfen one or herfen two, a streifenhörnchen? A-Hörnchen, B-Hörnchen. So. So. Yes. But if my practice isn't developed yet or isn't strong enough yet, so in a certain environment I can't hold my practice, I assume like the Dalai Lama, and it just goes under.

[09:53]

I feel I'm feeling the same way. We'd better stick together. Now, to overwork this definition I've been overworking, Now, Reuschecker gave very good talk, which I enjoyed. Very intelligent. And insightful. I was quite impressed. But where was he standing in his body? Where was his lived body?

[11:17]

And he wasn't just speaking stuff. He was speaking stuff he deeply felt, too. But his stance was here. And he went back and forth between these two. Pretty much like the tea teacher who was very good at tea ceremony. And with holiness the stance was there. And I guarantee you it's really that simple. There was more content to what Weizsäcker said than what his holiness said. Yeah, but the holiness is going, he's here, and then he goes to here, and then he goes back to here. But he's almost never here.

[12:21]

So you were engaged with him. You thought, what's he going to say next? What's he going to do? And in the middle of this talk, in this huge auditorium, when His Holiness saw me, he waved. First we gave each other little bows, which I didn't understand. Then he waved, and then I waved back. But Weizsäcker wouldn't have done that. If he'd seen an old friend, oh! But his holiness was able to do it in a way that almost nobody noticed. But it wasn't a big deal. It was just kind of... So, this kind of consciousness transformed thousands of people at that room who transformed the yuban and then singing.

[13:41]

They were singing songs. You could hear a song passing up and down the train. Each of you is as talented as the Dalai Lama. You're not going to learn all the permutations of visualization that he knows. But this ability you can learn as well as you can. And I believe you can transform your society equally. And the more you can be here, your work will change. Yes? Okay. You didn't discuss it in your group? Well, I said, well, it's small.

[15:04]

Well, why don't you give your example, Enrique, because I like your new example with the floor instead of the birthday. Yes, let's start with the immediate consciousness. So I now have the perception of where I sit, for example. That I am sitting on the floor. And this is an experience that I can make immediately. I don't need to think much about it, I just perceive it with my leg, my thighs, my feet, how they touch the floor. I am sitting in meditation now. When I open my eyes a little, I can examine the ground a little more closely, visually. I can see that it is grey, that it has a milled pattern. I can see that it is clean, for example. But these are all things There is no need for information that comes from outside of me.

[16:06]

But I go into a secondary or somewhat loaded consciousness because I now basically enlarge my perception of meaning, include more fields of meaning and also compare. But these are all things that I experience myself and experience from myself. But if I now think about it, aha, the ground is plastic. For example, at this moment I am in a protected consciousness, because I cannot make the experience that this is plastic without anyone explaining to me the difference between plastic and natural materials. And then I can play it even further. I can think about whether there is PVC in it, whether it can be reused or whether it develops toxic gases when burning and so on. And this is always more protected and always... No, I think that the important difference between these is that borrowed consciousness is not deeply rooted in you. It's energetically different.

[17:37]

It's not arising from you. It's arising only or primarily from conceptual thought. And as I repeatedly pointed out, Our entire educational system is almost entirely based in borrowed consciousness. And when you're involved with what people think of you and status and things like that, you're in here. And as Ulrika said, I believe you have to know something about this like this, maybe this vinyl floor, plastic floor may be off gassing and slowly killing us all. And that's probably not noticeable in a short time and you need research and so on. So nothing's bad about this. It's only a problem if this is where you live. It's much healthier to live here because it's rooted, deeply rooted in your own experience and energetically nourished by the phenomenal world and your activities.

[19:10]

And you can usually tell the difference as you become more sensitive and practice makes you more sensitive. For example, practice makes you sensitive in such a way, if you start saying things you don't like, you may find you bite your tongue. Well, before practice, you can say horrible things and not bite your tongue. Or you may find you stub your toe or bump things when your state of mind is off for a moment. Anyway, borrowed consciousness is pretty thin. And you can usually start to feel, as I said, as you practice. When what you're doing nourishes you and what you're doing depletes you.

[20:24]

And immediately you start feeling depleted in this here. Do you know when you watch television for too long, you start feeling like you're being sucked? What? I think this is the whole problem with the whole peace movement and the whole green movement or the whole political movement, while we all at some point got really drained doing this kind of work because these endless debates... we're all in borrowed consciousness. So I think that's also the reason why so many of us who were probably once very politically engaged or are now very active in environmental protection or sometimes would like to be more politically active and apply for environmental protection, why you often feel so exhausted instead of actually being stimulated and feeling nourished.

[21:36]

Because too often, unfortunately, in these endless debates, You know, we started in San Francisco when I was head of the Zen group there. We started an organization called the Neighborhood Foundation. And we started a local grocery store. And designed and built a pretty big new park. And when we first started doing that, we were giving that working primarily in a black neighborhood and giving ex-convicts work and things like that. We get some gold medalist black runners to organize the local track team.

[22:41]

It did very well, the track team. So we did a lot of things. But when we first went around and tried to get involved ourselves with various neighborhood things, they said, oh, you white kids, you always burn out. And I said, unless you're really poor and angry, you don't have the energy to do this. You'd burn out in a year or so. And literally it took five or six years to win their confidence, but after five or six years they came to see us and said, you guys didn't burn out.

[23:46]

We hand it to you. And it was clearly meditation that let us not burn out. Okay, let me finish this little picture. So you can begin to notice when you feel depleted and when you feel nourished. You can also notice a little bump that you go over a little bump when you move from borrowed to energy. So I've drawn the bumps here. So here is... Here is an immediate consciousness.

[24:52]

Where should I put it? Let's put it here. This is immediate consciousness. I see. And here is borrowed consciousness. And you're set. And when you're practicing, there's a kind of, when you're first starting to practice, you can practice with no effort to go up to here. Quite an effort to go up to here. You have some kind of bright presence of samadhi, but very quickly many distracted thoughts come in and draw you into secondary, back into body. So you can't stay in immediate positive or samadhi very long. Because the adhesive quality of our consciousness keeps... But after you practice for a while, you get very attached to Vedic consciousness.

[26:16]

And then you begin having trouble at your job. Because you like being here. And this is a friend of mine who's a doctor, told us in Berlin. All these patients come in with their long list of problems. And they won't even wait before reading one. They read the next one and the next one. They won't get involved. And he knows most of these problems are just, you know. And he starts getting mad at these patients because he wants to stay in immediate consciousness. They're trying to drag him into the world.

[27:26]

This is kind of a Zen sickness. You get stuck in immediate consciousness and you don't want to... But the advantage is this, is when you're in borrowed consciousness, as soon as you don't have to be in it, what it will be. So this is the marketplace of illusion here, the plaza. So this is in the marketplace, you have to go back and forth between these two quite regularly. So developed practice is to, you know... Yeah. Now, what time is it? Oh, my gosh. I think we should take a break.

[28:50]

But you had a question. It's sort of related to what we're talking about. Yeah, sure. My question is also, I'm sorry to read the questions, and I said also to my child, which brings me permanently in a kind of conflict with the aggressiveness, which also according to the concept of tonight, I'd like to... be aware and not follow too much aggressiveness. But in the job, I'm forced many times actually to make certain steps and make certain, prepare certain decisions which cause a lot of trouble to other people. And knowing that, I still am convinced that that's the right decision. So I don't have a permanent conflict between not wanting to hurt somebody or cause problems to somebody.

[29:59]

On the other hand, also do something which is painful, but maybe still a better position for the whole. So, and I think you mentioned before that you sometimes have to close a plant or something like that and put people out of work. So you want to say it in German? Könntest du es auf Deutsch sagen? Oder soll ich es übersetzen? Ich habe immer gerufen, öfters auch die Situation, dass ich die Liquidität gar nicht ausübe. aggressive actions against other people, even though I don't want to do that in practice. When I do the activity, I do it not only because there are decisions and actions that are difficult to solve. And knowing that I don't want to do it, I still want to do it, because I think that the whole thing will be developed.

[31:17]

Resulting from the fact that the factory will be closed. And here I am in a conflict with the fact that aggressiveness is not to be lived. The principle of aggressiveness is not to be lived, and that is what we are trying to do, and that is what we are trying to do, and that is what we are trying to do, and that is what we are trying to do. Yeah. Well, I think there's no answer except to try to do these things the best you can, knowing that they're difficult decisions.

[32:30]

I remember a friend of mine, this is a sort of anecdote, partly relevant. I was staying with a friend of mine named Ron Eyre in London at one point. And he was trying to cast Othello, I believe. He was a director in the British stage. He was going down all the pictures of actors. They had this book of actors in England. He was going down all the pictures. And he said, Othello has to be played by somebody who could fire 1,400 people before lunch and then go to lunch. He said actors aren't usually that kind of person. So it's hard to find somebody who has that kind of ability.

[33:45]

Hmm. So anyway, I think if you can, I would say that as long as you feel you're making the right decision, you just do the best you can. And I would guess after, if you continue practicing after, over time you'll be able to bring more and more subtlety to the decisions. But I don't think it's easy. I started, as part of a meditation center, I started five or six businesses that were quite successful.

[34:47]

And then at another point on my own, I started a business that was meant to support me and my meditation center, but I started as a straight business with stockholders and things. And I found a very big difference right away. Because when I started the business as part of a meditation center, the center was very well known for doing good things and so forth.

[36:02]

And I was very well known in the city. And I realized as a result of that, which I didn't know at the time, that I lived in a kind of aura of people being very nice to me. When I started this other business in another city, I found that I was pretty powerless and nearly broke all the time. And I had no authority with which to threaten these other business people I was dealing with. And except for one person or two people, the majority of them tried to cheat me in every way they could think of. Lying to me, making immensely complex contracts that would cost five to ten thousand dollars just to have read by a lawyer.

[37:02]

And I actually spent that kind of money to try to figure these damn things out, and then they'd make changes that would cost me another $5,000 or $6,000. And I realized I just didn't have either personal authority or financial authority to do much about this. And I found it a disgusting experience. And if I had to be in business that way, I couldn't do it. Because it deteriorated my own experience of human beings. But business can be very many different kinds of experiences.

[38:14]

And I think if you can find a way to do it with honesty and subtlety, it's good. But how you practice and not compromise and so forth in serious ways, it's difficult. But what you brought up is Thich Nhat Hanh's precepts. Now, Thich Nhat Hanh is presenting precepts where you don't even drink a single glass of wine ever. And this is not difficult to do. But it's not so important whether it's difficult or not.

[39:28]

The point is, what kind of life is it presenting? And what Thich Nhat Hanh is presenting is, we could say, maybe a Buddha way of life in lay life. In which all the time you are in your relationship with people going back toward immediate consciousness, going back toward Buddha nature. Now Bodhisattva practice is to go along with people in their own circumstances. They say when a bodhisattva meets a thief, he or she becomes a thief. Or bodhisattva can be in someone else's shoes. Und ein Bodhisattva kann auch in den Schuhen von jemand anders sein, ohne die eigenen Schuhe zu verlassen.

[40:50]

So the direction is toward people rather than toward the Buddha. So in a way he's presenting a monk-like life that you lead in the midst of lay life. And I find myself teaching more a way to lead a lay life that... He's presenting a monk's life and lay life. I'm presenting a lay life and monk's... I don't know. It's a little different. Yes. Yeah. So the question is, you know, my feeling is that if you're with people, you do what they do. You may not do it to excess, but you do what they do. You go along with them, but in a different way. And it's a different way of understanding the precepts. And Thay has asked me to write a section or something, a chapter or essay in his book on precepts.

[41:53]

He wants me to write an essay on precepts. So I'm wondering how to do this in his book and also support his way of teaching the precept. Now, what we just talked about was more in secondary consciousness and a bit in borrowed consciousness, and I think you can feel the energy in the room is different. Now you can return to more immediate consciousness just now by just notice your inhale, notice your exhale right now.

[42:55]

And you can now return to this immediate consciousness immediately by simply concentrating on your breath. So let's have a short break of 10 or 15 minutes, and then I'd like to just introduce the koan, and then we'll stop.

[44:13]

And I want to thank Ulrike again for always translating. a bit before we end. But I also feel it's a little unfair if I don't say something about the koan. Since we've given you this long text. And as I said, it's easy to get bogged down in such a long text.

[45:15]

So mainly just read the first page or half of the first page. Then I think since you're lucky enough to have the whole translation in German, it can be something you can come back to as you wish, and it will open up if you come back to it at the right pace. Basically, this is the same koan as last week's or the previous koan in this book. And it represents the two great contemporaries at the beginning period of Zen Buddhism in China. And in the Blue Cliff Records version of this koan, the question is not what is the great meaning of Buddhism,

[46:28]

But rather the question is, what is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming to the West, or what is the meaning of Buddhism appearing in a culture? And it says, beyond affirmation or... Beyond affirmation or aversion or rejection? What? Negation. Beyond affirmation and negation. What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming to the West, Buddhism coming to the West? Niskoen says beyond the four, apart from the

[47:45]

Four propositions. And four propositions are... You, you, me. We think things like this. Now, we don't really have to spend much time with this. But if you ask yourself the question, how do things exist?

[49:09]

The more deeply you ask yourself the question, do they exist? Do they have an essence? Et cetera. Are they predictable? How do they exist? You come to the conclusion you can't really say exactly they exist. So then you can try on the alternative. Do things not exist? Well, you can't say they don't exist either. You can't name things as existing. That doesn't pan out. You can't name things as not existing. Okay, so you can try on a state of mind which is they don't exist and they don't not exist. Or you can try on a state of mind that says, well, they exist and they don't exist.

[50:19]

In other words, Nagarjuna developed this. And it's the basic four forms of naming. You can't have any more forms of naming than that. And his point is, even this is a form of naming, and this is a form of naming. And even this creates a kind of permanence. So this question is, independent of all this kind of naming, point out the meaning of living good. So Matsya says, oh, I'm tired out today.

[51:22]

Please, don't ask, we'll recover. And Ulrike says, well, why didn't you ask the teacher? Yeah, he did that. And so the monk says, well, the teacher told me to come and ask you. So Ulrike says, I have a headache today. I mean, really. I've been lecturing, I mean, teaching, I mean, translating too long. Ask Sister Micheline. And so the monk goes over to Sister Micheline and says, so I've come this far and, uh, And you say, when I've come this far, at this point, I don't understand.

[52:27]

Okay, and so Lamont goes back to me and says, And she had headache and she didn't understand. And I say, ah, you know, Ulrike's head is white and Micheline's head is black. What did she, what the devil did she do? I didn't say, I mean, I didn't talk to her. For Himmels Willen, worüber reden die? Anyway, that's the koan. Yeah, and I have an headache right now, and I think we should do some zazen.

[53:32]

So you might ask yourself the question this evening. If it comes to you to do so, how do I really think things exist? How do they exist? When I name something or look at something, am I really in fact naming it into permanence? Or do I see it as impermanent? To ask yourself this question at the moment-by-moment, at the moment-by-moment perceptual level is the practice of this first of the four propositions.

[57:03]

And maybe you'll begin to see the uniqueness and brightness of each thing. Maybe you can a little bit see into the in-betweenness of this world. I don't ask about the single hair, but what about the myriad holes? Pierced. Thank you very much for a wonderful day today.

[62:15]

I can't imagine anything I'd rather have done than spend the day with you guys. And is there anybody who would like to... We'll start the seminar tomorrow at 10. And we'll start the seminar tomorrow at 10. Is there anyone who lives near enough or would like to have meditation here in this room at 9? No? Okay, so we start at 10. Werner? Werner doesn't live near, but he would like to. Okay, well then I think, could he get the key from you? Okay, so Werner will open up at nine, then anybody who wants to come at nine can join you. And you can take the bell and ring it and do all of those things. Oh, good. Okay. Auf Wiedersehen, sweetheart.

[63:21]

Sayonara. This lovely day has flown away. Do you know that song? The time has come to part. I tried that technique. Please sit comfortably, stretch.

[64:58]

Let's use the dance bar. I'm waiting for the people who went to the toilet, perhaps.

[67:31]

How are all of you this morning? Okay. Some not okay? You're not okay? Your brother's not okay. Did you crash the gate last night? No. 50 feet away. Really? Did anybody mistake you for four hats? Somebody for his wife. They tried to get into the play last night of Peter Brooks based on the man who mistook his wife for a hat. I'll start this morning with an anecdote. I'd like to start this morning with a story. in the American vaudeville tradition, which is an early theater tradition that led to American musicals and early movies and so forth.

[69:09]

There were classic ways to start stories. Like, who is that man I saw with your wife last night? Or, a funny thing happened on the way to the pub. So, Rika... Ulrike likes to take a break and maybe have some exercise or swim a little when we're traveling so much. So I'm a more compulsive type and I'm always reading or meeting people or something.

[70:11]

So if Buddhism doesn't relax me, then Ulrike is going to find a way to do it. So I said, okay, I'll go with you and let's find a place to take a break and have a swim. So she said her old friend, who happens to be here right now, from Munich, took her to a place, a hotel which has a place to swim. So we went to this holiday inn. For our holiday.

[71:20]

Our holy day. Anyway. So Eureka went to the sauna and the sauna was too hot for me. So I had a little cold last week, so it's better not to go in the sauna. So I swam laps for a while. And Ulrike... Then I was sitting reading an international newspaper. And Ulrike was swimming laps. And suddenly a Tibetan Buddhist monk walked by. And then I... We thought we were undiscoverable.

[72:31]

Then I realized he was with a woman I've known off and on for about 10 years. Well, I believe Petra knows too, named Inga. Inga, yeah. So I put my newspaper down in my bathing suit and Ulrike climbed out of the pool. We went and talked to this very nice monk. And he's on his way to Vienna where there's a UN conference on human rights or something. So Inka said, well, why don't you see his holiness tomorrow morning? So I said, that would be nice. She said, he'd like to see you, I'm sure, and so forth.

[73:40]

So we said, okay. So this morning, because he was staying at the Biershof? Bavarian Hof? So we went there and it was arranged so that when he came downstairs we'd have a chance to talk for a moment or two. Because he was in an interview and things like that. So when he came downstairs, it was very nice. He gave me a very warm greeting. And we talked for a little bit. And I gave him, he asked where I was staying, and I couldn't explain, but I gave him the pictures that you took of the new Zendo and the area, Kirsten.

[74:52]

A few other pictures, but I had to come here and be with you, so I didn't go any further. But it was very nice to see him. Anything you want to add? Since you were part of the story, It was a very beautiful experience for me, how the different threads of life, how they suddenly, in this place that I have been familiar with for a long time and that I also have fond memories of, how they came together and helped us to meet His Holiness. It was very impressive.

[75:54]

Anyway, I didn't really realize coming to Munich he was here, but it was nice to see him. He stayed at my temple in America for about a week and a half in 82. I've seen him off and on since. So let me try to say something about this koan again. And I can't, as for those of you who have taken the time to read at least the case, and my enactment of the case last night with Micheline and Ulrike, you notice that the responses of Micheline

[77:13]

Matsu's two disciples. Both of them and including Matsu himself kind of deflected the question or walked away or said they had a headache. And so I should really answer in the same style. I should tell you I have a headache now and I'm going to go take a break. But it's not that I should imitate the style of the koan. It's that there's really what this koan is about. There's really no other way to approach it. Because the meaning of this koan is that there are some things, or what this koan is pointing out, is that there are some things that can't be approached.

[78:36]

But let me again say something a little bit about the history of this koan. And I'll just do this very quickly, but I'd like to put it in some perspective. That's what I started to do last night. And... There's some new people here today, and I can't re-head, recapitulate what we talked about yesterday, so you'll just, it'll be all right. Buddhism passes from country to country through people's bodies. It's not passed by preaching.

[79:48]

So it can't really be passed by books. It has to be passed by practitioners. And also it has to, if it's passed by people's bodies, then it has to be passed in the culture, cultural language of the new culture. One of the big issues for Plato and why he was against poetry and the more Homeric culture that preceded him Because the culture before Plato in the West was based on oral memory.

[81:04]

Where your body knows the culture and can recite the text. As poetry is lower in the body and prose is higher in the body. And I think logos becomes in the West the main way in which society and the world is ordered. So I think Plato's insight was that you couldn't change society and make it ethical through an elite of leaders unless it could be done through language. So if the population of the society knows the culture in their body, language doesn't affect it much.

[82:13]

Now, someone brought up the first evening, Friday evening, second evening, that this is such a different culture, the Orient and the West. Can we really understand it? Yeah, yeah, it's quite different, but you can understand it with your body. So Buddhism has developed a way in which you can enter a culture with your body and transform the culture with your body. As we spoke about yesterday, how His Holiness' body that was so present in His speaking changed all the people on the Uman and so forth.

[83:34]

Okay, so now the Zen supposedly, mythologically and with some truth, was brought to China by an Indian monk called Bodhidharma. And there seems to have been several people called Bodhidharma, but they think one of them is probably the guy the myths are about. In fact, Ulrika's Buddhist name is Bodhidharma. That's not true. Okay. Now, when we read these things in history, You may imagine Bodhidharma is this great, powerful, wonderful, shiny person.

[85:08]

And he's presented that way in the stories. He's presented that way because he may have been like that. But mostly he's presented that way because he changed the culture. And the point I'm making here is that really he might have been nothing special except that he might have been a quite ordinary person except that he had a new idea and conviction to go with it. And if you, any of you, each of you, is the carrier of a new idea which you carry with a deep conviction, it will affect everyone around you, whether you're some special brilliant person or not.

[86:09]

So we're talking about what pivots another person or pivots a culture. It's called in Zen, turning around the basis. And you may feel that certain teachings in Buddhism or your own experiences in practice, you can feel something edging around in your own basis. And if that edges around in a real way, it will affect everyone around you.

[87:26]

It will affect everyone around you, even if you're making any effort to do so, and in fact better if you don't make an effort to do so. And both His Holiness and Thich Nhat Hanh are two people who are doing this in our Western culture. Okay, so we have Bodhidharma who came from India. And then he had several successors and up to the beginning of Zen Buddhism as divided into lineages with the so-called sixth patriarch or sixth ancestor. And the sixth patriarch had three great disciples. Nan Yan, Ching Yuan, and Nan Yue.

[88:56]

You don't know. Three guys whose names sound like a ping-pong ball or a fork. Or a fork hitting the floor. Okay. Okay. Nan Yuan was an extraordinary person, but had left no real lineage that continued. And Ching Yuan and Nan Yue, all Zen Buddhism comes from these two people. And Nan Yue's disciple, great disciple, was Matsu. And Jing Yuan's great disciple was Shido. And our lineage comes through both, but most directly through Shido. And you have to also remember when I'm talking about this, that this isn't very long ago.

[90:23]

It's the 7th century, which seems quite a long time ago. But I haven't counted, but between you And the Buddha, there's a lineage of 90 people. So my guess is back to Matsu and Shido is about 45 or 50 people. In other words, about the number of people in this room. And if each of you spent your life trying to understand something and in every way convey it to your neighbor, it's the same as the lineage. So we're separated from Shido by the number of people in this room.

[91:31]

And that's the actual way it exists. It's not about centuries and time. Okay, so for those of you who were last week's seminar or reading the Book of Serenity, the last week's toan, number five, is it? This is number six. Last week's was about Ching Yuan and Shido, and this one is about Matsu. And both koans are teaching the same thing in a little different way. And they're teaching the same thing because it's this book's way of saying these two lineages at their root are the same.

[92:51]

So this koan is trying to present the root of all the schools of Buddhism. Which is summed up, and I'm sorry, I have a headache today. Well, it's not quite that simple. Or it's much simpler than that. Okay. Now, where I left off before I told you the history was there are some things you can't approach.

[94:01]

And in this context, Yogi Chen tells a rather classic joke. about some mice or rats who are discussing how to know when the cat is coming. Yeah, so they're having this discussion about how dangerous the cat is. Sie haben jetzt eine Diskussion darüber, wie gefährlich die Katze ist. Nach einer relativ langen Besprechung kommen Sie dann zu der Entscheidung, dass Sie wohl der Katze eine Glocke anhängen sollten, damit Sie immer hören, wann die Katze kommt. So the next stage is they try to decide who will put the bell on the cat.

[95:19]

And of course, no one can do it. So there's some things that can't be approached. So there's some things that can't be approached. Reminds me a little bit of Daito Kokushi's famous episode, supposedly when he went into the Holiday Inn, no, into the, hiding as a tramp under the Third Street Bridge in Kyoto. A Tibetan monk was sent out looking for him. And it was well known that he loved melons. So they brought beautiful melons, and melons are a great treasure in Japan. And as he went under the Sanjo, the third street bridge in Kyoto, there were these tramps supposedly living there.

[96:22]

And he noticed one very bright-eyed tramp, particularly when he saw the melon. So he walked over to the melon and sort of offered it to her. But he said to the tramp, take it with no hands. And the tramp said, give it to me with no hands. So he was discovered. Yes. And he returned and became head of Daitoku-ji.

[97:30]

Now it's also said in Zen that there is no understanding without...

[97:34]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_74.53