Now somehow this winter branches program which I want us to think together, the practice council will think about it and we'll have to think about it as a group too. What, what it, how it should continue? Not everyone is fulfilling all the agreement like Sashin and this and that to do. Yeah, some people ask for exceptions and some people don't. I don't really care too much except this is going to continue and work through our commitment to practice. And overall I would say in my life so far it's the most fruitful exploration of the koans I've done.

[01:07]

At least with this number of people. Yeah. But it's always a question for you to go on to continue with Koans. That's something I debate, of course, in myself. One person has repeatedly or several times suggested next time we should concentrate on Yogacara Buddhism. That's okay. Maybe we should, because that's the school that's most the basis of Zen practice. And it has deep and interesting connections with Western thinking. Philosophical thinking.

[02:18]

So we can find our way in it, I think, fruitfully, successfully, I hope. Also können wir, glaube ich, da hinein unseren Weg auch fruchtbar und auf erfolgreiche Weise finden. Yeah. You know, if we have a number of lifetimes, all of us, I guess my successors will be my other lifetimes, so you'll be safe. Wenn wir alle eine Vielzahl von Lebensspannen haben, oder leben, dann schätze ich mal, dass meine Nachfolger meine nächsten Leben sind, und dann seid ihr alle sicher. Yeah, it doesn't look like him, but it sounds like him. Even better. Es sieht zwar nicht so aus wie er, aber das klingt wie er sogar besser.

[03:21]

Yeah. But, you know, working with Koans, on the other hand, brings us into the unexpected in a kind of wonderful way. Aber mit Koans zu arbeiten, das bringt uns irgendwie in das Unerwartete hinein. And brings in the Chinese background of Zen culture. Yeah, and that's what I'd like to speak about today. Yogacara Buddhism, if we study it, it's going to be primarily a study of Buddhism in its most articulated sense, but primarily Indian Buddhism. And I don't know as much about Indian culture as I do about Chinese culture. But it's not because... But the nature of the koan brings in the culture more than Yogacara teachings would.

[04:42]

Because they're tied to this biography. The encounter. Yeah, and as I pointed out, the encounter here seems to be between Buddha and Indra and so forth. But it's really between Ye Lan and Wan Song and Tian Dong. Ye Lu, I mean. Yeah. And us. Mm-hmm. For example, some of you are coming to Doksan now. And Doksan is a ritualized biographical encounter. Or a dharmalogical face-to-face encounter.

[05:54]

How's that? You probably know the word duksan means to go alone. In Taisho we do this together. But somehow we go alone even in Taisho. I mean, in some sense, as I say, we're born in this human space. We live in this human space. Find our way, articulate this human space. And we die in this human space. And yet at the same time somehow we are simultaneously fundamentally alone. Fundamentally alone. How wonderful it is these moments also when we are not alone. With people all the time, but alone.

[07:11]

And occasionally, not alone. Yeah. Occasionally not alone. The idea and the sense of time in Chinese culture is a maturing time and a punctuated time. I'm wondering how to say it. Okay. Good. And the reason the Dokusan encounter is ritualized is because it's ritualized as punctuated time.

[08:38]

And what do I mean by punctuated time? I mean it's thought in Chinese culture And I think these aspects of Chinese culture I'm speaking about permeate this koan. It's the kind of flow of context under the koan. Now, what I mean by punctuated time again is that time is not clock time. Time is like, I don't know, I mean, it's like a A flow of liquid, something, water, I don't know, a river.

[10:05]

It's sometimes a river, sometimes flowing through a narrow bank, sometimes a wide bank. Sometimes the water is more viscous or less viscous. Like in Creston the air is real thin and here it's thick and green. Yeah, and in Creston it's thin and full of light. And dust and other things. Dryness. No water in the air there. We were just talking about it yesterday.

[11:07]

You spill something and you look away and you don't have to wipe it up. It's gone. Here it takes me two days to dry a shirt. So this sense that time has different moments in it. different possibilities. And that the average person is looking for, in popular culture, is looking for those telling moments. Moments that tell us something or moments that allow something to change. The wind is cooperating with autumn to fill the air with leaves.

[12:37]

But in Buddhist practice, we create these telling moments. We don't just look for them. It's also important to be open to time as continuous and discontinuous. And to feel it when there's possibilities. And this is time that flows as our body. And flows as our circumstances. Now, I'm saying this because, you know, I think it's really good to come up against a different worldview than our usual one.

[13:42]

Yeah, so it's kind of like, whoa, whoa. Can we really look at the world that way? But also, if you want to practice the koan, it's very helpful to have a feeling of this. And like most of these things, we already know them in our own experience. But our worldview doesn't connect the dots. So it's these experiences I think, and I think that's why Buddhism is working in the West these days. Because time has, we could say, time has matured enough.

[14:43]

Or Western culture has matured in a way or developed in a way. There's a lot of these dots waiting to be connected, wanting to be connected. Yeah, and somehow our daily life and the usual way our world is presented to us isn't connecting these dots. And it suddenly can be a terrible fear and it can be a wonderful relief. To suddenly feel these dots, hey, they're being connected or they could be connected. What will happen if they're connected? What happens to the rest of my worldview? What if it doesn't hold together or make sense anymore?

[15:56]

So the Buddhist practitioner... doesn't only develop a sensitivity for these moments that punctuate our lives. Enlightenment is a big punctuation. It's a comma, a semicolon, a period, a slash forward and a slash back. It's a comma, a semicolon, a dot and a thought line forward and a thought line back.

[16:56]

Then you think, whoa, what's the next sentence? No, it's just an ordinary old sentence. But you really feel punctuated. But these moments of punctuation are... Each moment is punctuation. I find it in the service, for instance, which I've been speaking about as an example. I find there are certain points in the service where I tend to find this zero mind. Let's also call it a zero moment. We can also call it a zero moment.

[18:03]

And what's also nice about a zero is that it's also a circle. And our whole numeric system doesn't work without zero. So zero means nothing but it has a powerful function. So there are certain points in the service where I find most often for me zero moments occur. Or I can locate a zero moment. And just to locate a few is, you know, helpful. I think I find a backward step is a zero moment.

[19:07]

And in a sense, in Buddhism, take the backward step is always a zero moment. Now I think what I'm asking myself now is what use is this koan to you? You may find it will have many uses. Well, use may not be the right word, but Yeah, something like that. But perhaps right now I would say maybe to take away from the seminar is the sense of a zero moment or a zero mind. Okay, we can think also of Koan 15 in the Shoyaruku.

[20:09]

Guishan says to Yangshan, Where are you coming from? Yangshan says, from the fields. And Yangshan says, from the fields. How many people are in the fields? At that moment, Yangshan takes his hoe that he was carrying and plants it in the ground and clasps it. Clasp to clasp to clasp. And he just stands there. Yeah, okay, so Guishan gives up and says, on South Mountain, there are many people cutting thatch.

[21:12]

Thatch is the kind of branches you use for an old house here in the Black Forest. Now you have to repeat the sentence. On South Mountain, in the Black Forest, there are many people cutting thatch. What is this? Well, it's not really different from planting a blade of grass. So you may find a way to feel you're planting a blade of grass. at each moment or now and then. Now, I think the most telling, memorable line from our skit the other night is I've lost the ten directions.

[22:21]

It's happened to me a number of times. I thought that was wonderful. The whole idea, I've lost the ten directions. And I said to someone, I said, whenever I lose the ten directions, I ask the Eno. Yeah, and sometimes I even call the dean in Holland. I've lost the ten directions. Where did we put them? And I can see that she's grabbed the phone, she's holding it like this, and she's not saying a word. Yeah, so I give up and I say, oh, they're cutting thatch in the lowlands again. So what are these moments? These zero moments.

[23:23]

I don't know. Well, let's put it this way. We're spatializing mind. You know, maybe we should become aware. We can temporalize mind and we can spatialize mind. Mm-hmm. There was supposedly an eccentric Chinese emperor who appointed a tree as his senior minister.

[24:25]

And whenever he needed advice he went and sat under the tree. And whenever he needed advice he went and sat under the tree. Yeah, I wish certain government figures had ministers that good. But this whole sense of it is, you know, it's not just eccentricity. It's sort of part of Chinese culture. You know, when... After the wonderful episode of Dongshan questioning how do inanimate objects teach the Dharma?

[25:28]

Sorry. How do inanimate objects... I need the names. What? I need the names. Oh, Dongshan was... Anyway, just how does he do it? Okay, so then Dongshan, after that conversation, he asked Guishan, Guishan told him, rather, you should go to a man, you'll find him close to the stone cottage, Du solltest zu einem Mann gehen und du wirst ihn in der Nähe der Steinhütte finden. He'll find him at Jungian Monastery. Du wirst ihn im Jungian Kloster finden. And then he said, if you can look at the grass...

[26:36]

To find the direction of the wind, you'll benefit from his teachings. Now, this is a Chinese expression. And it's funny, you know, without knowing anything about it as a Chinese expression, particularly when I first encountered this phrase, It was the sort of final step in my accepting without reservation or further thought Suzuki Roshi as my teacher. And you know, I've told you several times, he tried to take that away from me. He used to say things to me like in Dukesan, you came into the door, but you better be ready to go out the window. And once he stopped looking at me.

[27:58]

I told you that. We'd file out of the Zendo and file to him in his office. And suddenly, I mean really, one day he just didn't look at me. I thought, maybe he's in a bad mood. And the next day it happened, and the next day it happened, and you know. And then it happened at other times during the day. He was there, but he never made contact. Eye contact or anything. And I was perplexed about it, but after a while I thought, this is his problem, not mine.

[29:03]

He's my teacher whether he likes it or not. And I remember after about two months it dawned on me this is going to last a year. And after a year, really, almost to the day, I don't remember exactly, but really close, he suddenly looked at me. We've never mentioned it, we never talked about it. It was just fine. It was kind of amusing. And somehow I never took it personally. It was just, really, who cares what he does? I was interested in practicing. Yeah.

[30:09]

But I can remember this phrase, look to the wind to see, to look to the grasses to see which way the wind is blowing. Okay, so this statement, for me it meant I have to find, discover who my teacher is in my own circumstances. I can't look for a teacher according to my education. I can't look for a teacher on the basis of my future plans. Ich kann nicht auf der Grundlage meiner Zukunftspläne nach einem Lehrer suchen. Ich kann noch nicht mal auf der Grundlage nach einem Lehrer suchen, also nach der Frage, ist das ein guter oder ein schlechter Lehrer. Und ich habe tatsächlich nie darüber nachgedacht, ob er jetzt ein guter oder ein schlechter Lehrer war.

[31:12]

Das hat mich nicht geschert. Somehow this look to the wind and the look to the way the... It just meant he's my teacher. That's just the way it is. Yeah. It's like I was born into this moment and discovered that's who was in the moment with me. Yeah. So that's the way it was. No, but actually this is a Chinese expression. Very related to the Confucian concept of the relationship between the disciple and the teacher. The teacher always teaches by indirection. As the Chinese saying, I believe, the meaning in the words or the meaning is ahead of the words and in the wake of the words.

[32:29]

The wake after a boat. Yeah, I know. But what is it called? The wake of a boat? Yeah. Sailboat? Yeah, I don't know what it's called. No sailors here? No. The meaning is ahead of the words and behind the words, but not in the words. And you immerse yourself, bathe yourself in this sense of the words. And an atmosphere is created. Okay. Okay. Now, the sense is that the teacher gives you not a symbol, but a talismanic direction.

[34:17]

I just made that up. A symbol tends to, as we use in the West, contains everything. It's an example of everything that it is an example of. But a talisman points somewhere. But you don't know where it's pointing exactly. But you absorb the feeling of its pointing. And you don't know where it's pointing. But it's in certain circumstances, in certain punctuated moments, tells you what to listen for.

[35:28]

Now this is the Confucian idea of how you teach. You praise, you blame, sometimes your praise is actually blame and vice versa, etc. Or criticize and praise. And it's by indirection Because indirection flows in the three times, past, present and future. Can you explain indirection? In means not directed. Indirection. So you're given a teaching but you don't know quite where it goes. Also gibst du eine Lehre, aber du weißt nicht so genau, wohin die geht.

[36:39]

But then, and it's meant to bear fruit when the circumstances are right. Dann ist sie darauf angelegt, Früchte zu tragen, wenn die Umstände reif sind. When you're able to let the lotus bloom. So let's take this zero moment again. Or zero mind. They occur every now and then. And it's not in this case just about getting a physical feel for darkness. And we would more easily say the space of a Dharma than the time of a Dharma. So it's not just about zero moments being dharmic moments. It's that they're moments of divination. And the word divine in English means to foresee, to point a direction.

[38:02]

But it came to mean later to be inspired by God. Because in our traditional culture, inspiration comes from God. But in Chinese culture, inspiration doesn't so much come from God. More comes from nature. And I should finish this. I'll try to not go too long though. So for the Chinese, it's more you're inspired by nature. But that's not right.

[39:14]

You're inspired by your circumstance. And let's think of the word circumstances as a circle. And there's even a whole sense in Chinese art of little space cells, circles in which you illustrate several stories interlapping at once or different stories, etc. And they're always circles, using circles. Okay. The ten oxherting pictures are like that. They're stories in a circle. But in Zen, the Enso, the circle, has nothing in it because everything is in it. It's both zero and everything. Now, how do you create that circle? Well, basically, you spatialize your experience. These zero moments spatialize your experience.

[40:42]

And here we have Indra and the Buddha and Dipankara, etc. And divine also means to be godlike. So to be godlike, to be divine is to be godlike. So this is divination or insight in a big way. Let me give you an example. Someone said to me that their mother used to heat water for the bath. And she had to take a bath as a kid. And then afterwards she liked to run out into the yard in the cold.

[41:52]

And she could feel the wind on her body. And she wondered what color the wind is. And so her mother came out and said, what are you doing? And she said, I'm wondering what color the wind is. And the mother said, don't waste your time with silly questions. Get back in the house or something like that. Well, the mother, I mean, the mother probably forgotten her own childhood. When children are more open to these moments of divination, what color is the wind? This is a spatial moment. And can you see it's also a kind of moment of divination?

[42:59]

There's a Chinese poem. The limpid wind, limpid means clear and transparent. The limpid wind blows on my breast. Der klare Wind weht auf meiner Brust. Outside a lone goose cries on the plain. Draußen ruft eine einsame Gans auf dem Dach. To come, to go, what is there to see? Sadness, grief, blessing the heart. Blessing the heart. Okay. Now, this kind of poem is often analyzed by commentators.

[44:09]

These are political references to the emperor and to exile and stuff like that. And they're clichés of Chinese poetry. But these commentators somehow usually forget that these clichés of Chinese poetry are rooted in experience. That's their power. When the wind blows on the breast and you hear the cry of a bird and to come or to go, what is there to see? Sadness, grief, blessing the heart.

[45:10]

So the sense of it here is a teaching by indirection is a teaching that gives direction to a moment, to a zero moment. In other words, when you're in a circumstance where you spatialize your experience, I'm making it a little mechanical, but it's the best I can do. When you spatialize your experience and your circumference, the circle in which you are, There's a merging of subject and object. And everything speaks to you.

[46:17]

And to know this circle which you can expand and contract and you can swallow. Swallow the ocean or the river at a single gulp. This is also the pulse of Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara. This circle that can speak to us that we can listen to and that suddenly the teaching has relevance. This is to plant a blade of grass. And when you have these moments, these zero moments, you find them sparkling in the flow of time you might say to yourself this is the teaching or this is transmission that will become a location within the zero moment and you can feel the Dharma passing through you and being realized in you

[47:39]

This is the sense of planting the hole. Planting the blade of grass. Where these moments are moments of divination. Moments of understanding. and realization. Thank you very much.

[48:14]

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