Sometimes I'm a little too, I think, fatherly, and I worry too much about you. But on the other hand, I don't want to become the tough Zen master who only kind of beats at you with an invisible wisdom. But part of it, you know, is my... Well, let me say this. I mean, in a way it comes down to not only a face in you, But a faith in the practice.

[01:08]

The practice is kind of like a big you or a big us because it's a way a large number of people have developed over, of course, a long time so that we can have faith in ourselves. And the practice is almost like a big you, a big we. And it has developed over a long time with the participation of a lot of people so that we can have a belief in it. And it's also what I'm talking about is partly a function of the fact that I as a Western teacher embedded about as much as a Westerner can be in the tradition. I'm not asking you to understand my problem, but I think it might be useful to at least see it.

[02:34]

As a Westerner embedded in the tradition, I have a special responsibility to... to the extent to which the tradition has to be developed or changed a bit in the West, this is a kind of responsibility I have. Because if you don't have a real contact with the tradition, then if you make changes, there's no rudder in the changes. So sometimes when I'm at that point, how should we develop this or change this or what should I teach? You know, there's a moment where I can have a different kind of concern than if I was just doing it the traditional way.

[04:08]

But I think in some ways most of us may have this problem, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Because whether you're a therapist or doctors or... who I think have a special responsibility because you're affecting people. Or you're just thinking through your life in the context of how you work with people and live with people, bring up your family and so forth. I think all of us are here because, most of us are here because we're actually venturing into a territory which is, you know, we're asking, should it be different?

[05:24]

Is what we're doing really responsible? And when you see how deeply your view of reality affects what you do, And then when you actually see a view like Buddhism, which is such an ancient view of the mind and body, that it's got to influence many traditions in the West. So you can ask yourself, how do you enter this stream yourself? Now this koan... I brought up last night of Yan Men.

[06:47]

Yan Men, we'd been in the seminar, in the castle seminar, we looked at Yaku Jo and Nan Xuan, and Yaku Jo is Zhao Jo, and Nan Xuan, and who else did we look at? Who was at the Cohen seminar? Other than me. What? Zhao Zhou, yeah. Anyway, along with young men, they are the most definitive of the Zen masters who shaped this teaching. It's easier to remember the cat and the fox than Bai Zhang and Zhao Zhou. For those of you who weren't at those seminars, we looked at the fox and Nanchuan's cat and Baijiang's fox.

[08:01]

For those of you who weren't there, we looked at Nanchuan's cat Both the cat and the fox are koans about a very similar problem. And it's a very contemporary view of the Western contemporary view of the world. Which is basically, we don't know what we're doing. The true imperative in Buddhism is the reality that you have to act in a world that's unpredictable.

[09:04]

We don't know how we'll die. We don't know how we're going to live. Not just that unexpected things happen, but really subtly, what paths do we follow? Even if we don't know where the path leads, how do we develop a sense of path? So this is, you know, one of the fundamental positions of Buddhism, even though we don't know where the path will go, we need to develop a sense of path. So Yan Men is one of these Zen masters, and he developed a special way of looking at questions. So that each question or statement had several levels embedded in it, though it looked like only one level.

[10:27]

And he also tended to ask questions that engaged us intellectually when really there was no intellectual response possible. And Jan Men is an interesting fellow to get to know. And there's enough stories about him that you can get to know him as a kind of inner archetype. And when you get to know these guys better, and this is part of what a lineage teaching is, they do begin to function, as we talked about a little bit in the seminar, as archetypes. Dann fangen Sie an in uns, und wir haben ein wenig darüber im Seminar gesprochen, als Archetypen zu arbeiten.

[11:40]

Like you explore the korn, Nanchuan's cat? This is the poor cat. This is the knife. What do you do in a situation where there's a cat in effect held up in your life? In your life? In your life. How do you save the cat? So it's not just a simple question of how do you save the cat. It's how deeply have you examined this problem? How deeply? It's not just a matter of a simple question of how do you save the cat. But how deeply do you understand have you embedded yourself in this problem of how to act in a situation where you don't know the outcome where there's a lot at stake.

[12:50]

So anyway, going back to young men. I didn't quite finish the sentence. When you get to know these people of young men, Zhaozhou and so forth, they become a kind of possible identity that we have. And often if you practice, you'll find a close affinity with one or another of the teachers. And these figures are presented in enough of an archetypal way with a real computable integrity to their actions and way of being. that you can actually ask yourself, what would young men do in a situation like this?

[14:04]

Or, I need Zhaozhou's spirit at this moment. So in a way, you're getting to know an ancient, not just your immediate family and this... these decades, but it's a way of getting to know a number of people over some centuries. Now, quite a lot of koans are about young men, and quite a lot of them are about the body of reality or the Dharmakaya, the Tathagata. Now, one is somebody asks, young man, what is the pure body of reality? And his well-known answer was, this flowering hedge. And then the one I presented to you last night at the hot drink.

[15:27]

And I presented it to you first as if Sukhiroshi, I'd asked Sukhiroshi and he'd spoken to me. Because I wanted you to see how easily it could have been what he asked. Now, there's an interesting question here. If I'd said to Suzuki Roshi, after he'd given me this calligraphy, So I come to his door and I'm carrying the incense for him. And as he comes to the door, perhaps more likely as I bring him back to the cabin at the end of Zazen and service, I say, what is the body of reality, Roshi?

[16:38]

And he says, the six don't take it in. Is this an unoriginal answer? Is he copying young men? Should he have given me his own answer? Sometimes, actually, you give your own answer. Sometimes you give young man's answer. And you're not imitating young man. At that moment, you become young man. Or you open yourself up to a bigger sense of being in which there's a permission given by using a traditional answer.

[17:51]

And I think you can feel that if I say, the six don't take it in. That's not just imitation. You feel some power in that. The six don't take it in. So here we're talking too about how we use a tradition or study a tradition. Okay, so what is young men talking about here? And I don't know how much I can go into it, but I'm following up on what Randy brought up in the first talk. Sort of trying to take something he brought up and open it up step by step.

[18:55]

So the koan begins with, and the koan helps us open it up, with this strange statement. What does the sky say? It says, hi there. Have a nice day. Except it's raining. Have a rainy day. Actually, the koan says the four seasons go on there. And then it says, what does the earth say? It says, the myriad things are born there. That's already, you know, a kind of clue, because if you hear things, as we do here in this amphitheater of the house distiller in this neighborhood,

[20:24]

And that is bereits ein Hinweis, den wir hier haben, denn wenn wir etwas hören hier in diesem Amphitheater des Hauses der Stille, hier in unserer Nachbarschaft, man kann jedes Ding hören als etwas, das geboren wird. Oder eine Art Samen in diesem Netz der gegenseitigen Durchdringung. And each thing that comes to you is not just a continuity, but a seed of a web of continuity. So this isn't just an intellectual idea. It also becomes, as soon as you hear something, a seed in your own mind, in your own consciousness. Yeah, and then it goes on to say, seeing the force, it implies there's an adept person or a monk or an adept person listening to the earth. In the background of this it says, such a person... sees, seeing the four seasons, sees the essence.

[21:50]

When hearing or knowing the four seasons, you see the essence. And then knowing... Hearing myriad things born knows the true activity. Okay, now, so here again is... Literally, they're kind of inner posture meditation instructions. What activity is there when you hear myriad things born? Okay, so there's something you hear? Then you hear it as a seed or as something being born.

[23:07]

And then you feel a kind of activity on that. This is a kind of classic yogic inner instruction. Not just how your back is or how your hands are, but how... the structure or attitude that informs interior consciousness. Okay. So then it says... Oh, yeah. It says... how can we see this adept? Even though they've given up words and speech and stopped all activity?

[24:18]

How do you see someone who's stopped speaking, given up words, and stopped all activity. It also means, how do you see your own inner person, realized person? We could say your inner monk, or your inner adept, or your Buddha nature. Now, the koan is, a monk asks, someone asks, what is the body of reality? Now, this koan goes pretty quickly, and it is pointed out for the people reading it that the body of reality usually means the Dharmakaya.

[25:44]

And to understand this work with a koan like this, you have to understand something about the three bodies of Buddha, the Nirmanakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Dharmakaya. And you also have to accept that these are, at least in Tantric Zen and in Yogacara Zen, that these are experienceable, actualizable identities. Yeah, good enough. And they're not just concepts or some kind of philosophy. And very simply, I mean, in your own Zazen experience and in the Sashim, when you have an experience of a kind of field around you or you don't feel where your hands and are in your body, but you can feel a kind of territory.

[26:56]

This is a kind of seed experience of the Dharmakaya. And when you, these three bodies hold together philosophically, but they hold together much more thoroughly experientially. And when you feel your ordinary sense of your body drop away and you have an experience of ease or blissful feeling or your breath feels warm and reaching throughout your body. This is a beginning Sambhogakaya body experience.

[27:59]

And when you... And when you can, from either of these bodies, act in the world with the sense of this present as well as your ordinary ego and self, then this is the nirmanakaya. You told me the other day you drove from Berlin to Hannover, was it? Hamburg. Hamburg. From Berlin? Yes. And it usually takes you how long? Three and a half hours. And after a seminar it took you how long? Seven hours. Yes. Now, this is partly, I would say, the result is you suggested that the seminar kind of disorients you and your views get, you know, who am I?

[29:20]

And so you don't know who's driving the car and you start down little streets. I wish I could have been in the back seat of the car. I'm sure I would have enjoyed the trip very much. I'll take that street. But... We could also say it was a kind of embryonic Nirmanakaya Buddha trying to drive a car. And in this century, the Nirmanakaya Buddha has not yet learned how to drive. And when this other presence begins to be in your life, it takes a while to integrate it into ordinary activity.

[30:25]

And that's one of the problems with sashin. You get a certain kind of subtle or other activity going, and it's a little hard to integrate it afterwards sometimes. No, it's hard to integrate even during sesshins sometimes. Now, I would like to... I'll follow this a little bit, so please sit comfortably, because it might be a little longer than 40 or 50 minutes. If the window's not too cold for you, it's nice if it's open a little, unless it's too cold for somebody else sitting over there, like Hilda. I realized to make sense of this I have to sort of give you a feeling of quite a number of different things.

[32:11]

Because all of this is really about how to understand and experience the two truths. And the two truths form an emptiness. A divided world of conscious perception and an undivided world where things are joined or not divided at least. And actually, our mind can only think certain ways. I can describe the undivided world as joined or not divided. And each is a little different, and you can develop different practices based on whether you see it as joined or undivided.

[33:24]

If you emphasize undivided, you emphasize faith a little more. If you emphasize joined, you emphasize the craft of practice a little more. And in Zen practice, some schools, some lineages emphasize the Dharmakaya more, some emphasize the Sambhogakaya more. And the Sambhogakaya emphasis in Zen tends to be more central and also more esoteric. Although I actually feel that for lay people the Sambhogakaya is a more accessible path than the Dharmakaya path.

[34:39]

In Sashin practice can be developed either as more Dharmakaya practice or more Sambhogakaya practice. Sashin that's very strict and a lot of shouting and hitting, at least in Japan, and so forth, is more a dharmakaya. In that practice, you're trying to put a person into a place where they either break through or die. And... In Sambhogakaya practice, you're saying, well, great, but if you haven't broken through, here's a few doors.

[35:44]

Some of you like to go straight through the wall. Others use the door. And I'm trying to show you both. Because you want to know something? The wall's not there. But you don't know that sometimes on the third or fourth day of Sesshin. Okay, so when someone says Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, they're trying to make emptiness more accessible. These are images of or doorways or experiential manifestations of the absolute or the undivided world.

[36:46]

And when we say the Tathagata or the body of the whole earth or the body of reality, each case we're saying it a little differently. So, young man is not answering the question by saying the Dharmakaya. It's the koans being presented in terms of the body of reality. And the other is presented as the pure body of reality. And he says the flowering hedge. Just simply. When you see a flowering hedge, do you see your mind?

[38:19]

If when you see the flowering hedge, you see your mind, you've already made a big step. And when we take our walks here, and I wish actually, you know, Since it's so rainy, especially when there was a sunny moment, if you want to take a walk, you could just do it. Maybe not everyone can go, but it's okay. Or maybe on a particularly difficult day, you can walk all day. Oder vielleicht an einem besonders schwierigen Tag, dass ihr da den ganzen Tag geht. Nein, also ihr kommt wohl doch besser zurück. Sonst müssen wir 50 Regenschirme austeilen. Sieht dann aus wie eine Beerdigung. funeral in a movie.

[39:32]

Nobody else stands out in the rain unless somebody's being buried. It's funny when it's... Only when there's a dead person who can't feel the rain anyway does everyone stand out in the rain. And the other time we'd go indoors. Bury the dead person in the living room, maybe. Hmm. So when we're taking those walks together, when you, on the sounds and on the sights, you see your mind, not just the trees and the plants, this is again a step in the right direction.

[40:42]

And Sashin tends to make us have that experience almost involuntarily. It's a hard thing to experience in your ordinary life. It's also a hard thing when you do experience it in your ordinary life to see the value of it. To realize the three bodies of Buddha are speaking to you. But once you have a taste of it in Sashin, or in zazen practice, then you can begin to hear it and see it and feel it in other circumstances.

[41:50]

Okay, so what Yan Min's doing here is trying to give us some entry into the two truths. In other words, we experience one of the truths, and we think it's the only truth, which is our conventional comparative reality. But all of us have some truth. intimation and experience of something more than that. And if not more, at least other than that. Now this emptiness is also identified not only with the Dharmakaya, but with mind, big mind, or however we turn it.

[43:21]

In Yogacara, Sambhogakaya, lineages mind is emptiness is experienceable and emptiness is also a manifestation of emptiness is big mind. Now, in the very clarity of everything you see and hear, big mind is present. In other words, the elixir, the underlying mind that makes clarity in our perception possible is big mind.

[44:26]

Now, how do you have some experience of that? And one of the practices developed in Zen to have some experience of that is Se Shin. Because one of the things you see in Se Shin is your very states of mind.

[44:55]

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