Of course, when I first come down here, always at the beginning of practice period, I'm... No matter how many times I come down across the road, I'm always struck by the beauty of the mountain. Can you hear me okay? When I come to Dusseldorf to practice Buddhism, I'm always struck again, freshly by great advantage, opportunity of being here. we get tired of stolen the place we've practiced. But at the same time, it's pretty hard to take advantage of, to make use of practicing to stay here a long time. And I'm very grateful to you who do stay here because you

[01:32]

make Tassajar come alive. Even though for your own benefit you stay here, I am very grateful. and with rare exceptions. Maybe... I know right now I can't think of any exceptions, but maybe there are some. Being here a long time, even when it's quite difficult to stay, I always see, very clearly, the benefits

[02:36]

in each person. So many things come up when we're here that make it difficult to stay. When we're not here, we think of some place like this. And when we're here, we think of many things we should do, things we desire. that aren't here. And yet for the practice of Zen to develop some continuum of mind, some stable mind, some stable continuous

[04:00]

It's unstable, continuous. Whatever I add after that is not quite right. Mind or being is not quite right. And we don't call this practice. We don't call this training period so much. We call it practice. And this is a rather big difference between the schools of Buddhism, actually. Training or practice. But, of course, it is training, and I think maybe we should see training more, see the aspects of practices of, that we, that are training. Training, you know, goes against our idea of natural, and though I always rail against

[05:40]

Natural. The idea of natural. Still afraid of the meal chant. The natural order of mind is my own introduction. And I don't think we want to feel that Buddhism is like training our hair in the wrong direction. Training a plant to grow some way it wouldn't grow if you left it alone. Although, as soon as you plant a seed or water it, you are training it. At least you are influencing it. But there is a difference between training. You know, just say everyone is... The idea of training is coming into our culture. It's been rather absent

[06:43]

quite a while. The idea of trusting our inner nature, or laissez-faire, or just how people exist together, or capitalism, all have some kind of trust in everything will work out as left alone. And Buddhism, because of greed, hate, and delusion, Everything won't work out if you're left alone. This is, anyway, a Buddhist view. But, Buddhist view is, Zen Buddhist view is, and Jodo Buddhist view is, if you practice emptiness, if you eliminate ambivalent comparative mind, then everything will be okay. So this is the idea of Buddha nature, inherent teaching. Other kinds of Buddhism are close to a revealed teaching, because you train to acquire a certain view. To just extinguish your faults is not enough, then you have to consciously

[08:12]

endow yourself with Buddhist virtue. So training in one sense means just to get things in unison, similar things in unison. You don't try to. A train is made up of similar railroad cars, not trucks, automobiles, and stones all being dragged. So training means to drag. to get in a line, to make certain things come into unison. And we do, you know, if you don't think this is all created by God or something like that, and that as an idea has been unable to sustain itself, maybe it's true as

[09:13]

has not been able to sustain itself in large percentage of the population in view of the tremendous complexity of natural processes that are revealed by contemporary science. It just doesn't, most people can't sort of say God created all this in his cell So somehow it's involved in its own creation, its own evolution. So the idea of God, though you can keep bringing it back, still slips more or less out of the picture. So if you don't think God created it, you still, we've talked about it many times, you can't practice Buddhism and see it as some passive object, some objective world. You have to have some relationship to it. There has to be some identification, unison, mutuality with the phenomenal world.

[10:50]

So basis of your practice, base of your practice is you, as you find yourself. So the basis of the practice is you, as I said. There's not much doubt about that. But then we have the path. What is the path? What is this path of purification or practice or training? Where does the path come from?

[12:28]

And if we're in schools of Buddhism, which are more like revealed teachings, then it emphasizes training to... This path is shown to you, and if you follow it, end product. So emphasis is on the end guides you. But emphasis in Jodo-shu and Zen-shu, Zen school and Pure Land school, is faith in Buddha nature, not in Buddhahood. You see the difference? So most of the earlier schools, including tantric schools emphasize buddhahood, endowing yourself with the aspects of buddhahood. It's a way of training, teaching. It's very worked out. Does one trust this strange idea of buddha nature, that inherent

[14:02]

inherent teaching. So if you practice emptiness, realize emptiness, Buddha nature will come out. But again, this Buddha nature is not some idea of soul. But emphasis is on seed. Out of, you know, acorn comes oak tree. But is the oak tree drawn out, in a sense, by the possibility of the oak tree as end product? This is one way of training, or one method of Buddhism. But Zen method is, poetry is already in the seed. And you have to find right conditions. So path comes from the seed. Path is inherent. There have been so emphasis in Prajnaparamita Sutras that there's no origination.

[15:34]

Neurodegeneration means, again, no over there, or everything is included in each point. Each point is fertile. Each point can become everything. It's quite fertile. So we can say field of intent or object of practice is the object before you, the welfare of the object before you. This is, again, trying to express... Maybe I can come back to where that comes from. But the object before you, not even sentient beings, let's start out with, just the object before you, the welfare of the object before you. This is like love thy neighbor. Start with whoever's near you, love thy neighbor. But in Buddhism, not even thy, your neighbor, some sentient being, but the object, whatever it is.

[17:02]

But when you start with the object before you, it must dawn on you that it's animate, causally animate. Its interconnectedness means it's animate. And this is the point Spinoza came to, if we look in our own culture again. For this kind of idea, it seems Spinoza came pretty close. He studied in Amsterdam to be a rabbi, I believe, until he was about 15 when he became a green dresser. But that was the family's business. And he concluded, finally, that there was only in his own studies, that there were not many substances. There was only one substance, and that substance had to be animals. So here you can see all sentient beings, or the teaching of insentient beings we say, or teaching of stones and walls. But this is just a way of saying everything is animate, causally animate. More than causally animate, but to realize first of all causally

[18:38]

So Baijiang, or Yakacho's Fox, is about fox, and causation, and everything is animal. So if we don't have some form of Buddha that we train ourselves by, we need some conditions, right? The seed needs some conditions.

[19:45]

And those conditions are not just water and earth, but those conditions are basically some other person or other people to practice with, or some teacher, at least a teacher, and some way to be free of distractions. So Tathagata's emphasis in Zen is on practicing in places like Dasar, where you can be free of distraction, even though it brings up many distractions and desires that you hardly notice if you're in usual work. So by concentration and teacher or teaching some method of freeing yourself from comparative thinking and distraction. Thus, a seed will become a buddha.

[21:17]

Again, we have base, the base which is you, and path is phenomenal world, of course, and you. But that phenomenal world is not something objective, but is one substance with you and eminent with you. Otherwise, there's no meaning to the path. So there are, we can say, maybe methods of knowing the path. One method is by belief. Here, the extreme form would be training through some revealed teaching. But belief and ego, belief, ego, and desire are quite related because belief becomes the way we desire it to be. may not be only that, but in many ways more the realm of desire. So it is one way to know things, though. But it also may obscure, blind us to

[22:45]

Another way to know things is by imagination. You extend yourself to things. And imagination, to know a religion, say, by imagination. Not by But you can imagine it and that, like maybe scientists sometimes discover something by imagination, by extending themselves to it. A third way of knowing is caring or compassion. So compassion in this way of practice is not just good way to be, the best way to be, or moral way to be, or accurate expression of this world. But it's actually the way to know the world, the way to realize the path of phenomenal world. So again, we are talking about object before

[24:17]

love thy neighbor. To actually care, not just see the object before you, but to care about the object before you. And you care about the object before you through realizing there's only one substance, and all substances animate, or So this is more than imagination, but we embody it or it's more carnal, carnal knowledge. And we are rather afraid of carnal knowledge. I believe carnal literally means to cut the flesh away. Carnal comes from to cut, and it means flesh. So it's like to part the flesh from morality or your soul,

[25:18]

So it also means leather, skin. As if flesh could become just phenomenal, objective world, caught just by greed, hate and delusion. So again, this is where Zen, this is the point of Zen, desire itself. And it's expressed in this wide, not particular, not discriminatory, but wide and period of time, is to see, first of all, by eliminating the distractions, most, many of the distractions of usual way of life. Then you find how many distractions are inherent, almost inherent in you, part of you. And it gives you the first chance to see if you can

[27:16]

eliminate or smooth out, even out those distractions that come up even here. It takes a pretty long time to do it, but until that evening out or that continuum is established, stable continuum, Real teaching of Buddhism is not accessible to you. As long as you care this way or that way, it's not accessible to you. When you care equally about each object before you. We sometimes say object before you and sentient beings. Welfare of object before you and sentient beings. To say, am sentient beings, means just that the object before you is also am. That when you care for the object before you, it reaches everyone. To care for sentient beings, it means the interrelatedness

[28:38]

So this teaching is quite simple. But it does mean you have to come to terms with the phenomenal world as you, or as the past. And I think you can see that there's no practice, no real practice, no path, unless come to terms with the phenomenal world. And this kind of evenness and equality is not possible until you are free from so many self-thoughts, That you just live by the people you practice with. But we petro-beggars just watch white ox on, lazily watch white ox on open field.

[30:04]

White Ox's phenomenal world as ourself. Every point containing everything. No over there. And blazily watch is to be free from So, our practice here at Tushla is until you can lazily watch white dogs on an open field with no particular desire for anything else. This way we can reveal.

[31:25]

Also when I come down here, away from the noises of the city, how much the air is noise. Always insects, at night time especially, nothing but the sound of insects. Air, warm air. Sound air.

[33:11]

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