That was number two. I have just ten more minutes. I'm just kidding. Okay. We're out of control. Okay. So sitting in the heaps of form and sound, if you observe it without interfering with your observation, you'll see the glue of self isn't holding the sounds together. That's why you don't have to name the truck that comes through or what's going on. It's just... So you're not naming, you're not putting it into a story.

[01:08]

What is it? You don't even know. It's just a what-ness. Okay. Now the Mahayana view is that the earlier Buddhism emphasized this as selflessness and realized selflessness when this when your Energy didn't flow again into your story. Okay. Now, everyone knows everything's changing. Everyone knows that things are impermanent. Okay. But there is subtle forms of permanence. Okay.

[02:26]

When you are practicing zazen, and you're bringing your attention to your breath or to your body, and your mind keeps going back to your narrative story, it goes back to It goes back to the contents of consciousness. Why does it go back to the contents of consciousness? It goes back to the contents of consciousness because you're bored. Why are you bored? Because you don't know how to find, notice the satisfaction of simply being alive. You're not actually immersed in being, you're immersed in thoughts. And one of the meanings of the Sambhogakaya body or the bliss body is you get the ability to notice that just being alive

[03:39]

is an extraordinary bliss. Why can't you notice it? Because you're addicted to thoughts. So we're trying to retrain you to notice the fundamental bliss of aliveness. And you're already experiencing that, at least a taste of it, when you hope the bell doesn't ring at sāsana. And you feel, if the bell never rings, this is fine. And we also go back to our narrative contents of mind because we have fear when we're not there. But it's understood in Buddhism that we go back primarily because we view our thoughts as

[04:58]

a subtle form of permanence. Do you understand that? It's because we think that's where we live and will live the longest and be the safest. That's not true. It's a view. And it's a view that makes us to keep doing that. And it's a view called... Delusion. So Dogen says that there's delusion and enlightenment. This has nothing to do again, as I keep saying, with not thinking. It has to do with not viewing thinking as a subtle form of permanence.

[06:12]

So you are actually going, I think, constantly back to your thinking because thinking for you is is an abiding self, is where the self abides. Now, what is a practice antidote to this? The one I've been emphasizing this practice week is to view each thing equally. To bring energy to each thing equally. And to begin to know how attention And energy are the same, are related.

[07:22]

So what you're practicing then is what appears in each moment. What appears in each moment is your energy and attention. Okay? It's like a fountain coming up. The water's coming up. It can go into thinking. You can go into various things, right? A depth practice is simple. You simply bring this into what's there, just what's there. Whatever it is, you don't discriminate. So, I mean, if it's going to harm somebody, you discriminate, but, you know, mostly it's just whatever's there. If you don't harm anybody, then it's okay.

[08:33]

Yeah. I mean, we have to be practical. You can't go around smacking people in the face. That was there. I just put my energy into it. Pow! But you're all of good character, so there's no problem. So into each syllable of the chanting. Into just sitting here in this posture. Into breathing. Into the white of the rug. Whatever's there, you develop the habit.

[09:38]

For a little bit each day at least. What you're doing is you're contradicting the habit for our energy to go into likes and dislikes. Into the various gummy bags of preferences. Gummy rooms, what we have said. Gummy room, gummy bags. Gummy bags. Gummy bags, okay. Gummisacks. Gummisacks, ah. So you have a gummisack of anger. You have a gummisack of love. You have a gummisack of love. Now, during the sixties there was, people were

[10:51]

taking a lot of LSD where I lived. And a group of people called the diggers and others even found some chemical, I can't remember the name, where it would go right through the skin. So you didn't have to talk somebody into taking LSD. You just put a little in this chemical and you said, oh, it's so nice to see you. And then Gerald says, oh, I'm beginning to feel a shared mind. This very quickly, though, became it became considered wrong to do this to people. But I'm using the example only to say that the more

[11:56]

the more you develop the habit of bringing your energy and attention to each thing equally, you begin to produce an external mind of equanimity, It doesn't discriminate preferences so much. And it passes right through us as if our skin were not there. Okay. Okay. Now, I don't know if this... I want to stop in a moment. And I don't know if I can make this point with much clarity, but I'll try, since I've been trying for three days. So we're back to this experience, common experience of sitting in the heaps of sound and form.

[13:20]

It's also a line from Koan 46. Now, if you've been practicing, the more you've been practicing, this mind of equanimity, of bringing your energy equally to things, not just to preferences, the gummy bags, the gummy sacks have begun to shrink. And you no longer, the energy of your meditation and this equanimity welling up of aliveness, doesn't flow into the subtle form of permanence that we call self. And when you get up from meditation, you enter a functional self but not a self you see as permanent.

[14:45]

It's not a self you invest with the expectations of permanence. This would be existential suffering. And when you don't invest self with... subtle expectations of permanence, it changes dramatically how you relate to neurotic suffering. Because in neurotic suffering, we could consider a log jam in your narrative story. Your narrative story. In the water, the stream begins to flow and the logs become untangled and flow along. And it also changes the way you accept and enter into physical pain.

[15:47]

It also changes the way you accept and enter into physical pain. Now I come to this point of the difference between early Buddhism and Mahayana. Early Buddhism and Mahayana share this view that of the impermanence of self. So you no longer have your energy flowing into the gummi sack of various views and hopes and desires. Or it does, but it doesn't flow into it with the expectations of permanence. But the view is that early Buddhism still assumed that the world was somehow permanent.

[17:13]

So although the self was not identified with the mind and body were mind and body and not necessarily self. Okay. Early Buddhism would say there's mind and body and self. And person or person. And the energy doesn't have to flow into permanent to person or selfhood as a subtle form of But self and person were considered of a different category than mind and body. And mind and body were a kind of given. as was the phenomenal world.

[18:21]

Now, the problem with this is, and again, I'm only trying to explain why Dogen says the emptying this, the no abiding self in things. And it's Gural's fault because he said I had to use this text. Is blaming someone else a subtle form of self? Okay. What would I do without you? You would just continue to... So, this view of earlier Buddhism blocks a deep experience of emptiness.

[19:36]

Because I'm in this experience of sitting in the heaps of sound and form. And through the practice of bringing my attention and energy to each thing equally, I've broken the habit of my energy going into the gummi sacks of my abiding self. So I have a tactile sometimes suddenly, a tactile experience of the emptiness of self.

[20:40]

Of the impermanence of self. And I can't take refuge in self in the way I thought I could. But I still think, oh, mind and body are here and phenomena is here. But the Mahayana says we also There's no gummi sack in the phenomenal world of the body for our energy to go into. It's also empty. So my energy has no place to go. It can't go into the physical world. It can't go into mind or body. It can't go into my habits of self. It can only open to a realization of emptiness. And Dogen tries to express this by saying, leaps free of the one and the many.

[21:56]

Or this phrase in Koan 46 says, sitting in the heaps of sound and form. And then it says walking on the top of sound and form. So these very first sentences of this Genjo koan, if you read them with the shared mind we're developing, It can throw you into or create the seeds that will throw you into an experience of the liberation of emptiness. of a liberation of emptiness because the other side of no abiding self and not being able to rely or take refuge in an abiding self in person or phenomena

[23:17]

is the experience of emptiness and the realization of Buddhahood. Okay. We might still have supper. Kisla wouldn't let us go without supper. Okay, thank you very much. And thank you for translating. Very welcome. This helped. Yes? Probably tomorrow. Are you surviving talking so much?

[24:27]

Maybe during a practice week we should have one day where we just do a sashin day. Tomorrow? Yes. We should have a little different schedule. I'll talk to the boss. So, let me hear from the discussion. We talked about aggression in our group How does a Buddhist deal with aggression? Show me this own aggression Or if a member of the group, the spouse or the cat is teasing him.

[26:07]

The spouse or the cat? Yes. Giving him a hard time. This is a category. Sorry. Yeah, the spouse with the cat. Is there any aggression in this statement? Is there any aggression in this statement? How do we deal with aggression outside? How do we deal with aggression like war? When your sentence came up, I'm the tree, then it should also be said, I'm Hitler.

[27:31]

That's what you talked about. Yes. We had one question that came up after ending the group, with the same theme. Since we were talking about the aggression, there's this feeling, is there in the world partially an aggression field, like we are talking about, a Buddha field, that is concentrated in war places. Can we understand it in that way? Okay. Okay, so the next group We tried to talk about the car hinders the car and try to understand this.

[29:04]

And then the question came up, what does it mean if birth doesn't hinder death and death doesn't hinder birth? That's an open question. The second theme was about the same energy I give equally to everything. The question was, how do I do it in action? How do I translate it into action? That was kind of open also. And the third area was the question of being alone and being connected.

[30:58]

So this statement, fundamentally alone versus already connected. We stopped at this area. And in that thing you also talked about I am also the tree, the tree is also me Being connected And the question was, what do you really mean with being fundamentally alone? Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Next. The very first question was if there are any especially Buddhist jokes.

[32:10]

The very first question was if there are any especially Buddhist jokes. And the next was the wish to have, again, the translation of Genjo with a Genjo core. And next we talked about, again, to complete and it's kind of clear and kind of unclear what it means to complete what appears. The next thing was what it means to complete or to complete something.

[33:18]

We weren't quite sure if completeness was the right translation for this completing and it was a bit clear and a bit unclear what it could mean. And then we discussed quite a long time about the it's also me statement. And I think we talked mostly about working situations, how can I deal with colleagues or the chief and these upcoming conflicts in these situations. And I think it was clear that this also me could mean to step back and to include the situation and the other person into this is also me and then you can come into communication with the other person which is also me. We talked about this sentence for a long time, that is also me.

[34:25]

We mainly talked about work situations, so what happens to the boss or colleagues or employees when conflicts arise. And then it became so clear, I think, that this, that I am also I, means to step back from the situation that is caused by the conflict and to say, this situation or this other person is also me and from that What did he say? He said in English first. Okay, that's three, the fourth group. Oh, I forgot something.

[35:31]

Oh. Which was just to hear the sentence, forget about enlightenment, and what was the sentence? So you forgot the whole sentence. That's the question, that's what it is. Yeah. I think it was, forget about enlightenment, the better choice is to be happy. Something like that. I hope I said that right. Okay, next. I would like to add something to this group. You talked about how practice influences. And the intention is a very important act in that.

[36:51]

So how much I step into practice and find a balance and try not to take away the results before I have experienced it. Oh, to step into practice and take away the results before I experience it. So I practice I'm not too. But I would like to narrow it down with someone who is suffering a lot. So I don't try to think about what could happen if I do it in advance. I say I do it a little bit for now. Do what a little bit? So my structures can only become a part a little bit.

[38:23]

Oh, yeah, okay. And not too much. Yes, I... I think I said everything. Okay, I think I understood. Okay, next again. Who's the reporter for this group? We didn't choose one. Maybe I can only start with it. I found it interesting that we had the same theme like this group with the aggression and also with the Nazis that came.

[39:24]

Maybe you're all getting mad at me. The topic was how does a Buddhist community like this deal with aggression? This was one. And is there aggression? And why the fear that there's everybody only smiling and maybe there's not allowed any strong emotional aggression? And we had the question, what is the difference? It was a little . Pointed. Pointed the question between a sangha and a Nazi group. Yeah. And then Gerhard was in our group. He said, yeah, we see hate and greed like a problem to work on. take it as to work with, against the rest of the world. Yeah, this was one thing and the other thing that I remember was also the, that's also for me quite important still, the question fundamentally alone and fundamentally connected and how does it relate to the other.

[40:37]

From the feeling here, for me it's always more the The fundamentally connected blessing that I found so astonishing when I'm here in this place or in this kind of practice. And the fundament alone is more this being allowed to be an individual or something like that. But we talked a lot more, maybe someone else. Vielleicht kannst du das noch kurz auf Deutsch sagen. Yes, first of all, I was surprised that you and people like me talked about aggression and that in connection with what distinguishes a group like ours from a, let's say, a fascist group, that is, from a sense of community, it is perhaps similar and what is actually different, Or how is there such a danger that such a group develops into such a group? And the other thing was also for him, I think with the second group, this difference between being completely alone and also connected from the front and the connection of these two aspects that become noticeable in the axis.

[41:46]

Yeah. And that's good. It's not a real question. It's somehow a question. It's more the state. I'm worried about the state. I don't really have a question anymore. So what is the question? Or do we get a question from you? Or what is it? You mean in practice you don't have any question. So you want me to give you one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this is already no question what I ask it. Okay. Deutsch? Bitte. Ja. Ich bin unsicher darüber, dass ich das Gefühl habe, ich habe keine wirkliche Frage mehr, die sich, was sich vor allen Dingen gerade in den Textstudien mit solchen Teilen hier äußert, Maybe I could add something that I found important, too.

[43:00]

There was one who said that Gerard one time was so friendly on the telephone that he Klaus had a whole day that he was very happy because Gerrit was emerging so much kindness to the telephone. I call him up all the time just to feel good. But he also has to pay the phone bills. From this week we came to the point of that we all, and me too, we experience this great kindness or, yeah, heartfulness that is here in this place.

[44:00]

And, yeah, and then we try to be like this, like the Bodhisattva, always kind, always helping. And there came one point that I can also very good understand from my side, that you have But in daily life, it's quite difficult to go on with your work or to not leak in your energy when you're always there for people and say, oh, I don't want this, I don't want this at all. And we were talking about how they're not in Buddhism and how we deal with that and what point is that there. And then there's a lot of structure so that you just have times where no talking and no we can't come always to you. Yeah, we can, but there's a structure that helps us to develop this kindness, maybe. But still, I think it's an important topic for the daily life, how to be really friendly and open, but not... Yeah. So one of our group had called Gerald, who was so friendly that he would be with us all day long.

[45:10]

We have been talking about friendship since then, which we are also trying to In the beginning, we discussed this phrase, this is also me, looking at things, the indication of identity with phenomena outside. And I think during the course of our group this arose an anxiety of too much identity and too much conformity in groups. And so this ended in the end. I think we also agreed on the fact that there are subtle things which connect people and we enjoy them.

[46:17]

We like to be in such groups, whether it's a family or a Buddhist group. And then we ended... in trying to find out in what ways are we different from people who gather under a different topic like fascists, with different aims. And to put the arrow backwards, in what ways are we endangered by a group feeling which is not authentic? Of course I don't know the answer to these questions. But they concern me.

[47:31]

And so sometimes I think maybe I should just practice by myself or with just two or three people. But even though I don't know the answer to these questions, I've made a decision in life to continue what I feel I should do. Because also I feel someone, various people will do it, and so I should probably also. And I should bring my concerns into the practice with others. And that's why I was speaking both here and

[48:49]

Crestone, recently. But what does it mean to establish an institution in a society? So we made the final payment for this place on December 31st. And now we're... planning on building these two or four buildings or so at Creston. And maybe Beral remembers that when we were going to build the Zendo... At Crestone. I really didn't want to. Do you remember that feeling I had? I was ready to leave Crestone because I didn't want the Zendo. Because I know that When you create something, it doesn't work just to be a rich person and make it.

[50:28]

It only works if you do it with others. But if you do it with others, then the whole energy of society comes in. Look, this is a big society. I don't know. We're just little guys. I'm hesitant to let all this flow into what we're doing. And I believe that the power of the sangha, the adept sangha, is its marginality. I mean, I'm quite interested the way, for example, Scottish... in the 18th century, Scottish intellectuals contributed significantly to producing economics and sociology, which European philosophers and British folks wouldn't have done.

[51:47]

Because Scotland, within English-speaking culture, was marginal to England and had a certain creativity because of that. So I think you can look at, probably you could look at Germany, Switzerland, Austria and see different contributions from Vienna and Austria that are different than Germany and so forth. So my point is that being marginal does not mean you're not central. To be marginal is sometimes also to be central. So how do you remain marginal in a way that you can be creative and fluid enough to contribute to the society.

[53:06]

The edge, to be at the margin edge. So these are the kinds of things I think about. And particularly come up when we make a step like getting Johanneshof. And although, going back to the Crestone Zendo, Although I at some point wanted to build a Zendo, and had one designed in my mind, I didn't, at that time, definitely did not want to do it.

[54:21]

But I sort of got, just for explanation, got sort of roped into a situation with my friend Bill Thompson. Who'd given us, basically... no strings attached, even me and Dharma Sangha, the Crestone property and the buildings that were there. And so he wanted to do some things, it required funding, and the funding wouldn't come to him unless I built the Zendo. It's just the way the situation happened to be. So really, out of friendship to Bill, I built the Zendo for us. And I was real tentative about it, I must say. And one of my rules is I will not accept any contributions or support where there's any strings attached.

[55:48]

Okay. So, but really, for me, this in the end is about friendship. I'm doing this here because of my friendship, my feeling for you, for us. Now, you know, I am part of the Sangha, but I'm also rather isolated from the Sangha. So, Sometimes the feelings people have surprise me when I hear about them.

[56:50]

I can't believe it. This person is jealous of that person and this person has one job and the other person thinks he should have that job or she... I think, what's going on? And it's particularly strong in a practice period. Three months people living together. For me it's, you know, these jobs are I mean, ridiculous. You're like a cook or a tenso. I mean, what difference does it make? And there's a whole tradition of you rotate people, people rotate through jobs. And if you're a lousy cook, you still get a chance to be the head cook. And there's a rotation this way and there's a rotation this way.

[58:16]

So when you get to the top, you're supposed to go back to the bottom. So Atmar is the head monk now, but head monk, the word she so means toilet cleaner. So he has to clean all the toilets at Crestone. And he has to take care of all the garbage. And he has to give lectures. He's doing quite well, actually. His lectures are very good. I think many of you know Ottmar, but maybe not everybody. Yeah. So for me, it's just, I don't care whether somebody's this job or that job. It doesn't, I can't, you know, I don't get it.

[59:17]

I'm afraid, I'm kind of dumb. And I think this is my weakness. So to not understand it better, But people seem to have this energy that rushes into their job and then they compare it. And it happens, so I have to figure out how to cope with it. And then, particularly in a practice period, I think... there's lots of projections on me. I just feel like just an ordinary guy wandering around saying hello to people. I realize people tell me that something else is going on sometimes.

[60:20]

I just realize that and people tell me that too. Something else is going on sometimes. So you see, I really don't know if I should be doing this. I'm kind of dense. So to play it safe, I'm trying to keep the dharmasanga small. What? I don't know if that's... Bob is on the same side. You mean it's not staying small? I don't know if that really protects him. Oh, it does. Yes, it does. Oh, boy, I'll tell you, there's a big difference. Big difference.

[61:20]

Scale is a huge difference. A very big difference. When I was head of the San Francisco Zen Center, we had 200 employees. And I had 400 Doksan students. In San Francisco alone, there were 12,000 people involved. And when small ripples get going in a group like that, They soon are, you know, people are surfing on them. Well, it's interesting to do doksan for 12 straight hours.

[62:21]

I was younger. So the question is, what is the scale? That's also something I'm trying to feel out. Because my experience is that... Something like we're working with our individual identities. And we're working with our sense of Buddhist practice. And also, simultaneously, the metta identities. Metta identities. larger identities begin to happen and float in the group.

[63:32]

So, but still I feel it's worth trying. How do I respond to the question about aggression? My feeling, let me go back to the sense of sangha first. As much as possible, I would like to have a group where there's no coercion. It's completely easy to join or leave.

[64:34]

Not too much coercion. No coercion. Coercion means force, to force someone to do something. So groups tend to be coercive because, you know, they make it hard on somebody who wants to leave or something. So I would like to have the group dynamics here in Crestone to be as little coercive as possible. And I used to make what I think was the mistake of trying to make it possible for people to stay if they wanted to stay.

[65:44]

So people would come to me and say, well, I'd like to stay, but, you know, I have to have some money to have my teeth fixed, and I can't live here because I need, etc., And people came to me and said, I would like to stay here, but I need money to get my teeth treated. So I can't stay. He's going to leave to get a job so he can fix his teeth. And I'd say, oh, no, I know a dentist who'll do the work for free, so you can sit here. And I was always doing things like that. Now somebody comes to me and they say, I have to leave because of some reason. I say, well, goodbye. Or, you know, I try to be more... I don't like that. And also our emphasis here, as I tried to say this morning, is on a shared but not common mind.

[67:07]

But I can't control the group dynamics, so we have to see what happens. You know, I'm fairly smart. And I'm fairly sophisticated about psychology and sociology and so forth. At least average, or maybe slightly more than average. But I'm not anywhere near smart enough to figure out how to really... I mean, we have to experiment. But by saying I'm smart, I mean I've made an effort to understand these things as well as I can. And I've gone and spent time with the head of the unions in the United States, and I've spent time with Eric Erickson and other people like that to try to get the best ideas I can.

[68:18]

Still, I think we basically have to experiment. In other words, what I'm saying is I don't think there's any expert we can go to to explain how we should do this. So if recently I was again speaking about aggression, I think we have to come back to

[69:36]

our individual practice. And again, no matter how intelligent we all are as a group, which I think is considerable, we still can't figure this out. We have to try it out. So one of my emphasis also is not to advertise, not to promote ourselves. If we... I don't try to... You know, it's hard to... Well, we send out a brochure here, etc. In America, we don't. But my feeling is just to be here and see who arrives. And in the first years in Creston, it was Gerald, Gisela and me. And then Randy came. And then came Randy. And every now and then, Gerald would say to me, we're awfully alone here.

[71:10]

Fundamentally and in fact. Couldn't we let people know we're here? No, if anybody shows up, it's okay. And how many years were we mostly alone? Two, three. Then slowly one or two people came and another. Because I don't want to dupe anyone. Dupe means to fool. Dupe. Anybody want to say anything?

[72:10]

Yeah. We are in Germany, and as you explained, it's not the only consciousness, but it goes, you said 200 years, but it goes also for us to the last 50 or 60, 70 years. Yes, and so the anxiety... Anxiety, yes. I had this question too, and I didn't join this group. I had it for me alone. I know, you mentioned it to me already. Yes. It's serious, I think. It has to be serious. Yeah, no, I understand it's serious.

[73:10]

And one of the reasons I think Buddhism is so popular in Germany is because of the war and your parents' or grandparents' generation. You can't look back. You need to... you're more open to what are the possibilities of being human. And we can't look back in America either because there was nobody there 200 years ago. At least there were some. But it's not our culture. So I think American-Germany share some kind of feeling which I don't find, say, in England or France or other places.

[74:21]

If we look at... I'll just tell this as an anecdote because Tanahashi's... Calligraphy is there. He's an old friend of mine. And he's a kind of Dogen scholar. And a calligrapher and an artist. And his father was Maybe something like the main strategist general for the Japanese army during the Second World War. And his father's best friend was Ueshiba, who founded Akita. And Ueshiba is perhaps the greatest warrior Japan has ever produced.

[75:47]

I don't exactly know the details, so I can't say this. But I believe during the war, they decided the war was wrong. And... We could take an awful lot of time telling stories. Maybe I should... Oh, dear. Okay. I was... Yeah. Anyway, so they somehow, I don't know how, dropped out of the war effort. And his father became a, founded a new branch of Shinto religion

[76:55]

and was a channeler of kind of spirits to this new group. And Ueshiba The first group of students, he decided to start teaching his approach, was Tanahashi and the village kids, where they were living in a small village away from the war, where they had enough food to eat. And Ueshiba had decided to teach it. And he taught it to children and people in a small village where there was enough food. And Tanahashi was one of them who participated. So recently Tanahashi and Mayumi, who did that picture, and she's just painted a huge Tara painting for us and is bringing it to Crestone.

[78:05]

She's meeting me when I return on Tuesday or something. And she's bringing this Tara painting to Creston. And to teach for a few days Zen practice and painting. So Tanahashi Sensei and Mayumi founded Plutonium Free Japan. Because they did not want I don't know. I find this story interesting, so I don't know if you do. Now, Eheji, the abbot of Eheji, which is the temple Dogen founded, Near Eheji were built, I think, Japan's first two nuclear reactors.

[79:16]

And the abbot of Eheji named them Fugen and Monju. Monju is the Japanese word for Manjushri and Fugen is the Japanese word for Samantabhadra. The Bodhisattva of Wisdom and the Bodhisattva of Practice. So, Tanahashi Sensei and Mayumi, the fierce, strong woman, decided to go to battle with Japan. Again, I don't know the details exactly, but... Tanahashi, following his father, decided to be the strategist.

[80:29]

And he tried to use Ueshiba's principles to turn the enemy's strength against himself. So they... decided the weak point was Japan trying to get plutonium from other countries that they would reprocess in their plants. And if you remember, about three, four years ago, there were stories. Ship leaving Israel, stopped in French ports. That was all their work. So they tried to figure out where these ships were going and they planted stories in newspapers and some ports wouldn't let the new ships come in, etc.

[81:42]

So this is some lineage of fighting this plutonium thing by stepping out of the war effort by the father in Ueshiba and turning that energy to non-aggression or something, but in an aggressive way. which comes from the withdrawal of his father from the army and the war. But to use this power to implement something not aggressively, but in an aggressive way. And they were quite successful in stopping this and the Manju plant blew up somehow on a particular date, I forget.

[82:54]

It was interesting. And... I have a half-Jewish daughter who I sort of adopted. Not legally, but I got her through high school. There's a long story, but I got her through high school. And she's now 34, a year younger than my other daughter, my real daughter. She's head branch of a Kung Fu school. And she's fierce, I'll tell you. She's a little thin girl, unbelievable. And I introduced her to Mayumi's half-Japanese son.

[84:02]

You introduced? Her to Mayumi's half-Japanese son recently at a dinner party that I arranged. Because I won't explain it all. But Mayumi's son, Zach, who's a great guy, and an artist and a karate teacher and a San Francisco fireman, and he went to China to study with somebody who... He met there. And this guy said to... Zach went to China looking for a teacher.

[85:05]

And this guy said to him, well, do you want to see my one-inch power? So Zack is a very solid guy. And he's developed this capacity that some of these martial arts people have. You can't bruise him. You can hit him with anything. There's no bruise, no black and blue mark. And this guy said, Zach said, sure. So the guy put his fist only one inch from his chest. And like that, Zach flew back about 15 feet. So it's like something out of the movies. And Zach said, I study with you. And Zach said, I study with you.

[86:06]

What does this have to do with aggression? This is actually part of yogic culture, what I'm talking about. I used to watch Suzuki Roshi a number of times this kind of thing happened. There'd be some crazy person, particularly in the 60s. We had crazy people around a lot. There'd be some crazy person in the hallway and threatening or swinging a knife or doing something like that. And people would all be sort of... And Tsukiroshi would come in the building by chance. And just walk up to this person as if nothing was happening. And say, how are you? He would say, oh, well.

[87:26]

And then Sukhirashi would say, let's go for a walk. He would... Sukhirashi was able to treat the person exactly as he wanted to be treated. And Suzuki... So the person immediately felt comfortable and said, well, okay, let's go for a walk. So they walked to the door. Sukershi opened the door. The guy went out and Sukershi says, goodbye. And then he came with this man to the door, opened the door, let him out and said goodbye. So I do think this practice allows you to relate differently to people. And also in Ueshiba, who was not exactly Zen practitioner, in the culture,

[88:32]

He could get seven or eight or more people all trying to hit him with clubs and sticks. He just walked around and nobody could hit him. But he was able to generate this kind of awareness and feel what people were doing. Now, I don't think, no, I don't feel I'm seriously responding. I'm not, well, I'm responding, but I know, I would like to find a better way to respond than telling you these anecdotes. Mm-hmm. May I add something? Sure. I think Aikido is not to take the energy of the other one against, but with him.

[89:49]

So it's kind of the same thing if you say, well, it's also me. Yeah. to make one energy out of two energies. I think that's what the Uyeshiba does. He does not fight against. It's not a confrontation, but an inclusion of the energy or of even the aggression of the other person. Okay, that's a better way to say it. I believe that Aikido works in such a way that the energy of the other, whether it is an enemy or just someone who approaches me, is not used against him, but that the two energies, that is, the energy of the other who approaches me and my energy becomes one energy, that this happens again, that I am also I, that from these two energies one energy is created. Okay, good, thank you.

[90:57]

I think that in your workplace, you have to spend the coin of the realm. What's that? The coin of the realm as an expression means you have to function the way everyone else functions. So if people are functioning the usual way and getting angry and etc., you have to function within that. But if you can function within that with the kind of mind where you treat each thing equally, you can engage people the way they want you to engage them. At the same time, I think you can engage them with much less anger or personality things functioning.

[92:04]

And you can actually make people feel pretty good generally who might be your enemy. in actual acting with them, something else happens. So I think on the one hand, you just have to live in your culture the way it is. But the wider your feeling and acceptance of the other person and the more you respond to them just as a human being and at any moment there's various elements in a person There's parts which are trying to behave this way, parts which are trying to behave that way, etc.

[93:11]

And you can actually feel those and respond to the ones that are most beneficial. So my observation is that people who have meditation you know, a fair amount, but not a lot, of meditation experience, actually function with more ease and success in work situations than the average person. That's my observation. Mm-hmm. But still we have to live in our society and function the way it functions. But at the same time we can create a place like this where we try to bring our intelligence and good feeling and develop ourselves in a in this way more based on meditation.

[94:31]

And one thing that does happen when a group of people meditate together, much of the energy that would go into interpersonal stuff is absorbed by meditation. So,

[94:45]

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