So how was your discussion? Yeah. When I'm here and after a while I finally lost the ground under my feet, then … That's our fault, huh? Why should I be happy? Why should I be happy? Then after a while something like a thick texture begins to appear. On the one hand, that is what I hear, what I experience here, what is discussed in the groups, but also experiences that I of course bring with me.

[01:11]

So somehow it is an elevation of space and time, because the things come together and in part also memories come that I have had somewhere for a long time. So this happens through what I hear here and what I experience and what we speak about in the groups and things that happen and it's like as though space and time dissolve because all kinds of things they come together And it's also that then what happens is that memories begin to pop up that I had already buried very deep inside before. And I observe that I deal with it as if I had a finer sieve every time. So at the beginning everything is still very crude and actually they are always similar questions. But I always go with a slightly finer sieve.

[02:12]

What I notice, what I do is that every time this happens, it's as though I apply a finer sieve to it. And this happens through the support from the groups and through the experiences I make here, that each time I can apply a finer sieve. And the last point in the group, which was not discussed further, but that is important to me. I also said, and still, even though I learn a lot and even though my life has changed a lot, I sometimes have a stutter. And the last point that I brought up, which we haven't spoken more about in the group, but this is really important to me, I said that still, although I notice that I'm learning a lot and although I'm changing, sometimes I'm just angry. At us or me or, no, just yourself?

[03:17]

No, just in everyday life. It just happens that there is anger and, yeah, I'm furious. And for me it's important, because Susanne spoke about it a few days ago, the anger and that they then feel dirty. With this word, a lot of things came up to me where I said, that's actually a shame. And one thing I would like to say, because Susanne brought this up, when she spoke about how sometimes when she feels angry, there's also, it's accompanied by a sense of somehow this also feels dirty or something. And what came up for me then is that I thought, oh, well, this is really too bad. So I think it's too bad because what I see, I see anger as a tremendous energy that I can also use as a resource where I can get something from if I just fully go into it or something.

[04:44]

And I won't go into the detail of all those things that I can get from it now, but that's another alternative. Thank you very much. I don't like to stop the discussion at this point, because I prefer just to let it go on, but a couple of things you said make me want to use this as an opportunity to say something. One thing, I mean, I think, and I even talked to Sukhiroshi about this, about his feeling about anger, feeling anger he had. And usually, even in more kind of superficial anger, self-preservation anger,

[05:47]

You're trying to protect yourself, preserve yourself. Self-interested. Even in the earth case, there's usually an element of anger which is the world isn't the way it should be. And that anger can be a fuel for practice, for transforming, making things the way they should. It's the kind of border between rage and outrage. Do you know the difference? But the main thing I wanted to respond to, what's your sense of the finer sieve?

[07:21]

or the penetration to a different kind of memory. When we're functioning primarily through consciousness and the whole thing about the negations And much of it is about how we pierce the veil of consciousness. And Jeffrey Hopkins has written a book which is a commentary on Tsongkhapa's Was it Flow of Eloquence or something like that?

[08:46]

And the title he gave to the book, which is sort of his own commentary on Tsongkhapa's work, And it's something like absorption in no external world. And I would put it, what I would say as a phrase, is absorption in a non-external world. I don't know, it's okay. No, I said that.

[09:47]

I have to translate the first thing, definitely. What? Nonduality is a kind of absorption in the world in which... Hard to say it in English, in any language. Absorption in the world in which boundaries are not lost... But the boundaries become membranes of transfusion or something like that.

[10:47]

So I may be going a little... I may be speaking not just to what she said, but I will continue. For a minute, if you'll let me. Okay. So, when... when we're defining our world through consciousness, perception penetrates to emotions and associative memories. But when... Maybe I'll have to come back to this tomorrow to find words.

[12:28]

But I will continue with inadequate words. When... Maybe this is okay. When your experience of the world is non-conceptual. And again, these are things we all to some extent have an experience of. In adept practice they are more articulated and more fully present. When you have a sustained or periodic, intermittent, non-conceptual experience of the world,

[13:38]

a perceptual, non-conceptual knowing, then percepts penetrate your activity and your life in a different way. And they don't penetrate so much through to emotions and associative memories, but penetrate to very deep levels of attitude, views, feelings. Call up whole modalities or paradigms that have lived us from underneath. Am I getting too complicated? Paradigms of?

[15:10]

Paradigms or modalities that we have lived from underneath. And we feel these really deep emotions, deep feelings come up. As if we've been maybe crying inside ourselves all our lives. And perhaps also somehow joyous and relieved in our lives. And perhaps also somehow joyous We can't reach it conceptually, usually, but we can, of course, but sometimes we feel it in our fingers or our hands or our fingertips.

[16:11]

It's like things, momentary things penetrate us, not momentarily, but as if forever. It's like we dissolve into each person. Okay. Thanks for letting me try to say that. I've been wondering how to find a way to say that for the last couple of weeks. So that's, if you get a feel for that or understand, grok that, then I think you can understand

[17:12]

the tremendous emphasis within adept Buddhism at negating the conceptual identification of the world. Because it's not just some kind of philosophical exercise of the Fort of the Tetralemma. But it's an incomparable way to be in the world. Incomparable, without comparison. You know, if you're unfamiliar with the word tetralemma, I don't know, it's the same in German, it must be, because we have in English also dilemma.

[18:40]

A dilemma is, of course, a double proposition, twofold proposition, not four. Tetra is four. A dilemma is when you're faced with two unwelcome choices. Okay, thanks. Someone else? What Roshi just said leads me to the question of the monk in the choir, after he has discarded the four positions,

[19:43]

What you just said leads me to the question of the monk. After having cut off the four propositions, what is the meaning of living Buddhism? What you just said, would that be something like an answer to that? Yeah, let's pretend. And what's interesting is, and what the koan does, which is a little bit sleight of hand, it's who by robbing whoever it is, the robber who robs the robber, And what is interesting is that what the koan does is a bit like bag magic or something like that, like a bag trick, where the koan mentions that who buys, who hails robbers. So this great meaning of Buddhism, which I think what I said was some version of it, is found within the Four Prepositions and Hundred Negations.

[21:20]

So is beyond just to rob the robber? The word beyond, you said beyond the four properties. Or is there some additional sense of beyond as well as within? Oder gibt es da noch eine zusätzliche Bedeutung für das Wort jenseits, zusätzlich dazu, dass es schon darin liegt? Das ist die grundlegende Frage des Koans. Okay, we're getting there. We're beginning to get into the koan now. Okay, for now? Okay. Someone else? Yes. To what you said about dealing with annoyance and the deeper attraction to perhaps an experience that has not been experienced before, the question is now, is it not necessary to dissolve certain concepts, for example, through the Eightfold Path,

[22:45]

and other teachings, which are practically contrary to conventional concepts. What you just said about anger and about penetrating into deeper ways of experience that maybe before were not noticed, is it not also necessary to dissolve concepts, like, for example, dissolve them through the Eightfold Path? Is that some sort of... Ah, so before man gets to this... Ah, so before man gets to... Okay. ...that you mentioned, or that you already mentioned. So before you penetrate into these levels, is it not necessary to dissolve concepts through the teachings? Yeah, there's no harm in doing that. But Nagarjuna's point is, at the moment of each percept, use that percept to dissolve the concept.

[23:55]

And also use the percept non-conceptuality. Anyway, allow, permit the percept non-conceptuality. And also allow the concept of non-conceptuality. We could say that the craft of this koan is to permit non-conceptuality to the person. I love hearing German. It sounds so nice.

[25:08]

And it's wonderful that it's so distinct and clear and articulate. I don't understand a damn thing. It's wonderful sounds. When I first started coming to Germany, I couldn't hear the sounds, but now I hear the sounds very clearly. And they're sitting there like beautiful things, and they have meaning. Exactly. They shine for you and to me they just shine. Okay, someone else? Yes. I would like to say something about the questions from the last or previous seminar and not about today's question. I would like to say something to one of the questions of a previous seminar, not of today's seminar. To the question of how do I make decisions and also how do I make crucial decisions.

[26:12]

This one step, to make such an inventory, I have translated for myself, how do I actually experience myself in the world, how do I function in the world? And this one step of making an inventory, I translated that for myself into the question of how do I experience myself in the world? How do I function? Yesterday and the day before yesterday you talked about neuroplasticity and hemispheres and so on, and I think these are highly exciting and interesting questions, and I can benefit very much from them, especially for my professional practice, because they are more in the attitude

[27:26]

And you spoke about neuroplasticity and these things, and I find this entire area to contain very, very interesting questions that I can also use in my profession very well and am increasingly using because they fit very well with how I work. And then I noticed that I think I don't function the way that these steps are. that I presented during this seminar? Well, if I speak about questions that are deeply, essentially important to me, Not something like what kind of butter I would buy.

[28:48]

That's something we spoke about. Oh, really? That's sometimes important. And then I looked, how is this actually so important and central? How did this actually happen? How did I end up there? And somehow I have the feeling as if I somehow have a red thread in my life. And I ask myself the question, well, how does that work in really crucial situations? And how did I get to where I am? And I feel like there's something like a red thread running through my life. Do you have that expression? Yes, we do. Yes, that's more the point.

[29:49]

Somehow I have the feeling that when I already had this red thread of time of life and lost it and at some point I took it up again, it's more the question of how I can continue to follow this thread and see it more clearly. and somehow I feel as though I've always had this red thread and as though I, you know, sometimes lost it but then picked it up again and the question for me is more something like how can I see it more clearly? And so sometimes I have a picture sometimes from my experience is as if I am a balloon, an air balloon and when I breathe in this balloon blows up and I somehow notice the limit, but that is then one

[31:03]

a complete body and with every breath it breathes and floods at every moment. I have such an image. And one image that I'm holding is that as though I was an air balloon and every time I breathe in this balloon is filling up with air and I do feel the boundaries of this balloon but somehow it's as though with each breath it's completely it's completely filled with um and flooded with air and this is a closed body and so Yes, and somehow decisions come from this whole closed body.

[32:24]

And it's one closed body and somehow it's as though also decisions arise from this closed body. And that I manage, and somehow I manage more and more somehow to stay on the outside with my perception and to keep this state and sometimes it is so that this outer skin is not really closed but it is transparent and this perception goes beyond this outer skin, this balance and with this perception I can also stay in this outer space And sometimes it's as though I manage to be on the outer surface of this balloon and to perceive from there and then it's as though the skin of the balloon is not really closed but it's a membrane that can be penetrated.

[33:35]

But my perception is bigger than the balloon. It can reach into the space beyond the balloon. Yeah, that can even stay there, is my perception. Your perception is probably right. I look at the question of how I make decisions. It's sometimes a feeling of... ...a question of timeliness... ...of harmony, and sometimes it's almost like... ...something aesthetic in this... So when I make decisions... somehow move back and forth in me, that is, when I actually move back and forth in different positions and also move back and forth over such a ... yes, such a movement back and forth and such a ... you can't describe it well.

[34:48]

Yes, it has almost sometimes something like that, there must be a certain voice in this whole field, then it feels good for me. And as for the question how I make decisions it's about having a feeling of harmony and of attunement and it's as though I'm turning the decision, the question back and forth and again back and forth all the time but the decision happens in accordance with the sense of attunement that has to be there. And afterwards I can think about it, but this thinking about it is not the level for me at which deep decisions are being made. Yeah, I understand. That was wonderful that you presented that to all of us.

[36:00]

Who that? That's not martyrs. Emily. Oh, Emily. Well, we really had a lot of martyrs in the Doksan room this morning. I think they were having babies or building houses or I don't know what it is. And if what you've said may be, you know, I might want to comment on, I'll see if it happens during the next days. But I'll just say a couple of things.

[37:03]

One is that when we do find our path is widening Perhaps we find that as well as red threads, there are green threads, yellow threads, Shotruz. That's a color. She dyed her hair shotruz. Shotruz. That was a jazz song. Anyway, when David's here, I start singing. I don't know what it is. But I can't sing, you know. But he can. He would form the World Suicide Club once. He had members and records and things like that. And he figured if we're building all these nuclear weapons and putting them in Germany and stuff like that, we must really want to commit suicide.

[38:10]

If we have a fire one night, maybe you can sing us some songs around the fire. I'd be glad to. You have to have a guitar. Yeah. All right. And also, you know, when I'm presenting this teaching in a certain steps and patterns, Your practice might go the opposite direction or be in a different pattern or different steps.

[39:34]

So I'm trying to present it so it's most not experientially necessarily Understandable, but so it's conceptually, in this case, understandable, so you can hold it in your mind. No one else. Someone who hasn't said anything yet. That's Emily. Yes, Tara? What touches me most deeply in the Quran is this phrase, living Buddhism.

[40:49]

So mostly the word living, but at the same time I'm still concerned with impermanence and momentariness. So I continue to practice these last days to simply take away the future, to simply stop at no next moment or no tomorrow, So what I practiced with throughout the week is to not allow myself a next moment, to not allow myself a tomorrow or something like that, just take away the next moment. And what that led to is that I fully plunged into the present moment almost like a sponge that fills up with the present moment and then in turn this led to feeling

[42:02]

very much alive within the present moment. And to practice with this there is no next moment or I'm always already including the end. Somehow that leads me into a much more complete aliveness. Yeah, it's wonderful to reach this point. And the point as Hans brought forth a few minutes ago too. Now the question is, how can we bring this experience, which we could also call a shift, left right brain shift,

[43:25]

Or a shift to what Buddhism would call wisdom instead of... Yeah, anyway. Yeah. How can we let that start to function in our habitual psychological patterns and daily activity. Because in the end it doesn't mean much if it is kind of special experiences you have, and I'm not just speaking to you, I'm saying, but rather experiences that First open up the rest of your life.

[44:29]

And then begin to penetrate the rest of your life. And then transform the rest of your life. So investigate for another 30 years. Okay. Someone else. Is that you? No. Yes. We stuck to the questions in our book. A good student, finally. Well, you're a teacher. We just stuck to what was offered.

[45:30]

That was good. And I also thought that this can't do much harm. But then it turned out that it's not all that harmless. We have... Let's put it this way, this ideal came then, it was split up into properties.

[46:37]

So we already took the Buddha and then looked, so then everyone discovered such qualities that individually So we did speak about the ideal but then that got split up and we spoke about different qualities of an ideal. So this is individually different because every person is at a different place and has a different kind of not being at peace with themselves. And I think certainly that it's worth looking for what has priority there.

[47:48]

And then about this field of tension. And then this is something we spoke about. And what I find interesting is that in an educational process and we also work a lot with role models, someone like Gandhi for example. And now you just mentioned this phrase and sort of said something like the world as it should be or as it should be from one's individual perspective.

[49:01]

away from how I should be. I should be like Gandhi, or like Albert Schweitzer, or like my father. And somehow that turns it around. It turns it around, away from how I should be, that I should be like Gandhi, or my father, or whatever. But I can become active in order to shape the world in such a way that I feel at home in the world. so that I can become active to form the world in a way that I would feel at home in this world. This means that I am no longer in such a tension field, but the main criticism does not always fall on me, that I have to tinker with myself until I become like this role model. That means that I'm in a field of polarity, a field of tension there, but the pressure is taken away from me in the sense that I don't always have to work on myself until I become the way that my role model is or something.

[50:18]

But that I can actually research, how an encounter takes place in me with these activities or qualities. But that I can investigate and play around with these different qualities and try them out and find a quality that complements that which in the world is not exactly the way I would wish for it to be. and this world of tension takes place absolutely in the moment, then there is actually no look back and also no look forward, That's how it comes about.

[51:22]

I thought it was great how Roger told us about perception and appearance, or, as it is sometimes an activity, to dissolve this concept. And this field of polarities happens in the moment, it's just here in the present. And I liked very much how you spoke about using the percept to dissolve the concept. Because I have a concept about myself for example and how I am. And mostly it's probably not complete. And that is dissolved by entering into this field of polarities which has so much aliveness or something, vividness in it, and through that somehow opens so many doors.

[52:42]

And there are so many more possibilities of how to How to be free. Swim free. Yeah, good, thank you. When I when Adnan and I discussed what could be the question for today he and we spoke about the ideal of how we want our practice or the world to be. And yet we accept what our practice is, but we are informed by the ideal. Und wir akzeptieren zwar, wie unsere Praxis ist, aber wir werden durch das Ideal, von dem Ideal informiert.

[53:57]

Und da hat Ottmar gesagt, ein gutes, einfaches Beispiel dafür ist, dass unsere Zazen-Haltung von der Ideal-Haltung des Buddhas informiert wird. Und das stimmt ganz genau. But we accept our posture, but we're within the ideal of a Buddha's posture. And there's a dynamic there between ideal posture and accepting our posture. And as I've been pointing out a number of times, we're also sitting within the concept, don't move. In this way we can study how concepts, intentions and ideals actually are functioning and can function profoundly within us all the time.

[55:09]

And the teaching of Buddhism is you have a choice about what ideals, concepts and intentions you function through and within. Which is not the same as just being natural or something like that. Or this is the kind of person I am already. No, you have a choice about what ideals, concepts and intentions you live through.

[56:12]

And that choice Buddhism hopes that choice is informed by wisdom. But that's a real simple point that we've got to get that we have a choice. For me this problem of ideal and missing the ideal is a very important one. And when I intensified my practice at the beginning of this year that was something that kind of oppressed me, wanting to have a very good practice now.

[57:31]

And then there was also a disease that interfered so that I had to stop sitting for a while. And these questions today, they really touched me because this morning, this is just what I thought about during the study period. And so I am happy that you have used the word that ideally informs. Because informing is something different than suppressing. And that is now a new understanding for me to get out of this pressure. It's just a help, a hint, but I don't have to be it. So I was very happy when you just used the word inform, that the ideal informs it, because informing is different from oppressing. Yes. Big difference. And it takes away the pressure. Yeah, no, it's true.

[58:47]

Yeah, very good. These slight little differences make a difference. And it's funny, sometimes we can find the difference through words, and then the words themselves can change everything. Since we're running a bit out of time, How can we run out of time when we are time? I have no time. How can you have no time? You are time. Running from time. So since we're running out of time maybe I'd like to say try to say something Yes, some kind of, you know, platitudes.

[59:52]

A set of platitudes. Exactly the same. We are born through, we're born from others. And we develop, while we to some extent may develop ourselves through ourselves, the assumption, experience and position of Buddhism, as we most fully evolve ourselves through others. ist, dass wir uns am vollständigsten auch durch andere entwickeln. We proceed, that's like a proceed, we're born from or we proceed from others. Wir stammen von anderen ab. We proceed into ourselves through others.

[60:59]

Oder vielleicht auch wir folgen auf andere und wir, wir, wir And we proceed through others into Buddhahood. And that's the, you know, called the Bodhisattva path. And the practice of the six paramitas. So this is a very subtle concept of others, the role, engagement, participation of others in our life. We're born from two parents, obviously. But we're continually reborn through how we're brought up, how we engage with others.

[62:13]

How we engage with others. But that, obviously that's It's not just an external engagement, it's also internal engagement. And I think particularly of one of my favorite poets, Fernand Pessoa, who didn't have too many friends, But he created a whole world of poetry, including himself and three, I think, three heteronyms. And he had complex internal relationships with others. Perhaps like a novelist who

[63:15]

writes this world of complexity that appears from his primarily internal experience as well as touch-stoned through external experience. So the understanding The understanding of a koan is not waiting in the koan for somebody intelligent to come along and ferret it out. That was a reference to martyrs. Ferrets are also something like a mark. To ferret it out means to figure it out, but it also means a little weasel type guy.

[64:38]

Yeah, okay, well, that reference I can't make. Yeah, I know, I just played around. Okay, so... So the understanding of the koan is not waiting in the koan for us. The understanding or wisdom of a koan is, if it's waiting anywhere, it's waiting in the maturity of the practice that's brought to it. It's kind of a magical territory where the meaning is not in the koan, but the meaning in the sense of transformed experience. is within the maturity of the practice brought to the koan.

[65:53]

And the maturity of the practice brought to the koan at various times in your life, the koan becomes different. And it's not only the maturity of the individual's practice brought to the koan. It's also the maturity of the sangha which practices the koan together. Yeah, so people asked me various ways before the koan, before the seminar. Do you know what you're going to say, etc., you know? Yeah. Because I don't really ever know.

[66:54]

I have a vague idea occasionally. But I said, no, I'm going to face the koan with all of you, with each of you. And I guarantee you, if I face this koan with a different With another group of the winter branches, it would have been very different lectures. So the meaning, these koans are this, I don't know how anybody could create such a thing as a koan. I can't imagine how anyone could create something like a koan.

[67:55]

A koan which has very little meaning in it, but carries meaning now, a thousand years later. So for me, the meaning or understanding of the koan, I find that I have to find myself within the flow of our practice together. And within that, the flow of our practice together, something comes out. Which I think you can see is really part of the koan. Yeah. So some of you may find that you may notice things or think about things that seem unrelated to the koan, but when you get here, I start talking about them.

[69:30]

Because this koan, I mean in the big field that we are, the koan may be like, let's say it's here. But it's working with things that are up here somewhere. But it seems not connected until you start penetrating the koan and find that this is actually here. And the koans were created that way too, really. And the Kohans were actually created that way. We have Yehlu Chusai, who was the, believe it or not, as you probably read, the advisor to Genghis Khan, who terrorized Europe.

[70:40]

He destroyed a lot too. Supposedly he mitigated some of the Mongols' violence. Mitigated element. Milderter. Milderter, okay. So there's Yeh Lu who really got Wansong to put this collection back together. And there's Chen Dong. And there's also Yuan Wu, the compiler of the Blue Cliff Records. Because he was constantly really referenced and the Blue Cliff Records was consulted in developing the Book of Serenity.

[71:47]

And the Matsu of these koans And the Matsu of the Koans is not the historical Matsu, as I've told you often, is not by philological research, is not the Matsu of the Tang Dynasty, the one who lived in the Tang Dynasty. If you study the actual lectures that people, records they have of his lectures, there was somebody named Chadwick who collected them. I can't remember. It was Chad Wong. He was a very traditional, conservative Buddhist.

[72:48]

The lineage turned him into this most dramatic kind of person. big guy with a tongue to clean his ears. Called Horse Master. So Matsu's created as a literary event, in a sense a koan event, an ideal By the lineage. By the Sangha over some generations. And we now are participating with our own practice to awaken these and create these experiential understandings.

[74:11]

Hi, teacher. How lucky we are. So let's ring the bell for the heck of it. For the bell of it.

[74:43]

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