Now, you knew this was coming. Why weren't you prepared? So habe ich gehört. Okay, wir haben... Entschuldigung. Okay. Können wir mal mit der Gruppe 4 anfangen? Also, ich war in Gruppe 4. Ja, ich bin in der Gruppe 4. Und... At the beginning, Gerard asked the following question. Assuming that it is ideal to become a Buddha, I'd say there is this ideal of becoming a Buddha. And then he was interested whether we are convinced that we ourselves can reach this ideal. And from that point of time the whole discussion was about why everybody was here practicing Zazen at all.

[01:27]

And then there was one part that was very simple. And that was... Zazen contributes to making me feel better. There was one very simple comment saying, oh, Zazen is a contribution to feeling better. Good. I hope so. Yes, that's good. I hope so. And another contribution was, I wish to be able to act more from my gut. And a third contribution was, I would like to know where I come from and where I am going. Third contribution goes, I want to know where I come from and where I go to.

[02:43]

OK. Thanks. OK. Next. First we tried to remember the lecture you gave yesterday and what everybody remembered from that. Everybody reported from their own experience and how they are touched by those experiences and where.

[03:46]

I can name different qualities. I don't like all of them, but I think one is that you feel very attached to a state. When I feel touched, I always feel something from... I know that, even if I've never had it before. When I feel touched, it's a very, very familiar state. There were various qualities and one was that somebody said it's always like having or it's a feeling of arrived and then you meet something you haven't met before but you have the feeling that it's very familiar and that you know it already. Everybody has said what they are doing to approach those states of mind So maybe there is a craft to approach these things, but that there is not a...

[05:15]

There can't be a direct intention to be deeply touched by something, but only maybe some tools or craft to prepare the ground. Thank you. Dankeschön. How was your group, Marie-Louise, with Sophia? Let alone the Buddha, huh? So next group. I have a feeling that I always forget everything, although we just talked about it.

[06:32]

When I talk, then it's coming back. So you had me add one thing. We also talked about the koan and what is implied in the word body or various bodies. Maybe three bodies also means many bodies or infinite number of bodies. And then there is this body you can take a photograph of or that we usually consider to be our normal body. And there's maybe also something you could call an inner body or a karmic body where all the pain and experiences from the past are stored and that you can photograph.

[08:09]

There's also an expanding body. When you hear a sound, for example, you have the feeling it extends towards the sound and you get really big eyes that include the sound. Ears. Oh, eyes. Sorry. Or where the boundaries are not clear. Well, if we accept that much, know that much, experience that much. Yeah, we're in the realm of what this koan is about. So that's good. There's two groups.

[09:12]

We have a third. You are? Well, hello. We started with the question... Roshi said... So a category like this here and now is actually a dead category. And someone said that this is covered with their experience, that when you speak, things often sound hollow, that they are not filled. And from that came the question, how can you speak in such a way that it does not sound hollow or empty? And right after that came the question of whether it is an obstacle, as Roshi said, to clarify what these three bodies are or to understand these categories first, why you need these categories at all, what they are useful for at all.

[10:35]

We also talked about the fact that there are two levels in communication when you speak, one level of content, the what of what I say and the how, as Roche explained, how you can say in different ways that the friend is a good person. And we talked about what Okay. Somebody brought up, because you said yesterday that the here and now is a category that is almost dead or it's not alive. And that somebody said that it's in accord with their experience that sometimes we speak and it sounds really...

[11:46]

hollow. Yeah, it's just hollow. And then from there the question appeared, how can we learn to speak in a way that's not that hollow or alive? Then there was also the question that if, as you said, it is a hindrance to enter this koan by asking what are the three bodies of Buddha, why is it Why do we have these categories at all, or how are they at all useful? And then we also talked about that there are two levels in communication, maybe the what-ness of what is said and the how-ness, and that how something is said establishes a relationship, that this might be a more important level,

[12:50]

that this is where, yeah, where people meet. Okay. And then as the group can, again, maybe other people can add what they think was probably... I would like to add something. For me, in this choir, this sentence at the very beginning is very decisive, where it says, show me, or where is the technique to help other people. And the answer to this question, so to speak, is also I am always close to this. So you can also refer to that. And then different techniques are represented between teachers and students, or also students among each other, which for us

[13:55]

almost unimaginable quality of communication. So when a teacher puts his student in a fight to bring him into the background, you see it first of all like a fairy tale and it doesn't necessarily have a connection to reality with us, because if we really try to get into such a situation as we are sitting in this circle, and discuss the Dhamma. And then one of us would actually suddenly give a slap to another, how we would react to that and how much we would be in our old nests again. And in this choir, other possibilities are being opened up. The question is, are there still possibilities for us? And what kind of quality of friendship, because it was also a topic of friendship yesterday, what kind of quality of relationship is needed to be able to practice such communication or teaching?

[15:14]

German, please. That was German. I mean, English, bitte. For me, one main sentence in the koan is showing the technique how to help other people. And the sentence, I'm always close to this, you can also use as an answer this question. And then we try to imagine all of the techniques which are shown in the koan, how the teacher relates to the students and how the monks relate to each other. And so here the teacher once reacted with a hit to bring the student in the

[16:21]

into the presence and we can read this and it sounds like a fairy tale to us because when we really try to imagine in this kind of circle we were in discussing the Dharma really try to imagine that someone would really enact that we would be immediately in our irritated consciousness and so the question below that is which kind of friendship or which kind of relationship is necessary to create a realm for that this kind of enactment is possible A similar question.

[17:26]

How can one help people without entering the world? We went back to the topic of friendship and noticed how we feel towards each other and that we mistrust our feelings of wanting to help. Right? Yeah. And from there we came to the question of whether it is possible for us, ourselves, so to speak, who are now here in the group, From there we were led to the question whether we are actually able to meet just these people in this group, meet one another without putting categories on everybody.

[18:48]

And from there we came to the different levels of feelings that were rather scary to us or that burdened us with prejudices in a group. Feelings that, so to speak, were rather against us on a friendship level. Sure. Everybody talked about their feelings, how it is difficult to enter a group, that they have maybe low self-esteem or they have a little anxious to express themselves. We realized that we are full of categories concerning other people.

[19:54]

But underneath this we can create a field that is nourished by practice. This is how I think the group discussion went. Maybe other people can add. I had the feeling, first of all, we just shared how we were touched by the lecture yesterday. Can we stick to this topic of friendship, as Hermann said? who are there and who are important to develop the character, but who are, of course, uncomfortable for us.

[21:36]

And I have the feeling that we are so underappreciated. So we will be circled around these fields of guilt and shame and low self-esteem. Those are important to this building, how character is built, as you said. We actually talked about our experience here, how it is here, also with the whole group and with the practice. If Zen is about also feeling good... Why then is the setting sometimes so that you feel like an idiot?

[22:52]

We were reminded of one formulation in the koan. Why does ultimate family intimacy sometimes look like enmity? Why does relaxation sometimes look so cramped? Can you give me an example of... What was the first thing you said to how... Intimacy looks like... Well, before that, it looks... Why it looks severe or something.

[23:55]

Feel like an idiot? Yeah, when you feel like an idiot. What makes you feel like an idiot? Why do you feel like an idiot? When you eat, for example, at Essen's ritualization, you do almost everything before you eat. When you are new or a beginner, for example, with this ritualized form of eating, you of course make mistakes all the time. We are pretty clear about that. This is the most relaxed form of eating for 30 people eating together. This is the most relaxed man. Presupposing that you really know the force. Yeah. Yeah. I noticed that in the group that there is an experience of closeness and friendship.

[25:11]

But it's also confusing because it happens in a way that I usually do not experience friendship. At the same time it enables us to reach a point that we usually don't reach in usual friendship. So what kind of friendship, help, support is this that we give each other? I think these are all fruitful questions, fruitful observations that you brought up.

[26:41]

But I don't see that it makes any reason particularly for me to respond to them. And I'm feeling today, you know, this sense that I mentioned yesterday of the Apache building blocks, Yeah, I don't want to give you too many. Yeah. We don't want to build a cathedral. We just want to build a Buddha hall. Yeah. And I hope you got the sense of this kind of...

[28:02]

dialogical process of a koan. It's a kind of building process that occurs within you. The dialogue continues in you. And your ally is... Assimilating awareness. Assimilating mindfulness. Assimilate means to take in and digest. Oh, assimilate. Dein Verbündeter ist so eine assimilierende Achtsamkeit. Yeah, something like that. Integrating mindfulness, assimilating mindfulness. I don't have some word for it. Yeah. It's said that the tathagata is realized through mysterious functioning.

[29:45]

and non-discriminative wisdom. So I'm putting that out into our conversation along with some other things. Now, it's good to study the three bodies of Buddha. It was one of the main early teachings that Sukhirashi gave us. And that I particularly... took up with him and practiced. But that's not the topic of this koan.

[30:58]

That's just a foil of this koan. Yes, I said yesterday, partly in response to what you said, Hermann, is the voice of the koan is to put this free body stuff aside. The voice of the monk in the koan. As we could say he's asking about Buddha nature. Now, the usual term translated as Buddha nature is Tathagatagarbha. And Tathagatagarbha has a double-double meaning. The first Tathagata means coming and going.

[32:08]

Or it means the one who comes and goes. Or the one who knows coming and going. That's simple enough. How can we pinpoint that as a practice? Yeah, because I'm assuming here we're talking about practice after realization. To mature your original enlightenment, your initial enlightenment. Mm-hmm. So how do we pinpoint this practice of the knowing of coming and going?

[33:37]

Garbha means both simultaneously womb and embryo. So we could say the Tathagata part is active perception. And Garbha is active conception. How you conceive of things. Yeah, not making babies. No.

[34:39]

Yeah, active... It's a bit like conceptual thinking, creating concepts, ideas. It's not conceptualized and to receive. No, it's a way of viewing or conceiving of the world that you put into action. It's a way of viewing the world that you put into action. In general, I'm very impressed with how good our practice is. And after you guys have been practicing a mixture of a few to 10 or 15 years,

[35:39]

You all have a better sense of practice than the people who have been practicing similar length of times in the 60s, 70s and 80s in the United States. I think that's because, you know, we're in a second phase, historically, of Buddhism in the West. And we're just more familiar with it. And even in this group, we have the kids of people who've been practicing. You, for instance. Yeah, and some of you could be the kids of people who started practicing in the 60s.

[36:53]

Yeah. Yeah, we got you now. Marie-Louise said to me this morning, I have to point out things to the baby all the time. I have to point out the pictures in the book that this is this and that's a cow and that's the color red, etc. So she asked, how do I point out what's not there? How do we point out the in-betweenness? That's a good question. That's just how we bring up a baby as a Buddhist. Okay. And I think also we are... in this new millennium, Western Buddhism has made some progress in how to make practice relevant.

[38:19]

And I would say that in fact, The Dharma Sangha in Europe and in Germany and Austria, Switzerland. Why are you laughing? You know why they have a speed limit in Switzerland? So people don't notice how small the country is. Anyway, say it. Okay. That's a joke of one of Marie-Louise's cousins. All right. I think the Dharma Sangha and the Buddhist groups in general in Europe are already functioning as Buddhists.

[39:35]

Now, I'm not trying to make this something important. I'm not glorifying what we're doing. I think in a very ordinary sense. For example, I just read an article about all the Buddhist groups in the upstate New York area. The local real estate agents say, Buddhists make good neighbors. And they try to sell property that way. You'll be near a Buddhist group.

[40:37]

There's about 40 groups or something like that who have various places in upstate New York. This is the activity of a Buddha. So I think we can say that somehow what we're doing with each other and with our neighbors and with our friends family is something, it's the activity of a Buddha. Even I believe there were, I read once the Jesuits in Japan, I think Portuguese Jesuits back in the 1500s. Wrote back to whoever was head of the Jesuits. There's people here who seem to be good Christians. And they call themselves Buddhists, but they must be somehow good Christians.

[42:11]

They act like good Christians. And supposedly they established a sort of ghetto in heaven for Buddhists. There was some special realm where if you were a Buddhist, you could still get to heaven. Now this is the action of a Buddha, the activity of Buddha. How many other religions have a place in the Christian heaven? Yeah. So I'm trying to make this more kind of ordinary and accessible for you. We're already involved in the activity of Buddha. It's... Not always the case, but it's part of the atmosphere of practicing here.

[43:26]

And the discovering of friendships, as Frank said. Bye-bye, baby. Wiedersehen. And this activity of the Dharma Sangha creates, we can say, a Buddha field. which we can benefit from.

[44:37]

And if you don't want to think of yourself as a Buddha, or a part-time Buddha, on an installment plan, You can think of the fact that somehow together we're creating a Buddha realm, Buddha field. And the Buddha field means there's a possibility not only of this extending to others, But it's also the possibility of bringing it down into ourselves, actualizing it in ourselves. Although I think our practice is moderately advanced,

[45:40]

It's the weakness of our practice. We don't... practice what we do practice thoroughly enough. And often our intention isn't deep enough. Your life doesn't have to be any different, but your intention can be deeper. Euer Leben muss nicht unbedingt anders sein, aber eure Absicht kann tiefer sein. I think sometimes we're afraid that if our intention is deeper, we have to give up our usual life. Manchmal sind wir, denke ich, haben wir vielleicht Angst, dass wenn unsere Absicht tiefer ist, dass wir dann unser gewöhnliches, übliches Leben aufgeben müssen.

[47:06]

Bodhisattva is one who can keep his ordinary, her ordinary life and still have the deepest possible intention. A bodhisattva is the one who can maintain his normal life and still be an ally of assimilating mindfulness. I was talking to someone the other day and he was asking me a question about his life. I know something about his wife and family and so forth.

[48:08]

And I could see him. With me. And... It was clear to me he does not know how to, he hasn't realized, really, mindfulness of the body, bodyfulness of the body. This was in California, it's not here, it wasn't. and he's a person who's though profoundly committed to Buddhism his whole life is profoundly committed to Buddhism and sometimes he teaches so when I said something about mindfulness I just said it as a kind of aside like I wasn't talking to him

[49:28]

His response was, oh, I've taught the four foundations of mindfulness. Which meant to me immediately he doesn't understand anything. You simply don't respond that way if you understand. He didn't relate to what I might be saying. He related to a borrowed consciousness about he has taught this in the past. And I think a lot of us have that kind of feeling, oh, we've studied this, we know something. Yeah, so it's really hard.

[50:42]

How do you crack through such an attitude? It's not my business to do so. And B, it's not somebody who practices with me. He's not someone who practices with me. It's not my business to do it. But at the same time, in some ways, he's asking me. Yeah. So I'm not... I don't mean to... The point I'm making here is... For example, there's another koan in the Blue Cliff Records.

[51:44]

What is the pure body of reality? And young man says, the sikhs do not take it in. No, of course that means the six consciousnesses and so forth. The six sense fields. The six consciousnesses are based on the sense fields. But the koan specifically says, if you think this, this is not right. So what does that mean? Well, in a way it means the six consciousnesses. But if you think it means the six consciousnesses you don't understand.

[52:59]

It's like thinking that the here and now means you understand something. The here and now is an idea. How do you crack it open? Yeah, the six consciousnesses. Oh, it's the six consciousnesses, I understand. Yeah. So what we should emphasize in a phrase like that is the do not take it in. What you want to practice with is the do not taking it in. If you practice with that, the six consciousnesses are not important. So Yunmen uses the six consciousnesses just as a way he can say, do not take it in.

[54:03]

I mean, okay. So that's the same as do not set up categories. What is the pure body of reality is something like what does not fall into any categories. So what I'm warning about here is the impediment of intellectual understanding of Buddhism or an experience of Buddhism which inoculates you against Buddhism. Like getting against a disease, you're inoculated against the flu or something. Yeah. So we have to be careful here that our already experience and knowledge of Buddhism, our familiarity with Buddhism,

[55:25]

does not inoculate us against Buddhism. And against the thoroughness that is necessary for practice. of the thoroughness necessary. So the obstacles are like your karma. So you see your karma coming up, your habits coming up. These are also categories.

[56:26]

And you have views. Views of an implied or assumed permanence. implied or assumed. If you get free enough of your karma, but you're not clogged in that all the time, then you can begin to see if you have a view of assumed permanence. And then you can begin to see if you see others through your own and their thought coverings.

[57:33]

Yes, so the bodhisattva is is in a karma-free zone, or a karma-fluid zone, and the bodhisattva does not assume permanence, and the bodhisattva sees past and through thought coverings. And the Bodhisattva sees behind and through such thoughts. Okay. No, this is all possible to do. So let's go back to the word Tathagatagarbha.

[58:35]

Okay, so thus coming and going. You yourself are coming and going. What's the word? There we have the word thus. And you can... It's a good thing to work with. If I say this microphone, there's an implied permanence there. If I say thus microphone, it's like... a microphone. Yeah, and you have the feelings of it appearing in you, appears there, it doesn't see, it's strange. One change in word in English at least,

[59:36]

you relate to it differently. So if Frank comes to my door today, Herman, thus Frank. Door opens and thus Frank. So if I just use the word thus instead of this, I feel Herman appearing at the door. Not only does the door open, then Herman appears in there. So you can work with coming and going through the word thus. So if you get in the habit always feeling things are appearing and disappearing, they're impermanent.

[60:38]

The point is not that you know this intellectually. The point is that you feel it on every perception. This kind of thoroughness is necessary. It's this kind of thoroughness which puts you into a karma. Because the more your mind rests in and acts through an assumed impermanence, your karma does not affect you the same way.

[61:46]

The more your personal karma does not affect you in the usual way, not only are you freer, and you have, Houston Smith just wrote me a letter today, he's written the books on world religions. Houston Smith, who is on the board of the Dharma Sangha in America and wrote the books on world religions. He just sent me a little note saying, it's wonderful you have a baby, but at 82 I'm not sure I want to start over again. But he said, we all want to have that We all want to have that ease of being that is the feeling of a Buddha.

[63:12]

He used the phrase, ease of being. This sense of using thus instead of this, loosening the bonds of karma, It does loosen the bonds of karma. It gives us an ease of being. You're standing here and you just feel here. There's no sense you should be somewhere else. And then the mysterious functioning of the Buddha somehow, as if it was a presence waiting to appear in us.

[64:34]

The more we have that ease of being, the more the field of the Dharma field, the Buddha field of our practice together can be present in us. Can be present in us. Now if we take the word garba, the garba means womb and embryo. But it means to view the world as this fertile place, interrelated place that's simultaneously creative and simultaneously the situation for creation.

[65:39]

Yes, that creates. That's good enough. So you have this... Yes. So you stop viewing this as some kind of dead place, but as a place like a womb. And each thing has a potentiality in it. So if I relate to Geralt, I've been doing it for many years. I relate to his potentiality. And every time I see him, though he walks me back to my room, you know, after... Something's different there.

[66:47]

I relate to Geralt as thus, not that Geralt. And I feel this fertility in him on each one of you at each moment, this fertility. This interaction of the Buddhist side of us and our usual way of being side of us. So, you know, I'm saying way too much. But I want to put something on the flip chart.

[67:52]

By the way, you mentioned all the stuff we do, the orioke and so on. Suzuki Roshi was always confronted by these questions because he was introducing it all. And he would say something like, naturalness is learned. In yogic culture there's no idea there's a natural place. Everything becomes natural through doing it. I like a longer service, for instance, because it's long enough to be short. The usual short service, I'm always aware that it's going to end soon.

[69:01]

When it's longer, I think it's never going to end. So I give up thinking about when it might end. Though it seems sure. Because I had no experience of it. Like, oh, I'm just into the gold dollar forever. What the hell? No, no, no. That's greed, hate, delusion. Famous Buddhist formula. And this is also, of course, greed is also desire.

[70:04]

And hate is aversion. And it's useful to see it as desire, because desire means you want to come towards your aversion, you want to push it away from you. Delusion means you think you can have it, or you think you can get rid of it. So delusion means you have the fallacy of permanence. It says when you really are... inseparable from impermanence.

[71:12]

Things come and go, but you don't have greed or hate so much. And then we have like, dislike, neutral. And then we have pleasant, unpleasant, and neither. Now, Those are obviously related.

[72:14]

Here we can say we have no self or something like that. Here we have self and here perhaps we have ego. Now the second foundation of mindfulness is the practice of knowing these three. And studying how these three turn into this. Yeah, and you can't really keep And you can't really prevent this from turning into this, unless you're established in the first foundation of mindfulness.

[73:15]

I mean, I've been teaching recently, the last six weeks or so, the foundations of mindfulness. Because the general awareness of mindfulness has inoculated us against its real practice. the general awareness of mindfulness that everyone talks about, has inoculated against us, against its real practice. So we have mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of sensation, Mindfulness of the mind, which means mental formation, and mindfulness of pranamana.

[74:41]

on the feeling, on the spirit, that is, on the spiritual formations and on phenomena. That is the Dharma. What are the Dharmas? If you really practice mindfulness of the body, you experience a body-mind that's not a mind of mental formations. Once you primarily know a mind of mental formations, here, It's then involved with likes, dislikes, hatred, etc. The place to study this is sensation. As I said, if this was Sophia, if I do like that, Sophia likes that. If I do that, Sophia doesn't like it too much.

[76:01]

That's prior to psychology. That's prior to your personality. We're going to have that experience if you're alive. So as I said, if I stick her head in the garbage pail, she goes, ugh. But it's just a sensation. You couldn't say she dislikes it, it's just a sensation. But if I dump the garbage on the floor, For Sophia, it's still a sensation.

[77:06]

It smells all over the kitchen now. But for Marie-Louise, when she walks in the kitchen, it's dislike. It was sensation as long as the garbage was in the garbage pail, but it was dislike once it was all over the floor. The practice of the second foundation of mind-knowledge is to really notice when a sensation of pleasure or unpleasant shifts to like and dislike. As soon as it shifts to likes and dislikes, and you get in the habit of like, I like this, I dislike that, I like this, I dislike that, etc., Then when you're in a realm of, if you're in a situation where there's nothing you like and nothing you dislike, what are you?

[78:23]

You're bored. You turn on the radio or you do something. But if you're pleasant and unpleasant, you can be in need there and it's not boring. Now the bodhisattva learns to rest here. Things may be pleasant or unpleasant, but mostly you're just resting in either pleasant or it's just the trees, the air, heart beating. So the second foundation of mindfulness is extremely important to practice after you realize the first foundation of mindfulness. And you can see that life and dislike easily turn into desire, greed, hatred and so forth.

[79:33]

Mental formations are all based on likes and dislikes. based on likes and dislikes. And so if you don't really establish yourself here, you open yourself to all the karma of your life coming into every like and dislike. And that's why any experience of a subtle body And that wipes out any experience of a subtle born. So, let's see, I should finish now. I'm trying to do too much right now. I'm sorry, but we only have a... I guess I feel we don't have much time.

[81:01]

We all know that we are... There's all these differences. As I say, we're separated by space. Because we can perceive separation, we can perceive separation. We can't perceive all the ways we're connected. because it's not in the category of consciousness. The Buddha body is not in the category of consciousness.

[82:11]

We can act with a knowing of how we're connected. But we can't directly perceive it. And we can act with a knowing of the presence of a Buddha body. But that's not possible when your mind is involved with likes and dislikes and greed, hate and delusion. So the four foundations of mindfulness would be a very basic practice, a basis for bodhisattva practice. So if you can't really make sense of bodhisattva practice,

[83:13]

One good reason is you haven't really established yourself in mindfulness. So one task we could have Really understand this practice of the four foundations of mindfulness. Establish yourself in mindfulness. And this sense of how we are also Buddha with each other will become more accessible. Now here I said I wasn't going to give you any more building blocks. I'm sorry I gave you too many. But it's a long process. Thank you very much.

[84:12]

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