So I could go on. But I'd rather have some discussion. Okay, so who's first? You? You? You? Come on, somebody. All right. One of the things I felt this morning about your leading us into this topic was that you're talking about lay practice and monastic practice. You're not talking about being a priest or being a layman. And I feel much more a direction of how to enter this medium of being together.

[01:06]

As opposed to establishing an identity. Im Gegensatz dazu, eine Identität zu etablieren. And how the situation that we create together to practice supports that, not supports being a certain kind of person. Und wie wir hier zusammen sind, das unterstützt, anstelle von einer Identität schaffen. Yeah, I find that... I find I am describing, let's say, the medium of practice. And then the question is, how do we enter this medium of practice? Enter it, realize it, continue it.

[02:07]

And whether any aspects of it have anything to do with lay or monastic. Someone else. That's what some of you do. You're not going to ask me again. You mentioned this theme. I got this in German today. The same theme was discussed last year. And I have a little... And I observed how I define things by referring to them. But suddenly it became clear to me that things define me by how they refer to me.

[03:27]

It was a reflexive way of thinking about things You mentioned the same theme last year, and I think I mentioned how I practice at my meditation room at home when I take a break, I go out in front of the house in the countryside, not quite as isolated as Christel, but a similar feeling. And I was observing how the themes feel differently if I look at my relationship to them and how I define them by my relationship. Just the rabbits playing on the ground. But suddenly I realized if this is true, then they're defining me how their relationship is to me. And this actually became very amusing then to... To be rabbit defined.

[04:29]

To be rabbit defined, exactly. And it's... Actually it's a very beautiful feeling. Yeah, it's like that. It's like this. Thanks. Yes, Dorothea. When I practiced a lot last year. At Kirsten? Yeah. Yeah. Afterwards I had the feeling that I had a lot of energy. A feeling like nothing could happen to me. and now since I've entered more lay life again I find that first it helps me to kind of build up this feeling of space

[05:29]

At the same time I had the feeling there is no nucleus or center like self-confidence or appreciation of one's value, maybe. But self-confidence. So it was not so easy to bring these two together. But you're doing it. Okay, good. Thanks. Yes. Nothing is permanent. So for me when I practice already connected and when I practice nothing is permanent, somehow the resulting feeling is more or less the same.

[07:21]

I don't understand it clearly with my mind, but it seems to be the same direction. Yeah, that's good. I'm happy you try these things. Someone else. Yes. Susanna? I already had for many years this feeling of already connected. Before you started practicing with us, yes. But in my normal everyday life, it didn't work, it didn't function.

[08:35]

And I was very confused why it didn't work, but why I also continue to have this feeling. And when I first came here and you asked what sentence has accompanied you, then for me the sentence was the first one that came up. And now my experience with the sentence is changing in so far that a space is opening up. But still it needs again and again courage to enter this space again and again.

[10:05]

Yes. The challenges of the yogic worldview at the Western worldview One of the challenges is with these world views that one cannot really say one is wrong and the other is right. Like the Earth is flat, that was just wrong. And I find the challenge is

[11:11]

to have these worldviews kind of parallel beside each other. And also the view that's behind it, not only the worldview permanent or impermanent, but the view behind it, both and, both permanent and impermanent. And I find that is a very big challenge to allow both and and to get away from either or. Yes. Well, I think that the two truths is both and.

[12:32]

And we need to function through both ends. But I wouldn't say both are equally true. There's not too much good that comes out of viewing the world as flat. But you can say a lot of good, a lot of things come out of viewing the world as entities. But just because there have been extraordinary fruits of the view of an entity-based world makes it a useful provisional view but not a true view. I would say.

[13:41]

Makes it to a useful, provisional view, but not to a truth. That's what I would say. These two truths are like a philosophical structure. Or I think that these two truths is a philosophical understanding. To experience the yogic worldview or view could be felt as the one experience.

[14:48]

The only one. The real truth. More accurate at least. It feels just different. Yeah. But we don't really know both our mental constructions on which we base our activity. I think we can say that one seems better, it seems more conformed to... But behind both is we don't really know what's going on. This is the cosmogonic view. That's number three. Who is it that asked first? Why does anything exist?

[15:57]

I think it was Leibniz asked, why does anything exist at all? This question is behind all of Heidegger's philosophy. Why does anything exist at all? Someone else. Oh, you were going to say something, yeah. Mm-hmm. So in my mind, I still remember that this bell is an activity. And I'm thinking about How does the activity, what relationship does the activity have to stillness? And when I remember sitting it seems to me that there's always activity even between two breaths.

[17:21]

So maybe it is like in the Heart Sutra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form, and activity is stillness, stillness is activity. Yeah, okay. It's good. Yes. I'm at the moment reading a book with the title Living Like a River, a Flower, maybe. And it's about how I can practice with elements. and it is about how to practice with elements. What impresses me very much is that today science is so advanced that it has to recognize that there is no boundary between self and outside.

[18:45]

And what impresses me a lot is that science has advanced so far that it has to acknowledge that there is not really a dividing line between inside and outside. the current scientific findings related to the experience of people or people among themselves. And it seems to me to find a new language which reflects the new knowledge, the new discoveries in science in relationship to how human beings live with each other.

[19:46]

It seems to me that that might come very close to those sentences that we use as turning words or turning sentences in our practice. And so I hope that these worldviews may dissolve in something more true. Okay, I hope so too. Yes. This new knowledge and information in the advanced sciences, which relates to what we experience in our practice, is treated like any other intellectual knowledge.

[21:02]

And so it does not necessarily lead to a change in how we live our lives and how we live together. That's true. And so I see there is a danger that it is just some knowledge that's theoretical knowledge that's talked about that it won't have any real impact on individual people and how we actually live our lives. And methodology like in NLP that first were developed to help people they are now being used in advertising to reach advertising schools.

[22:34]

And so I think there is the danger also that this new knowledge will be used for commercial purposes. Anything that can be used for commercial purposes will. Well, you know, it's always surprised me a bit. You know, I know quite a few physicists. And very few of them let their view of what they do in the laboratory affect how they live. But even the two or three I know who would, they don't have the means, they don't have practice, they don't have a way to do it.

[23:36]

It's one of the reasons the Bodhisattva, even in Asian culture, is considered to be a kind of hero or a courage or shero. because they're willing to live by wisdom and not by the way that's just convenient and it's one of the reasons I'm very reluctant I was very reluctant for us to even have a website. And now I have on my computer a text meant to be put on the website about our guest season.

[24:49]

And if we don't develop our guest season, Crestone probably can't survive. Particularly, Hudson Ops is going to take away most of the income from Crestone, a large percentage of the income. Because many of the practitioners who come to Crestone come from Europe. And the Sangha wheel has been a way that people in Europe have supported people to go to Crestone. What has been a significant percentage of Crestone's income? So when I left for Europe a few days ago,

[26:10]

People said to me, is Hudson House going to affect if we do make practice periods here? That could affect us and affect the number of people who come and the financial support that comes from Europe. And I said, yes. And I said, but I can't sacrifice Europe for the sake of Creston. Creston is just going to have to figure out how to support itself. It's an interesting problem.

[27:31]

But one of the ways, and what Christian and Nicole are making a big effort to do, is to develop the guest season. As soon as we began to mention the guest season on the Internet, We had more people signing up to do yoga groups and things. But now the office has written a very interesting description of Crystal Mountain Zen Center to go on the website. But it's on the edge of commercializing what we're doing. I said, please don't send that out until I get a chance to look at it very carefully. Because my emphasis is to only be a face-to-face practice.

[28:47]

I don't want anyone to know about me through the Internet. And I, of course, am not on Facebook. This is not the face-to-face teaching I mean. But some people have put Igor Baker, our dog on the internet. Our dog's name is Igor and somebody's put Igor Baker on Facebook, I'm told. And there's pictures of Igor, things like that.

[29:51]

Okay. So I don't know. It's all interesting. I mean, it's better that it's interesting than not. Okay, someone else? Maybe what you just said. What I understood from Ottmar was that all the lay people, me at least, I want to relate to what Atmar said that in my lay life I'm always very occupied trying to integrate these two world views and how to live them Within me and with others.

[30:59]

Well, that's why I chose the word coding. And I think that a kind of coding and un-coding goes on in our own, without any connection with yogic worldviews, goes on in our own culture. A culture is a kind of code which tells you how to read things or how to understand things. But we're complex folks, you know, and we can have, I mean, we think in alternatives in a very simplistic way. But at the same time, we can have two or three different coding systems and see the world in a variety of ways.

[32:02]

And seeing them as separate codes is better than diluting them or conflating them into a mush. Okay, now, yeah, go ahead. I'm through. I mean, I'm not through. I have a question. If independence is at least the political key, then the question would be whether there is no independence from the world view. So if interdependence is a key in the Buddhist teaching, isn't there also interdependence of these different worldviews? especially for our lives where we on one hand practice and on the other hand live in the world of commercialism.

[33:33]

No, sure. We have interdependence, we have interindependence, we have interemergence. And I think it's most powerful and useful to think of it as inter-emergent, or as I say, intermergence. And I think it's most powerful and useful to think of it as inter-emergent, or as I say, inter-emergence. Because inter-emergence is emphasizing that at each moment it's new and unique. It's not just the same things interrelated, it's always making something new.

[34:36]

Now, in relationship to what we're talking about, to make all this work as a way we can function, In addition to the concept and practice of the field of mind I think we have to develop the sense and feel of mental postures the sense of what we mean by location, because if everything is an activity, everything is a multiple.

[35:41]

not just a single appearance. Appearances themselves are multiple. Or middles. We're always in the middle. You're never at the beginning or end. You're always in the middle. Okay, so multiples, middles... and so if we're always in the middle what's the location and what is continuity so these things have to be discussed to make this sense of the world as inter-emergent relationships But I think that's a little too much before lunch.

[37:12]

Jörg? I'll make a very simple question maybe, but that refers to the former question. What do you do if you think that these two codes can't work with each other that they are in a permanent contradiction to each other and that things that the state of mind in which you are after a weekend like this is destroyed by what happens in the week not only is it destroyed because you're not able to connect the two things but it's destroyed because there's just no room in this other world for that state of mind. You call that a simple question. I thought it's too simple for all the things you've been saying so far.

[38:16]

Oh, my goodness. I asked what it is when the state of mind, when the state of mind, through meditation and through conversion and through this way of life here, one not only stands in contradiction to daily life, but one realizes that it almost excludes itself from each other. And how to deal with it, if one has the feeling that this exclusivity I may add to what I've just said is, what do you do if you suddenly think that these two worlds are so incombinable that you have to make a decision, but you don't want to make it?

[39:20]

I just wanted to make the question simpler. As Rilke says in the poem Something Apollo, you must change your life. I have to find the poem. I'll mention it after. Well, we all face this. It's one of the challenges of lay practice. and after a while I think we all do pretty well in meeting the problem I think one does have to make a choice but the choice can be to find a way to live both You know, there's no such thing as a being.

[40:28]

Without the concept of beings, There's no such thing as Neil separate from beings, his daughter, his wife, his language, you know. Oh, really? Thank you. And we are beings in the West. So that's also our interesting, interesting is, interesting life.

[41:29]

Hmm. So after lunch, we'll find something else to talk about. Okay, thank you very much.

[41:56]

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