Richard spoke of this unevenness in the pulsation when we are at the same time here and in this other space, what he calls Dharma City. And the pulsation is not mathematically accurate, but there is always a small unevenness. And my personal experience in teaching, I have been with Reinhard for seven years now in the training and also accompany him in the further education here, that it has caused an incredible increasing stress for me. because I feel at home in this unevenness, but it is described by him as not being in the basis when I am not exactly and mathematically accurate. And I notice that at that moment I always come back to this mental level, where I have to control myself and check myself, and I lose contact with this area down here, which simply knows

[01:03]

And where I noticed it was when I started with the Samulnuri group of Koreans because they move it by dancing and they have no problems with that uneven figure. They have that jungle drum round and they dance all the time with their pelvis part here. And there I felt very much at ease and at home. Last summer we did a seminar with Korean drummers and they didn't move their feet as we learned with Reinhardt with the Ta-ke-ti-na but they did it with the cymbal. So they changed the drums. Yeah, I understand you don't have to transmit. Well, this is a good example of differences between Asian cultures and Western culture.

[02:27]

And it's interesting for me to watch him because on the one hand he has his basic sense of location here, I would say. But he generates, the energy is generated and moved through here. Instead of coming out in a field here, that these move in that field. And it's real clear to me. But it's more developed now than it was when I saw him two or three years ago, more toward what I think is right. It's not so separated, I feel. I don't want to discuss it so much. Sorry. But perhaps to introduce, maybe his intuition is right, to introduce this into the West and teach it, it first has to start up here.

[03:50]

But again, one of the things you're trying to do in practice is move the sense of your body location lower down in your body. And partly you do that with your breath by pushing the sense of, once you locate yourself in your breath, you push that down into your heart. So there's basic physical movements that go along with this practice. One is you push, you locate yourself in your breath. Then after you get the habit of doing that, you push that location down into your hara, which is about two fingers below your navel.

[04:58]

You allow that to create a field. And then you allow your other actions to move in that field. And that's something you just try, as I say, you open the refrigerator door from here. And we're staying in Herman's apartment. And he has a refrigerator door with a handle just in the right place. And the other basic, another basic physical thing is you contract your sphincter muscle two or three times a day. So you're moving your sense down into your hara, your sense of location.

[06:03]

And also sometimes you contract your sphincter muscle, which moves your energy up your spine. You just get in the habit of doing that. And slowly it will actually change the basis. I think we should go to lunch soon. I wanted to go to lunch around one. Wouldn't that be a good idea? And... There's lots of little restaurants around here. Is that true? A few? A few. A few. Okay.

[07:15]

This morning I ended with giving you an example of dharmas and to reside in a breath or a feeling as a dharma. Dharma is a kind of process. It's not a, you know, strict thing. It's not this exact thing which Dharma is. So it's just, you can make it... It's not a length of time.

[08:22]

But it tends to be something pretty short, like your breath or just a feeling on your breath. Another example which I have mentioned in Potsdam a number of times, is to do each thing you do with a feeling of completeness. That would also be a Dharma. Everybody okay over there? Okay. So if I pick up this stick, for instance, I experience it as a series of small, complete movements.

[09:24]

I'm sure this sounds awfully mechanical to you, but I don't find it so. And it arises when I bring my attention to my breath and then to an action. But attention is discontinuous and so you can only bring it, there's a certain pace or length of time you bring your attention to something. So if I'm picking up the stick, I feel, okay, I move my hand to the stick. And I feel a little beginning and end to that. And then I touch the stick and I feel the coolness of the wood. And then there's a little pause there. which I allow the feeling of the wood to come in.

[10:41]

So I'm letting each thing talk to me. I allow the movement of my hand to the stick to talk to me. This may be almost like a kind of ceremony at first if you do it slowly. And in Theravada Buddhism, they teach you to do these things, each one very slowly. But, you know, just that's the way of learning. So, and when I move my hand, I'm actually, my whole body's involved in that. And my mind is involved in it.

[11:42]

And my intention to move my hand is involved in it. So I bring my energy, attention, all the aliveness I have to a simple little movement of moving my hand to the stick. And I feel it almost like there's a rubber band attaching my fingers to my stomach and I'm stretching it to the stick. And you know when you light a candle, you have a match and you strike the match and you move the match out to the candle. If you go too fast, the match goes out. It's too much wind. If you go too slowly, maybe it burns your finger. So there's a certain kind of... There's a field to that. Well, that field is kind of like a little Dharma.

[13:00]

There's a kind of pace to it that the flame determines. So I move my fingers to the stick. Maybe there's that rubber band there. And then the stick speaks to me with its coolness. And then I lift it up. Now when I lift it up, I'm actually not just lifting up the stick, I'm defining my space. Now we actually have a kind of aura. And it can be seen if you know how to look. And when you do anything, you are moving it with ripples through this aura. And it's not like it was there before you were born. And it's not like it was there before you took this action. This action creates it or dispels it. In other words, everything is simultaneously arising.

[14:21]

So there's no prior. Mm-hmm. So when I lift up this stick, you can begin to have the feeling, in fact, that's what you're doing. You're defining the kind of space around you. And we were talking about that the other day at the little sitting group here in Berlin. If you try to hit the mokugyo sort of over here, you know, it's kind of hard to do it. It's not just because you're stretching or something, because it's outside of the territory of your body, the larger territory. And you can't have a feeling of that rubber band out here.

[15:30]

So you can move this in. At least into the line of your knee. Or anywhere in here. And it's not the length of your arm, it's the length that you can reach the rubber band. Now, if you practice qigong, for instance, you can get so good at it, you can move the rubber band right out from your arm. But when you're learning this stuff, you have to just begin to get a feeling of it. If you put your hands together now, don't touch them.

[16:31]

Generally, you have to let your hands be relaxed and cupped a little. If you can enter a kind of zazen space, And out of representational thinking, you can feel a kind of spongy material between your hands. You may be able to feel quite a distance or up close. And if you straighten your hands out, you maybe can't feel it. A certain curve of your hands and relax, you can feel it. And if you can't feel it now, if you practice with this once in a while, once a week, you fool around, you know, you'll be able to feel it eventually.

[17:41]

And then you'll find out what your posture makes a difference. If you're slouched back, leaning against the wall or something, it's much harder to feel. And you can do things with your stomach that make you able to feel it better. And once you've got the feeling, you can stretch it out pretty far, if you're careful, and at some point you lose it. And if you get so that you can really feel it between your hands, you can concentrate a kind of heat in the center of your palm. Then you can even take that and direct it at somebody else.

[18:48]

You can actually warm them up. But it's not exactly heat you can measure, but it's heat you can feel. Okay, now for that little experiment. So when you do that, we could say maybe you're feeling your aura. And it's very similar to the sensation when you have your back to somebody, you suddenly feel someone looking at you. Now, there's no scientific explanation of this, but you can feel someone looking at you. I don't know why I tell you all this stuff. But really the practice of dharmas is when you do each thing is to begin to feel that in your emotions.

[20:05]

Now it's again not a thing you exactly you can't make it happen. But if you believe me that this is the case, and you have a sense of bringing attention into your actions, that belief plus making it possible in your actions At some point you'll feel it. And it requires the ability to notice it first. But again, it's like noticing interpenetration or interdependence.

[21:14]

We don't have the categories, the senses really, that allow us to notice it, to name it. So I looked it up and actually defining my space. If I bring it into my body, I bring it in to my space in a certain way. Now this is quite natural when you feel the topography of your space. If you don't feel any topography here, it's just mechanical. You're just trying to imitate me. Okay. So, part of the practice of bringing your attention to your breath becomes also the practice of and makes possible the practice of bringing your attention to your actions.

[22:25]

And in the practice, even though I'm telling you all these things, don't try to achieve anything. If you're in a hurry or you want to attain something, I guarantee you, you won't. Und wenn ihr in Eile seid oder irgendetwas erreichen wollt, ich garantiere euch, ihr werdet es, es wird euch nicht gelingen. You have to actually not care. Ihr müsst wirklich eigentlich, es muss euch völlig gleich sein. Because as soon as you want to attain something or try or care, your personality is in action and it won't work. As soon as you're in the least bit of a hurry, there's no rush. You have all the time in the world. In fact, there is no time. Yes, sir. If I have this feeling of doing things slow and giving the right measure, let's say I try to brew coffee, then I feel that it's now changing, but then I make a whole mess.

[24:02]

But it interferes with my normal, very regular working action. At the end, the coffee is mostly on the bottom, and the cup is smashed. Well, there are small prices to pay for this. You have to develop a kind of secret practice as a layperson. And one of the advantages of living in a monastic or semi-monastic community is simply you can practice these things and you don't get fired from your job. And everyone's patient with you, usually. Okay. But it's true that when you do something like this, you're changing your rhythm.

[25:24]

And until you find a new rhythm, you become clumsy. And so it's good to actually, you know, you just do this occasionally in the morning when you're making coffee maybe, or sitting at the table, looking at the flower vase or something. Because if you do these things purely in small segments they get woven into the text of your life. You don't even have to do the weaving. They enter the text of your life. The word text means weave in English. So the text or weave of your life begins to change. The pattern begins to change when you weave these other little things in it.

[26:32]

So practice actually works if you do it a little bit every day. Plus you establish some bridge. And again, usually that bridge is your breath. So you may do specific practices in zazen or in a practice of direct perception at your breakfast table. But you can't do that at your office usually. Mm-hmm. I mean, Hermann's a doctor. So Hermann ist Arzt? So you can't exactly take a pill and... And bring the pill bottle up to your third eye and hold it a moment.

[27:43]

You'll get to be known as a witch doctor. But you can have the feeling when you give somebody some medicine that you're giving them a certain energy with it or a certain way in which they can take the medicine on other levels. By the way, Anne-Marie has spoken a couple of times, and Elizabeth a couple of times, and Herman a couple of times. I hope that it's not going to be a few people only who say anything. The price of the mission here is that each of you say something, at least once during the seminary. And those who would rather not pay double.

[28:55]

Silence costs a lot. So ladies, some of you would pay triple in order not to say anything. Maybe at that rate you won't be silent. I was about that. I would like to say that I have the experience that things don't work out when I want really to do them, but I also have the experience that they work out well when I want to do them. I get the train. I achieve the work I want to do today.

[29:56]

So there's a kind of... inner rejection to believe only to the one side that I have to drop all or it would be an advantage to drop all the plans or all the things I wanted to because I also have the experience Do you want to say that in German? I have the experience That things don't work when I want to make them work. But I also have the experience that they work. So other things, when I want to make them work. And there is a kind of inner refusal in me first of all. So from my ego or that says, no, that works. So why should you give up that? Yeah. Well, several people brought up a question. You just brought up that. And what is your name? No, behind you.

[30:57]

Yeah. Gabriella. Gabriella, right. Sorry. And Gabriella brought up, when I told about this, pushing your breath down, she said, aha, this is controlling your breath. And the other night at the sitting group she asked me, she said, do you control your breath when you breathe? And I said no. But she suspected maybe we do. Where does that suspicion come from? Wo kommt dieser Verdacht her? You think there's secret practices that I'm not telling you? I think there's something which is also a question. Sure, go ahead. It came up again.

[31:58]

A panel brought this example. What is the value in the practice that you mentioned? For me, what I would like to practice, for me personally, is to obey to the process of cosivecting, to obey to the little cup, also to obey to the breathing. And so I ask me, what is the worst when I smash the cup? Or the other question which I also have to, which is connected to that, to Zen Buddhism, what is the value of, or non-value of friction, the friction of my experience and those with other people, Is it just myself and my enlightenment and my process, my processing that is important, or is there something else that frictions me and gives me a shape and a form, and this is life in process?

[33:04]

Why don't you say that in German? Unless you don't speak German. It was all about the same thing, in different examples. The example with the coffee pot that I didn't quite understand. And I didn't say the exercise. I probably didn't understand it either. And because I would practice in such a coffee pot, to listen to the coffee pot and to do what is necessary and to be completely present. So just to feel what they are doing. and not just to feel myself while I am feeling it. And this is where I came across a general question for myself, with the question of whether the value or not of the experience and interaction with other people, and the limitation, And my suspicion is that this is not a value.

[34:16]

What is not a value? Interaction with other people. Interaction with other people is not a value? Yes. And that was my suspicion. Oh, they want to control breathing, maybe. Oh. That was the reason. Now, and then, what is your name? Chris. Chris. And Chris said, Oh, I've been practicing for two years now. Yes. Since we met a couple of years ago. And so she does Zazen every morning. And let me say I'm very proud of you. And... She said, oh, but I didn't know about this, you know, push your breathing down, crack the sphincter. Oh, this is great. Now I can do that every morning. No, no, no. This is a practice, this pushing your breath down with bamboo breath or successive breath and contracting your sphincter is something you do In a sashin you might do it once a day or twice or something in one period.

[35:35]

And in ordinary zazen, daily zazen maybe Once, two, a couple times a week you might do it at the beginning of the period. You know, it's really hard to, it's interesting to talk to Westerners, me too, we take everything so seriously. And we make everything into a system And we decide if this is true, then that's not true. It's all true. This is the logic of the included middle.

[36:36]

The logic of the excluded middle is it's this or that. And Buddhism is real clear. It's not this, it's not that. And the Sixth Patriarch, his last words, virtually, were to a student. He said, if anybody asks you something, tell them the opposite. Because he's pointing out the continuum, not the two ends. Okay. So, any of these things I've given you, in general, you don't do them all the time. I don't want to come back here and hear words.

[37:37]

Somebody should ask, where's Chris? Someone will tell me her sphincter exploded. She contracted it one too many times. Now that would be a terrible event. And... If I say the basic practice is uncorrected state of mind, and that we don't correct our breath, it doesn't mean we never correct our breath. Sometimes we do a little correction. And you see if it works. But your base is not correcting it.

[38:52]

Your home base is not correcting it, but then sometimes you correct it. It's like we concentrate. Then you relax the concentration. Or you forget about concentration. Sometimes you can be quite concentrated and then you lose your concentration, get caught in a thought and then you're much more concentrated. So it's a kind of pulse. All these things are a kind of pulse. Now, of course, when you make coffee, if you want to Practice mindfulness with making coffee. And you want to practice the parameter of patience. You obey the cup. You listen to the cup. You wait for the cup to speak to you. You know, you'd probably even lose your job if you worked in a coffee shop.

[40:06]

You know, there's a line of people waiting in your door, waiting for the cup to speak to you. It's said you're getting a cappuccino. Oh, I wanted a coffee latte. No, sorry. And if you're going to let the cups speak to you, you ought to at least let people speak to you, even if there's a little friction. But finding this other rhythm of letting things speak to you or moving within the pace of the phenomenal world, not just in your mental tempo, takes a little while.

[41:17]

It's quite natural. It's not an artificial way to act. Now, we live in a world in which to get to the train or get some work done requires you to live in that world. And unless you enter a monastery again, you can't throw that world away. That's what makes lay practice so challenging and an adventure. It's considered in Buddhism the most difficult but also the most powerful way to practice. The fact is, it's considered that it's nearly impossible. Suzuki Roshi came to America wanting to establish lay practice.

[42:38]

He thought that was more important than monastery practice. But after five years, he found that really nobody was getting it. Excuse me for saying so, but except for perhaps me. And I had to do it by pretending I was in a monastery. I actually started pretending San Francisco was a monastery. So Suzuki Roshi and I decided we had to find a place to establish a monastic practice. So we found Tassajara.

[43:49]

But because of my own experience in making it work, and because of Sukhirashi's dream that it was possible, And because you're different kind of people than traditionally practiced Zen in the past. And you have more time. You actually have more time in the kind of life we have. And there are teachers like me willing to try to make it possible. And I really believe it is possible. So that's what I'm doing, flailing around up here on this cushion and coming to Europe all the time.

[44:54]

Okay. You okay? You all okay? Do you want to say that in English? No, I was trying to ask how did you manage to... how did you manage to observe San Francisco as a monastery? I mean, what sort of changes of observation did you do? Actually, I find myself writing about it in this book I'm doing, because I was trying... I've been trying to explain how certain practices work, and it shifted right into my telling

[45:59]

about my experiences in San Francisco trying to make it work. And one of the ways I did it is I took the phrase, I discovered the phrase, there's no place to go and nothing to do. And in all circumstances, I said that to myself. Every time I did something, I said, there's nothing to do. Every time I went somewhere, I said, there's no place to go. And it was like a mantra. And I forgot it.

[47:02]

And finally it was just permanently present with me. I like this, working with you on this. It's fun for me. Isn't it more a discovery than a construction of this reality? The phrase, to discover the phrase, was a discovery. That's the discovery of this kind of reality. Yes. But I used a construction to discover. and I discovered the construction, which gave me the intuition that it was the right construction to use to discover.

[48:02]

Do you want to translate that? This is actually sort of that burden. I'm really at you guys' mercy. You can stop saying anything. But you were really... What we're really doing here is we're discussing potting, maybe. Potting? And we're learning how to make pots. And we're putting ourselves on the potting wheel of everyday life. And you're shaping your auric topography. Mm-hmm. I know that when I do something, I either manage to make it more of a vessel, it becomes a beautiful vessel, but it falls into itself, or I succeed or I don't succeed.

[49:28]

So the result. Or in any other technique, in yoga or qigong, I do something and either I wobble on my feet or fall down, or I succeed in the exercise. But in this Zen, you can juggle incredibly. You can juggle and maybe you don't even notice it. I have a question. When I do pottery or pottering and I make a pot and I can tell whether I succeed and whether it's a good product or not the same as Chico or anything else, I can see whether my body trembles or moves. But it's very easy to cheat, so how can I know whether I did the right thing? You practice Qigong? Two years ago I practiced a lot, and then I stopped for a while.

[50:34]

Yes, it's true that Zen is... I guess you only know if you don't cheat. Kind of our nature to cheat a little. But a certain sincerity and intent is required. Because it is pretty formless. And we don't want to give you a plan and instructions, some but not much. But I'm telling you, I'm giving you much more than I was ever given. I mean, there's no comparison. Why did you give that to me? Because maybe I'm not a very good teacher.

[51:45]

And I've been practicing with people for 30 years, and not many people really get the feeling of it. And I've found for Westerners, you have to get an entry into the world before you can do it. And since I've been making some things a little more clear, I think people are getting it better. But it's an experiment. I don't know. We're all experimenting. I'm trying out to see if it works. I mean, these are not things that I wasn't taught, but I was taught them in a different way than I'm teaching you, and many of them I discovered after I'd realized them.

[52:48]

But you have to also understand that for some reason I couldn't tell you why. Although I had a completely, well, somewhat normal life. And I had my friends and did things. For some reason, for five, really ten years, I did absolutely nothing but study Buddhism every moment. For five years and really for ten years.

[53:51]

And I decided to solve no problems in any way but through Buddhism. Und ich habe beschlossen, also kein Problem auf irgendeine Weise zu lösen, es sei denn mit Hilfe des Buddhismus. And I decided to put all my eggs in one basket, and if I went crazy or dead, it was okay. Und ich habe beschlossen, alle Eier in ein Körbchen hineinzutun, oder wie sagt man auf Deutsch? Alles auf eine Karte zu setzen. Genau, alles auf eine Karte zu setzen, ob ich nun verrückt werden würde oder sterbend. And I sort of survived. Now, I don't know why I did it that way, but it helped me practice it. So, you know, if you put that kind of energy into something, even over ten years instead of five years, something happens.

[54:53]

But I had a really wonderful teacher. I had the feeling all the time that he was going to go back to Japan. I felt I didn't have a moment to waste. I saw I did everything possible to spend time with him. And I did everything possible to keep him in America. I found Tassajara. He almost said to me a few times, are you trying to trap me? But he went back to Japan and he turned over his temple and everything and came and just lived in America.

[56:02]

But I still had the feeling he was going to go away any minute. But he was also very good. I want to stop in a minute, but there's a couple of things I would like to say. We've almost, including Zazen, been an hour and a half. Now there's two or three questions people have, which I would like to come to later. And I'd like to go for a moment more or a minute or two more into the sense of a Dharma. Because there's a point I want to get to before we stop.

[57:06]

Which is? When you do each thing with a sense of completeness, you can feel that completeness. So you start doing things within that feeling of completeness. We could say that's what Buddha's Eightfold Path means by right conduct. And this word right also means perfect and complete. And if you want to feel, if you'd like to be, this is just a simple, obvious suggestion. If you want a deep feeling that you are complete, that's much more likely to arise if in all your small actions you feel complete.

[58:15]

So if you keep doing things with the sense of, you can use the word even, complete. Complete. Complete. And with that sense of pace and a pause, the pause that completes. Do you have that ad for Coca-Cola, the pause that refreshes? This is the pause that completes. So that sense is Dharma practice. Now I want to give you a teaching of five or six dharmas based on the Lankavatara Sutra, which I'm going to modify a bit for you.

[59:36]

Now this is related to the five skandhas, which I've taught many of you, but it's somewhat different. Das steht in Beziehung zu den fünf Skandhas, die ich vielen von euch beigebracht habe, aber es ist auch etwas anders. Now the first of these five or six dharmas is naming. Und das erste dieser fünf oder sechs dharmas ist einen Namen geben, benennen. Now I'm sorry to bother you with such a small thing as naming. Und es tut mir leid, dass ich euch mit solch einer Kleinigkeit belästigen muss, wie einen Namen geben. And it's so obvious. And it's so obvious we don't name things. But these obvious things, these things we take for granted are often where our roots are, where are the basis of our existence. So if you accept that this world we see is a description, this Berlin is a description, then where does the description start?

[60:43]

Descriptions start with naming. Where does language start? Language starts with names. So when you practice with naming as a Dharma, which is one of the teachings of the Lankavatara Sutra, which is the main sutra for Zen, What you're doing is naming only. Now, naming usually is the name immediately goes into a sentence and into feelings, associations and so forth. Now, if I say, this is a bell, if I was teaching my child language, you know, to a one-year-old, sometimes I'd say, bell. And you can imagine what she or he is seeing and feeling when something is held up and you say, bell.

[62:24]

And you can imagine what she or he feels when something is held up and you say, bell. The infant probably doesn't know which he or she likes better, the sound of the parent's voice or the light on the bell. So you say, bell. And maybe you hit it. Maybe you hit it. Now I can also take the words, this is a bell, and separate them. Because this is also a name. But this is a little maybe closer to thusness. So I can hold this up for you and just say, this. Now when you do that, you're not making the association.

[63:45]

Do you understand what I mean? And you're actually changing the state of your mind. You're changing the level of your mind. Out of connectedness. So this is a bell. Actually creates a certain state of mind. Everything is simultaneously arising. And when you say, this is a bell, a certain kind of mind field arises. When I say this, another kind of mind appears. This. Or I can say is. Is. Is. And maybe we can even use a. And we can even use a. In the temples, at the gate of the Buddhist temples in Japan and China, there's usually two guardian figures who are actually modeled on Hindu gods.

[65:19]

It's a little politics here. You put the Hindus at the gate to guard the Buddhists. And the one on one side has his mouth closed and the one on the other side has his mouth open. And they're quite fierce. They're kind of like... Usually in armor. Looking like soldiers or warriors. And the one with his mouth open is saying, ah. Anyway, because this sound reaches up through you. In the Prajnaparamita emptiness sutras, I forget the longest one is 32,000 characters, I believe. And the shortest one is one character, ah.

[66:21]

And the second shortest sutra is the heart sutra that we chant. And the shortest of all is... Okay. Okay. So naming is a dharma when you break the connection of naming with language and sentence structure and so forth, and you just have the name. So you're starting with naming, peeling the name off things, but right now just naming. Not thinking about them. So you say in meditation, this is a long breath. Or this is a short breath. And you find if you do that, you suddenly find yourself in a pretty bright space.

[67:43]

Because you've let go of connectedness and grief Grief Now what I'd like to do now is I'd like to take a break, which is also I'd like you to get together in smaller groups. Now there's about 40 of us here, is that right? So if we broke up into groups of six or seven people each, we'd have six or seven groups. Okay, and some of you can go upstairs and some of you can be here.

[69:13]

Just take the six or seven people around you. It's the simplest thing. Now, what I'd like you to do is to discuss among yourself to share with each other. Some experience, like I said this morning, if you in a church perhaps or in the mountains had some feeling of divinity or some feeling of joy appeared in you or completeness. That... Or if in some way you have a sense of how, a feeling of this magical being. If maybe each of you have had something, you might share that experience.

[70:19]

Now also, if there is some particular term, idea that we've discussed in the seminar, that strikes your particular group, you might bring a sort of relationship between the experiences, the flavor of the experiences that come out as you're discussing with each other. And then if there's one or two terms that seem to come out of the group too, you can see how they relate or whatever. Und wenn es jetzt vielleicht ein oder zwei Begriffe gibt, die auch in dieser Gruppe auftauchen, dann schaut nur, ob die miteinander in Beziehung stehen. Das sind jetzt einfach Vorschläge, aber wenn ihr vielleicht jetzt euch an diese Vorschläge haltet, dass es irgendwie ein Territorium gibt, ein gemeinsames für euch.

[71:35]

Nun, ich mache das aus verschiedenen Gründen. One is, I want, as I said, to go a little slower. And I want to know what you know as we're going along. And I also want you to start using each other more in the teachings. Teaching shouldn't be just toward me and back to you. As I've said a number of times, I've almost never seen anyone make practice work who doesn't have a friend in practice. Not a friend that you discuss all your practice with, but you have a feeling you share the vision of practice, you have the physical sensations of practice.

[72:45]

Now, Zen practice is to help you realize the undivided world, And to begin to live simultaneously in the divided and undivided world. And now those terms we can talk about later if you want to bring them up. Now, the practice of living in the divided and undivided world, to really talk about it in a way that like potters we can begin to feel this,

[73:58]

There's a kind of special language. Like Sita means all the aspects of mind plus the unity of mind or the center of mind. Or the use of the word dharma. So these are a kind of special language of using words a special way and a meta-language that uses... You know, how I picked this up is a meta-language. And if you learn this language and you learn the meta-language, or you get a feeling for it, really, just even a small feeling for it, it really makes a difference in your being able to practice. And your ability to live in Dharma City as well as Berlin.

[75:20]

Okay, so it is presently 4.19. I'd like us to take maybe 30 to 40 minutes. And some of that can be break. And first I'd like you to figure out who your six or seven people are. Then you can take a break. And then, wait a minute, and then whoever, you know, two or three of you might take guys together and then four and then five, you don't have to do it real regular, but within 10 or 15 minutes I'd like the group to be together and see how you can talk to each other about these things for 15 minutes. Okay. And then somehow you guys have to figure out if one or two or three of you give me different reports or tell the group.

[76:34]

I don't know how you're going to do it. You can decide how you tell us. What happened? This is an exercise in learning your personal language and Dharma language. Thank you. I have the feeling we could start with any one group and spend all day tomorrow. Okay, but so, tell me something, this group. Anything you want. Go ahead. In English or in German? You might stand up. I don't know. That's not there. She don't have it.

[77:35]

She says it, not she. Yes, we just started to talk in the group of seven people. And I just made a note and wrote a few comments and a few statements. And... Show it to me. This is a good group. Yes, the topics have become more and more.

[78:36]

After 15 minutes, not only questions were answered, but there were more and more. We talked about everything. For example, the question, what is true Zen? Is it true? [...] Then there was a counter-examination when a teacher asked a student what the true nature of Buddha is. And he said, a pile of shit. What did the teacher say? A pile of shit. A shit stick, I think you said.

[79:48]

Motivation to come here. In the word trust. Who do you trust? Why do you come closer? Do you trust him, for example? And why? And how far? Where do you have fear? We talked about the topic of fear How far do you let yourself in on the breathing, on the sitting? Yes, and that's how it went On and on Okay, good Next, back in the back Yes, we all have felt the difficulty to say anything at all.

[80:49]

What's wrong? So that everyone actually told a little bit about what he actually felt when he put his hands together and the strap in between. It felt like it was going back to the children, where she remembered it again. And it felt like everyone felt their presence again. What does it mean to live alone in nature, for example, or to listen to music, or what do you have at the seminar? Do you have different... And we are very connected in the spirit of non-trust.

[81:51]

This is very good. Among each other. Did I get it all? Okay. In the middle and the back? Yes, so we have different experiences from our childhood, [...]

[83:10]

It seems to be that the experiences, which were carried out in some cases carefully or a little shamefully, in many cases were also aimed at the topic, can these experiences be destroyed? Is it only Apo or is it the language, the reality of this child, Tizianoid? It seems to be that these experiences are now a scandal, namely the experience of pure form, where less of the avatars are experienced. And does this remind you of this topic of the upward trend? So, for example, it's not the 5th, it's not the 1st, the 5th is the simple form.

[84:32]

Okay, in the corner back there, whoever that group is. I didn't understand. Five women, one... And one man. We were talking about... We talked about the feeling of being in nature, and to be absolutely present on all levels, to hear, to see, to be a feeling of one, which is very short, or to hear on different levels, where the sounds or the sounds can integrate into a symphony,

[86:24]

Grace. How do you feel about it? We spoke about music, about the sounds, about the tones, about the ability that music has to take us out of another world. We spoke about the What was her overarching? Okay.

[87:54]

And I guess there's a middle group right here. Yeah. So we talked about different, particularly moving objects. And that was, first of all, in nature. It wasn't the best feeling, but it was a sense of unity. Then it was after a car accident. After that, Arti Schwerde was also there. After that, there was a great gratitude for him. The feeling of dying and then after it's just... And then you see what you like to be. I don't remember what I experienced. Yes, what was interesting, or what we all realized, is that all these experiences were actually quite similar.

[89:15]

And that is, in all the experiences, you can get very close to nature or to other people. In any case, these are the limits, the normal limits that you build between yourself and the other. In all fields of activity. What you forgot was that the usual person was no longer there. Then we asked ourselves why it was so late to find ourselves in such a situation. What he noticed is that it has to do with letting go. If you don't force yourself, you can't achieve it. Why do we make life so difficult? This group here?

[90:27]

Yes, we have four women and two men. We talked about where we experience this magical being within us. There are experiences that we had. And we found out that it has something to do with experiences where we felt expanded, connected, in nature or with other people, but also where we feel joy. So, experiences, yes, in nature above all, also from the Indian area, But also the experience of being guided. To have the sure feeling that I am guided, controlled.

[91:30]

And we then continued to think that Zen is actually a very sober thing. So the experiences we had, didn't necessarily have anything to do with Zen or not with Zazen. but it came from other experiences, and Zazen himself is something very sober, pragmatic, and yet something happens, and we also talked about it, that the concrete experience in everyday life, the concentration, but that it also becomes noticeable, where one is not so concentrated. Or that simply, yes, although nothing happens directly, but the living conditions change, in a positive way.

[92:37]

Is that everyone? Is that all the groups? Oh. Getting refueled for the translation. Thank you very much. It looked like you were having a good time. I thought there'd be more feeling of objection to doing this regimented thing. Is there anybody who would like to say something that they feel was left out, that whoever reported for the group didn't say, that you'd like to say?

[94:14]

Yeah. Es ist aber ein bisschen persönlich, aber ich weiß nicht genau, ob die anderen das so sehr geteilt haben. Also ich habe zum Beispiel den Eindruck, dass da eine Verbindung da ist zwischen so kleinen Erlebnissen, die ich ja früher mal gehabt habe und dem, was sich aus dem Sitzen zum Beispiel ergibt. Also ich habe den Eindruck, ich komme so ein bisschen mehr in diese Richtung rein. It's maybe too personal, and I don't think the others have the same experience, I don't know, but for me I feel more and more connectedness between these early experiences and my practice. Good. Anybody else? Yes. For me, Zen at first was very understated, because it was so strange at first, and also sober, and I thought, oh, concentration camp, and terrible, and so on.

[95:25]

And over time I realized...

[95:26]

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