Yeah, I'd like it now if we could have some discussion. So anybody who wants to say anything, we'll all be happy. Okay, let's... I was very interested in this, what you said about this body logically giving its heart and soul immediately off to do the gesture play. Gesture. Play, yeah. You play something with six archetypical gestures. And it was amazing to me. You don't have to learn them, really. They are already there. And it's also important there that you do these very precisely and accurate. Even if you have some...

[01:01]

And what's also interesting is how directly this leads to something. There's nothing in between. I mean, you cannot betray yourself. You do the gesture and the psychological feeling is there. Deutsch, bitte. What I found very interesting was that with this body a physical topic, because it has to do with what I like very much. This is what is called a play of signs. And there we work practically with six archetypal signs. And it was very interesting that you don't really have to learn them, these signs. You really know them, they are there right away. And it is still important, even though you have a certain playing space, that you really do it pretty much exactly like that.

[02:10]

And then it's actually like this, even though now somehow Can you give me an example of one of the gestures? Okay, yeah. The other one is just like holiness, just wait and see. And where does it come from, the practice? From country practice here. From Dukkha, Dukkha. Oh, this place. Yeah. And one of his disciples, he developed this Silvia Ostertag from his initiatic.

[03:17]

He developed this as some kind of a plan. Okay. That's interesting. I wonder where he got it. I mean, he, of course, as you know, was one of the Zen pioneers in the West, writing the book Hara in the late 60s, early 70s. It sounds a little bit like Stanislavski and Borislavski, too, the Russian theater people. Yeah. Yeah, well, they taught along for theater, a whole way of using the body to communicate things. But the truthfulness of it is, you know, that you mentioned strikes me, too.

[04:21]

Because much of this, I think we could call it yogological as well as body-logical culture. And I want to make a parallel by using a word like yogological. To make it parallel to psychological. So we see we're not just talking about a practice separate from daily life. It's part of everything we do. And as we know, as I've said many times, the lie detectors work reasonably well because it's very difficult for the body to lie. And that fact is at the root of Buddhist practices.

[05:39]

When your thinking, for instance, is tied to your speech and breath and body, When you feel the physicality of thinking and speech, much harder to lie even to ourselves. Yeah, I mean, just... I would say that one of the things that characterizes Buddhism is it assumes that yoga is, every posture is yogic.

[06:46]

Yoga isn't something you do on a mat. once a day, it's something that's part of how you stand, walk, sit, etc. And I pointed out as an example, in China they When they did adopt chairs, they adopted straight back chairs, which make you sit upright, and with seats big enough to sit cross-legged in. Okay, someone else. I'd like to give some feedback on yesterday's Zazen instruction.

[07:53]

Oh, okay. came across an instruction of Suzuki Roshi's David Chadwick and it said that as long as you have while doing zazen you have the feeling I'm doing zazen you're not actually doing zazen so how do you remove that feeling that I'm doing it and you gave the formula yesterday which seems to work very well which is just follow intention where it goes by itself And I just wanted to mention that I think it's a very... I never heard it in that way. It sounds very simple, but it seems to work very well. It seems like attention is really focused on attention, which might practically be a definition of Samadhi. Well, could you please say that in Deutsch and in loud? I have read a Zazen instruction from the Supreme Master and it says that as long as you have the feeling that you are doing Zazen yourself and not really doing Zazen, it is difficult to have the feeling of practicing Zazen yourself.

[09:06]

And Roshi, in his introduction yesterday, in his Satsang Instruction, gave a formula or a correct sentence, in which he said, simply follow the attention where it goes from itself. And I think that's relatively easy to do, and I find it amazing how momentarily the tour of the whole thing disappears. Thank you. I find it so true. Someone else. Yes.

[10:10]

I'm not very certain that this is really a question because I'm still not so clear on what I want to say, but I'll just throw it out and see what happens. You got me interested in sangha, and now I'm wondering... I did, oh. Yeah. I thought you were interested before, but anyway, go ahead. No, I'm consciously interested. And I'm wondering about what's the intention. I mean, do you see any conflict between having the intention to practice for yourself and then there's also the intention to support sangha and, you know, you want to You want to somehow practice in a way that it's good for the whole. And then you also want, or you also need to practice in a way that you support your own life. And I wonder if there's, I mean, what's the intention? Is there any conflict or is there not? You see, I'm not clear.

[11:12]

Yeah. Yeah, but that's what I'm concerned with right now. Yeah, northern... German dialect, please. Yes. I'm not quite sure what I'm actually saying, but at the moment I'm interested in the topic of Sangha. The topic I'm dealing with is actually the topic of intention. What is the intention that you put into a Sangha? I mean, on the one hand, you practice to support the Sangha, to do something good for the whole Sangha, so that the Sangha can actually live. And at the same time, of course, you have to take care of your own life in your practice. Otherwise you can't even support Sangha. And I just wonder what the basic intention is. Well, of course we need to take care of our own practice.

[12:17]

But I think one of the major shifts in practice, when your practice jumps a leap, is when you really feel it, recognize in your own body that you're also moving. practicing for others. And that is really an arising in yourself of the Bodhisattva vow. And it's the beginning of the discovery that other people's practice affects you. And I mean other people's practice of delusion as well. So we start to practice with others in a way that strengthens our own practice.

[14:07]

For most of us, it just happens. We don't have to say, oh, that's important to practice. It just happens. Yeah, at some point, you know, you go to the sendo because you know you'll be missed. Yeah, if I don't go, the person next to me will say, geez, a dead seat. Yeah, so we go to the Zendo because we want to sit, but we also go to the Zendo because, you know, it feels different for each of us when we sit together. And Zen, of all Buddhist schools, particularly emphasizes this practice of sitting together. Okay. Someone else? Yes. My experience is that my own practice itself helps me for the practice with or in the Sangha, but that in particular the Sangha practice helps me when I am back at home, to be with other people who do not practice and that the Sangha practice supports me more, but my own practice especially helps me

[15:50]

She's expecting Papa to translate. Papa can do it. Very mainly my practicing with the sangha together, when I'm back at my normal life work and so on, the Sangha sort of practice, practicing with the Sangha helps getting along better and dealing with persons who don't practice. Richtig? Richtig. Who don't practice. That's what Sangha practice especially helps me for. So I'm practicing with the Sangha. It should be like that. So sollte es sein. Was it edited?

[16:59]

It was condensed, but not edited. It was condensed, but nothing I have left out. No, not edited. No, no, no, I wouldn't do that. All right, someone else. Thank you, Matt. In the morning you talked about society trance, psychological trance, Japanese trance, Western trance, and that it's very important to get out of trance, go in Zen trance, in a way. My experience is this changing itself, that awareness arises. What is the special thing about getting into self-trance?

[18:11]

in comparison with awareness which arises, changing within all the trances. In German, please. This morning, Roshi spoke of the path of trance, of Western trance, of Japanese Western trance. What happens when you come out of a trance? That attention arises. That it is important to come out of a trance. And my question is, what is unique or special about the ten trances? The difference to a change. Well, if I, you know, I don't know if I exactly understand what you mean.

[19:21]

But what I said was that I use trance in a... basically positive way. And I'm using it in a little bit as a challenge. So that we can see or think about that there's no just pure seeing. But of course it's a deep view, practice within Buddhism Starting quite in one of its articulate, most articulate beginnings is Dignaga, who says we can only see things as they are when we shake off concepts.

[20:33]

Yeah, and so that's an attempt to shake off trance as well. But we can also say any deep engagement or any engagement is really a kind of trance. So you have to choose your trance partner. I mean, you have to choose your trance. Which one has more wisdom or has, you know, et cetera. So, and sometimes... the best antidote to poison is poison. So the best antidote to trance sometimes is a contrary trance.

[21:44]

So what we're trying to do in this yogological body is to create a a kind of I don't know I hate to say it because it's so clumsy and so easy to understand but let's say a kind of sangha trance or a sense of a shared body which shakes off our individual psychological trance Individual psychological trance. Individual psychological trance. Because I would say... Yeah, Schüttelfrost, yeah.

[22:46]

Schüttelfrost. One of the words I know. So... So because I think each of us is in an individual psychological trance... Well, is it... shaped by, reified by our self-referential, constant self-referential thinking. So we could say that psychology of Buddhism To the extent that there is such a thing. Or perhaps Darmology. Is to deal with symptoms and not causes. But it's also to create a... bodily practice which breaks our individual psychological trance.

[23:56]

But that requires a considerable alertness to the architecture of the shared body. I said little things like just noticing after years people stand this way and finding your conscious awareness in your own feet. So you don't feel your feet are down there. Your feet are only down there in relationship to, I would say, a kind of psychological trance located in the upper body. There's an overall bodily feeling.

[24:58]

You need to have some kind of way to develop this. Let me start again. You need some way to develop this overall feeling. overall bodily feeling, awareness. And believe it or not, you pick it up from a bodily entrainment with others more than thinking it. But you have to be open to a bodily entrainment. What's entrainment? Entrainment is like when cuckoo clocks grandfather clocks swing together. Sort of synchronization? Yeah, but when athletes perform runners will run faster, two or three runners are running together, because their body gets entrained and there's more speed than if they're running by themselves.

[26:16]

In athletics it's called entrainment. So... Synergistic? Synergistic? synergistic? Well, there's a kind of synergy in it, yes. But bicycle racers, they use this all the time. Because you have more power riding beside someone. So if you're in the lead, you lose power. But we take entrainment as an invasion of our individuality in ordinary terms, but not in athletic terms. But in Sashin, definitely an entrainment occurs.

[27:33]

And if you measure, I think they've only done it, the study of some years ago, up to, I think, 12 people or so. But if you, people who sit together, you wire them up, you know, It looks like helmets of an old man with hair, you know. Some neuroscientists think we shave our heads so they can wire us up. Because there's now the whole custom, you know. Anyway, very quickly, within 10 minutes or so, in this case 12 meditators, all their metabolic rhythms got in sync. And you may know that somebody discovered by accident, this is 20 or 30 years ago, they were just studying something or other and they'd taken a film of an auditorium with a...

[28:42]

And they, for some reason, I don't remember why, slowed it way down so people's movements were like that. And they saw all the movements in the whole room. After a few minutes of the speaker was a synchronized dance. All the eyelid movements, everything was synchronized. So we do this, in fact, we're doing it... I'm sorry to tell you right now. I'm making eyes at you.

[30:00]

Do you have that expression in German? Yeah, we make beautiful eyes. Oh. Well, I wouldn't want to say that. I was just making ordinary eyes. Okay. And Zen practice has used this knowledge from the beginning. A kind of knowing in our acting, but not knowing in our consciousness. Okay. Did I finish? Someone else? I'm not sure I got you right, that you said Buddhism is not about causes, it's more about symptoms. So my question is, if that is true, and why did Buddha teach this for noble truth, for example?

[31:08]

And how can I get along in my daily life in this way? German, please. I wasn't sure if I understood it correctly, that Roshi said that Buddhism is more about symptoms than causes. And my question is how this can be seen in connection with the four noble truths that Buddha taught. And it is clear to me also, if I am to act on this path, how I should integrate this into my everyday life, to think or to act this way. The Buddha certainly taught, we could say, a theory of causation. And that theory is the same as the wider teaching of interdependence. But a symptom is the result of causes in the past. So Buddhism, in a more psychological approach to things, looks at the symptom as the summation of the causes.

[32:28]

And so deals with the symptom as the summation rather than trying to go back to an initial cause. So, I mean... I don't mean that looking at what happened in your childhood or something is a waste of time. But Buddhism has not emphasized that as a way of understanding. The emphasis is on the yogic skills that transform the symptoms. And then are thought to release the whole chain of causation.

[33:34]

Now, if you don't have some inventory of yogic skills, you can't deal with symptoms. So, sometimes I think it's useful for a practitioner to to work with the causes of their psychological situation. But in general, the approach, and why I would say there's no Buddhist psychology, because there's no psyche, But in general, the approach of Buddhism is to deal with the symptoms. No, we do, in a way, work psychologically, kind of.

[34:35]

I mean, I've thought of... emphasizing even doing a book on the psychological uses of practice. And I think one of the There's a number of advantages in doing therapy or being a therapist. Yes, it's part of our culture. We should understand it. But also, through doing therapy, you often can learn how to use practice psychotherapeutically.

[35:36]

But one of the useful skills related to what we're talking about is to develop the ability to follow thoughts, moods, back to their source but back to their immediate trigger or source in the near present you know maybe two days ago or or a few minutes ago a headache appeared, or an anxiety appeared, to know exactly when that appeared. So then you understand the contextual cause of the, say, anxiety, But that's still kind of dealing with the symptom, not going back to the past.

[36:47]

I hope that makes a little clearer what I meant. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to say something difficult for me. I got this winter branch program. And I looked at the dates. And I noticed that I could not participate there. And I noticed that I couldn't partake in it. And the feeling of being closed out appeared.

[37:50]

And I would like to make this a theme because it's about Sangha and about the bodily noticing it. And since I know that this exists and that I can't share it, I don't feel so well here. And since I know it, that this exists, and I can't participate in it, I don't feel as comfortable here as I did, as I used to. And this is my question now. What is the... If we think about the pursuit of feelings, where does it come from? Is it a thought? Is it... At the moment, while I'm here, I do feel comfortable.

[39:22]

But I think if it's... My question is, is this rather a thought which I can trace back? I feel like a fear concerning the future. Yeah, I understand. I'm glad you told me how you feel. And there must be... Yes. And I like this here, especially the openness I found here, and that I could participate in my own pace and speed here.

[40:26]

And that I was also a part of the whole, even when I didn't have a raksha. Yeah, that's good. Well, you're doing what I suggested this morning, is you're bringing it into the Sangha. Yeah, maybe we need a spring branches program for those who can't come to the winter branches program. And I know there's some people who didn't come to this seminar because they can't get that much vacation. And so they're saving... their time so they can come to the winter branches, but not to this. And there must be others who feel, who've had this, whose schedule don't, don't, don't, doesn't work. What can we do about it?

[41:39]

I've heard the whole thing from the Crestone practice period. They all want to leave Crestone and come here for the Winter's Bratches program. And some of them are trying to buy tickets and come anyway, even though I said no. And in fact, the Winter Branches Program is supposed to be a substitute for going to Creston. So we can all go to Creston and they can come here. So what are we going to do? I mean there's certainly no intention to exclude you or anyone else. I mean if you look at it from my point of view, I was thinking of retiring completely, stopping teaching.

[42:50]

So from my point of view, I decided, okay, I'll try in the next years, maybe 10 years, to see if I can create a situation where I can retire. And so this has been a complicated decision, too, because you know I have no... assets, I have no salary, I have no way to support myself. I have no health insurance, things like that. So when I get old and doddering, I'm going to fall into a snowdrift and freeze. It's like a no play or something. I don't know if I can financially survive with this new plan.

[44:07]

So it was a complicated big decision. And the three one-week sessions were determined by when I could do them. And somewhat separated from each other. And it probably doesn't fit anyone's schedule but mine. So maybe I'll be alone. I'll really be the dead stick. I don't know what to do. Of course, if I'm most traditional, I would simply retire to Crestone.

[45:08]

As Sukhiroshi at one time was going to leave the San Francisco Zen Center and wanted me wanted me to join him in Arizona because he thought I can't train all these people maybe I have a chance to train this one guy But other people got word of it and then it got to be a few more people. Then he was maybe going to go to Japan with a total of six people. I was already in Japan. And then some people who heard they wouldn't be included, which was almost everyone, Flew to Japan on their own. Do you know who did that? A big tall guy who was married to Diane de Prima for a while.

[46:11]

Alan Marlowe. He showed up at my house in Japan. I said, why are you here? Because I'm going to be included in this group when Tsukiroshi comes. I said, Alan, what are you talking about? He'd heard a rumor and he bought his ticket. Yeah. Because the tradition is that you can only really transmit this teaching in the kind of setting that you have in a monastery. And this was the motivation for starting Tassajara, actually. Because after being in the States about, I don't know how many years... four or five years, Sukhirashi concluded, although his vision was lay practice, after four or five years he decided

[47:41]

No one's getting it. Almost no one's getting it. I need a monastery to practice with people. So I went out and started looking for a place for him and found Tassajara. This was part of my expression to make practice for others. And that's where Paul and I got started and it did make a difference. But now the Sangha is much more mature than 40 years ago. some years ago. So now I'm trying to think, how can we do this without us all going to Crestown together? Because I know your work and others' work is equally important. You know, when I made this decision, I was 25, so I could say, well, I can throw my career away.

[48:53]

I didn't have a career. Yeah. Thanks. But, you know, you can see it in Dogen's teaching. Dogen seems to be open to lay people early in his life. By the end of his life he's talking, only monks can get it. My life is to try to prove Dogen was wrong. You could say, Bekiroshi says he's trying to prove Dogen was wrong. Doggone. Okay, so maybe we need a secret ballot.

[50:13]

Ballot? A ballot is to vote. So all of those who can't come to the winter branches apply for the secret winter branches. Which is private meetings we have fitting your schedule. Jeez, this sounds good. Then everybody will apply for the private meeting. Andreas just applied. But I'm sort of serious. If enough people say something, I will try to create some other meeting. I mean, part of practice is actually getting free of... the problem of feeling excluded.

[51:20]

But that's a problem we have to deal with in life in general. This is it. Practically, this is a problem of how to be included. So, I don't know. Let's see what, you know, a few... You're the first to make this clear to me, though I know other people have similar feelings. Maybe there's some solution. I would like there to be a solution, because I'd like to continue practicing with you. Okay. Thanks for mentioning it. Anyone else want to say something before we have a break?

[52:22]

And several times you spoke about the teaching lineages. And when I look at the three treasures, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, I ask myself, what meaning do the lines have? Sometimes I have the impression that it is an artificial split or a question of competition, perhaps. When I look at the three treasures, Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, and then I look at the different teaching languages, sometimes I have the feeling this is sort of artificial splitting up, probably like a sort of type of comparison, competition, like that.

[53:23]

What is the meaning of this teaching language? What meaning, what weight do these teaching languages, lineages have? What was the last? What? What weight and meaning do these teaching lineages have? In relation to the Dharma itself. A lot. It's a nice idea that the Dharma is somehow present for all of us. That the Dharma is somehow present for all of us. Yeah, and, you know, as I quoted Yuan Wu the other... last night, he says that the...

[54:26]

whole entire being is right here before us and nowhere else and ready made for us and this intact great potential Another way to say the same thing is like pouring water into water and is one suchness. Okay. That's a really very powerful and accurate statement of our practice. And one suchness is not the same as oneness. But actually how you bring that teaching into your life is not obvious. How do you know?

[55:44]

I mean, most of us go through life. We don't see the whole entire being is right in front of us at all times and ready made for it. We don't have that idea. Where do we get that idea from? That idea and the way of suppressing it arises from a lineage. And you can learn to speak different languages. But probably your way of expressing yourself is going to be more subtle in your language you're most familiar with. So within the different lineages, even within Zen, there's a different flavor. And they're rooted in, and I can see it when I just see a teaching, I can say, oh, that probably comes from this lineage, because it's rooted in certain kinds of enlightenment experiences.

[57:07]

I mean, for me, from my side, it's almost like saying well I could have been born from any woman That's not true. I could only have been born from my poor mother and father. A lineage for me is that different, that you're born from a particular lineage. And the teaching is In general, overall true, but in particular, it's particular. Babies are all looking, but actually there's a tremendous particularity to each baby, even though they look the same, pretty much the same.

[58:09]

In general, it's true, but in particular, it's particular. Babies are all looking, but in particular, it's particular. And one of the problems with a lot of the contemporary teachings is often they're not rooted in a lineage. Not rooted in a lineage. And they get off base within a decade or two. Or people get inflated and so forth. So... Anyway, it's clear to me and in my experience that the teaching is really deeply related to the face-to-face communication that happens in a teaching lineage.

[59:21]

A mother can't teach, not that a disciple is a baby, but a mother can't teach a baby through the television. Or through writing down. I mean, the practice is intimate, the way a relationship between a parent and child is intimate. And we don't have in the West much of a tradition of... personal mentorship. But if you study really good athletes or good businessmen or good doctors, often there's a lineage of other good doctors who preceded them.

[60:31]

There's some permission that occurs and psychological freedom that occurs when you have a teacher. If I had done this all on my own, I'd think, oh, look at me. I'm doing what Tsukiyoshi taught me. This is different. If I had done this all on my own, I'd think, oh, look at me. I'm just one of the dead branches trying to blossom with you. But I thought about this a lot because I put my life into it.

[61:43]

And what I've discovered, because my academic background is in history, is that lineage is also... important in the West in science and art, it's just not so explicit. Almost every field. Okay, sorry. Let's have a break. And when we come back, let's have small groups. We can talk with each other. I can be jealous that I can't participate. Okay.

[62:38]

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