I also made an experience that not every concept fits everything. This offer to work with arriving, receiving and done, I tried out in a way that I wanted to get rid of, so to speak. I wanted to cut off the current And I thought, I'll try it out now. And best of all, I thought, gun, I want to get rid of it, so I'll take a gun. That didn't work at all. And then I realized, arriving doesn't fit either. and ended up receiving. And in the moment when I was receiving with this activity, when I actually let my body speak, I came into such an accepting attitude One thing I noticed about practicing with concepts is that not every concept fits in each situation.

[01:15]

For example, when I was working with one situation that I actually wanted to get rid of, I began by practicing with the word gone, because I thought, well, I want to get rid of it, so I better work with gone. But I noticed that that did not work at all. So I worked with arriving as a next step, and that didn't work either very well. So I ended up practicing with receiving. And what happened when I said this word and practiced with this concept was that there was a kind of opening and when I began to accept it, that then really the situation began to shift. Yeah, that's my guess. The interesting thing is also that normally Buddhism or practicing Zen or having varying sraksu implies maybe this accepting attitude.

[02:24]

And sometimes for me it is really demanding. I don't develop this accepting attitude. And I was surprised that this receiving gave me a kind of inner activity to do it, not as an intellectual or Buddhist theoretical demand, more it was an activity inside changing into acceptance. Now you said it in English. Yes, I noticed that I could become active in myself with the term receiving and could transform something. With the claim of this accepting attitude, Buddhist practice or Raksotragan so implicitly, I did not always like it.

[03:36]

And well, that was the practice, that is not everyday life, but it was just an experience and I was very impressed that I could change something with this term receiving, without it coming from the head. I think that one of the things that helps, and you did, is that you make these practices your own. So there's not much difference between accepting and receiving. But for you, coming to that worked better than coming to accepting what you were supposed to do or something like that.

[04:38]

But the whole concept that you're expressing and others are expressing, the practice of... of understanding that we're in the midst of a situation which we either have habitual attitudes that we don't notice shaping our environment, To make it very simple. Many people have a suspicious attitude to everything. It just seems natural to them.

[05:39]

Maybe they're parents at it and the grandparents and the great-grandparents, you know, a little suspicious of everything that happened. You know, and the psychotherapist is always noticing people have certain attitudes that they live within and that's just the air they breathe. But to really know, you can do something so simple as change the attitude with which you meet the world. And you know, like some people always feel they're about to be the victim.

[07:02]

And I've had so much bad luck recently, I'm getting there myself. I'm going to start expecting bad luck. I'm going to have two flat tires tomorrow. If I walk, I'm sure I'll trip. Don't you know your car is stolen already? Yeah. So you can, and the way to start out is to just, usually if you can notice what attitude you bring to initial situations, you try out the opposite. But if you think you have a particular nature, I'm this kind of person, this doesn't work. But if you have a bigger sense of yourself in the world with others, not so different, you can work with your initial response to things.

[08:27]

And an important part of that is not only changing the attitude but identifying the moment of an initial response. Yes, that's why I suggest you practice when you come into a room. As you come into the room, you make that a moment of initial response. And see if you can enter with either an attitude like welcome or something like that. Or you just see if you can enter with no attitude, zero attitude. And if you can start to identify this mind of initial response, which isn't exact, you know, in some sense it's every moment,

[09:54]

But it's more particularly certain kind of moments during the day keep establishing our overall state of mind. And if we can really get a feel for this mind of initial response, moment of initial response, it goes a long ways toward this whole thing we're talking about in this seminar. developing a mind which sees finds the world a process of momentary appearances. And when you get to the point of really finding yourself in a world of initial appearances, which is what is actually the fact, this loosens the hold.

[11:32]

the habit of self and self-referencing has. So these small processes we're all involved in really practice regularly and thoroughly you know, are, you know, the roots of all Buddhism. Okay. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to say that. I always think she's playing Gute.

[13:04]

Gute always held up one finger. When everybody said to him, he'd hold up one finger. Gute, der hat immer einen Finger einfach hochgehalten. Und ich denke, die Nicole macht das auch. Aber ich mache das nicht, ich melde mich. I think it's also interesting to find out, as Manuela just pointed out, that I deal a lot with finding out which concept fits in which moment. Why? I find it interesting, and Manuela just brought me to it, that to find out which concept fits in which moment, to which moment. When I'm in a confused mood, when I find myself in a confused mood, then this gives me a clue to the core or the center of my confusion.

[14:25]

namely to find out which practice concept is working best or is working at all. It's about that I'm surprised then. [...] Let's say there is a situation which is oppressing me. I often think that I have to enter it with force with my spine. Then I notice that the tension that I feel does not dissolve at all. But I notice then that this tension which I sense and under which I suffer doesn't dissolve then. The question I put myself then to is

[15:51]

Which is the integrating field and what is making it complete? And then something is appearing like opening or acceptance. And that I find myself at a place where I could never have thought of. Then I find myself at a location or somewhere where I never had imagined I could be. Then I notice that together with that tension, that original tension, I get sort of stronger. What do you mean by a location where you never could have imagined being? The way I would have translated that is more like a place I could not have thought my way to. It's a feeling, a situation or something that you couldn't have thought your way to.

[17:15]

That's why I'm astonished with the solution of all this. I'm astonished and I couldn't have imagined that. I would have thought originally that the solution would have been to put more strength in it. Or force. And then I would have practiced with the concept of strength or power. But that I then realize that the solution can be courage, for example. But then I notice the solution might be, for example, humility. And that surprises me. That surprises me. Do you have a question?

[18:37]

Yes. How do you get there? Because I find that exciting. Is there a method? Or how do you get there? I haven't understood what could fit now. How do you get there from a stronger point of view? What he finds interesting is the question of how, if there's a method, how do I get from strength to find that the solution might be humility. Das ist, dass ich bei null wieder anfange. It is starting at zero again. Und dass ich bereit bin, dann nichts über die Situation zu wissen. And that I'm prepared not to know anything about the situation. Not knowing what is my role in that situation. And not knowing what the role of the opposing forces is. And then to take a look that covers the whole field. And then come to a look which encompasses the whole situation.

[19:52]

And then to ask what is it. And then let the situation find out for itself. It sounds like the part in the Quran where it says medicine working as illness and illness working as medicine. Yeah, when I first came back from Japan in 1971, I guess, there was a woman, lots of Zen students had been going to a woman who became pretty famous as a psychic reader.

[21:02]

Anne Armstrong. Anne Armstrong, yes. She's still alive? Oh, yeah. I've got an interview with her on my website. I had her contact, Suzuki Roshi. There was a woman to whom quite a lot of Zen students went, who was, how do we say that, medium or so, psychic, real, medium, right? Yeah. So I came back from Japan, and I knew I was going to have to be Suzuki Roshi's successor. Yeah, so I thought, well, I'd better find out why so many students are going to see Anne Armstrong. And then I thought, well, maybe I should find out why so many of our students visit Anne Armstrong. And at some point I called her up.

[22:05]

I didn't identify myself. I just said I would like to see her. She told me that I had 12 guides that were always present. I didn't see them, but they were always giving me instructions, and I always followed those instructions. Great Bodhisattvas, I'm sure. Anyway, I thought it was nice that she said I always followed their advice.

[23:05]

I don't know where they have been recently. Did you not notice my computer? Where were you when I needed you? Powerful, powerful. Anyway, but I don't think of it that way. My own feeling is that our situations, our life situation, are far more complex than we can understand. It's more than consciousness can reach. And again, this teaching that's the background of this con we're working with, assumes that you can't actually understand how things exist.

[24:25]

So you can certainly try to understand as much as you can. But you also, from the point of view of this teaching, you don't only act on the basis of what you, as much as you can understand. You also try to act on a... as if there were a bigger field than you could understand. So how do you bring that into... how do you bring the larger it's almost as if each person was actually two or three feet wider in all directions and was interdependent with the situation and with others in a much more complex way than you can understand

[25:52]

And if you can find a way to act within that larger field which you can't fully understand, it can feel like you're you're receiving guidance. And I think that's where a lot of people's religious ideas come from. So, I think Nicole found some way to let the situation speak in a larger sense to her than she could think her way to, as she said. And I think we all have two various ways and we have similar experiences. And that's indicated in this koan, where you can't open your mouth.

[27:06]

A tongueless person can give you guidance. Like that. Excuse me. Going on. Yes? What has just been said, I have been practicing for some time now. I would like to discuss it briefly. I don't want to get lost in something. What we have been speaking about just now, that is something that I have been practicing with recently quite a bit and in a very similar way and I would like to speak my way through it in some sense also just to check because I don't want to run into wrong directions with this.

[28:34]

Okay, as long as it doesn't keep us from having dinner. So, how to get out of difficult situations? No matter whether this is my difficult situation or a situation of another person. This is also a kind of delayed question to the first day. I wonder when I really don't know how to go on.

[29:37]

Can it be Is it now in this situation? Can it be in this situation? And where is it? What I then notice is that my body is communicating with something with something other than this situation, there's another ingredient.

[30:41]

Yes, the idea of God. It's not that I believe that this is the case, I don't believe that, but it is the feeling that it would be possible to enable the exit from situations. Through what do you mean now? Through these questions. It seems to me that these questions offer a kind of way out of the situation. But then it's also about trusting that. And I'm always a little bit suspicious here because of all these ideas of God or religious ideas or something. But it seems as though these questions offer a way out of the situation. What questions?

[31:54]

These two questions, is it within the situation, or is there something in this situation? This question, something like, is it within the situation, or is there something within the situation? And where is it? Somehow I would just like to hear what you can say to this. Any one of us. Paul, do you want to say something? My question is something like

[33:06]

Should one practice this kind of thing or better not? No, I think your basic attitude is good. There's something dharmically correct in this intuition you have. And I think you understand that you've said in difficult situations you sort of want to get out of them. But that's maybe not such a good attitude. What's wrong with difficult situations? I think that's a better attitude. I mean, I may carry it to extremes. But my feeling is always, you know, if I'm sick, I don't know, it's kind of interesting to be sick.

[34:28]

I try to make it, sort of try to make it go away, but I really don't care. Ich versuche schon so ein bisschen, das vorzuscheuchen, aber eigentlich ist es mir egal. It's one of the reasons I virtually never take medicine. Because I don't like the idea that I would like to get out of this situation. Well, I'll stay in it. No. When I had cancer a few years ago, I had quite a debate and I discussed it with Ivan Ilyich and whether I should have a treatment. And I decided that, you know, I should have solved this problem earlier and that was too bad, it had gotten too bad for me to solve.

[35:30]

By myself. Well, I had this. help of the Sangha and the advice of Gerhard and others. I got the news about the biopsy during his session and afterwards we met and talked to him. So I'm not saying we should never take medicine. But in most circumstances I find I learn more and my body learns more about how to stay healthy when I just accept the situation and don't do anything about it. It doesn't even occur to me to try to get better. So in some way, some version of this, you try on symbolically.

[36:45]

I mean, I've chosen things like getting sick. But you can try it out with other things. In other words, for me it's an example where I found I could try this out. To just accept whatever situation it is utterly from inside. And not have the idea I want it to change. Or if I have the idea I wanted to change, I also have the idea this is okay for the rest of my life. And some other kind of, for me anyway, powers

[37:59]

within us, within the situation, begin to be more accessible. So your attitude to look within the situation, that's good to me. Yeah, I could tell another anecdote here, but I think we should stop. I kind of wish I had just snuck in the back and listened instead of ended up sitting here. But I'm also glad to continue this inner and outer discussion we're having about this case. Okay.

[39:08]

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