And then there's doubt too. Closely related to what I'm speaking about. The doubt that you allow to arise in the fluidity of each moment. The most basic kind of Zen mantra is not mu, but what is it? Das grundlegendste Zen mantra ist nicht muh, sondern was ist es. Yeah, muh is a version of what is it. Muh is eine Version von diesem was ist es. What. Was. And that what is... A doubt, a genuine doubt. What's here? It's also a way to cut the moment loose from the preceding and the succeeding. And I worked with doubt.

[01:03]

I mean, you know, I... The way I worked with it is kind of stupid, but I'll tell you about it. I had some kind of dumb thoughts. I noticed that there was a lot of ambivalence in my thinking. And doubt, a lot of doubt. What am I doing? Why should I be doing this? And I thought a mountain doesn't doubt. Well, that's a kind of stupid thought. Mountains don't doubt. But I thought mountains don't doubt. They don't think, you know, I'm smaller than that mountain.

[02:14]

They seem to be quite happy with whatever size mountain they are. I thought, well, everybody knows mountains don't doubt, but still, I was struck by mountains don't doubt. In my practice, they didn't doubt. I had a little more problem with dogs, but mountains, it was clear. So I kind of put a mountain inside myself. And I actually kind of felt like a mountain. And... Somehow putting this mountain inside myself, it helped me to stop doubting. And then I also thought, I used to think, well, dogs don't doubt. And I also thought, well, dogs don't doubt. Do dogs have a doubting nature?

[03:35]

That was actually more important to me than do dogs have a Buddha nature. But then I saw so many dogs that had been mistreated by their owners and seemed to have a lot of doubt. So I switched to wild animals. They don't seem to doubt. So I again I sort of supported myself with this feeling of A wild animal doesn't doubt. At some point in those considerations, I stopped doubting. I could say I don't doubt. I don't have the experience of doubt. I mean, it doesn't mean I always think, I say, well, geez, will the train be on time or not?

[04:43]

I don't know. I mean, that's a kind of doubt, but that's different. Well, maybe I do have a moment of doubt sometimes, but I don't care. I forget about it real quick. But it came out of such simple practices as kind of identifying with mountains and animals. Oh, and trees. Identifying with trees, too. This might be a version of the teaching of insentient beings. So this very basic practice in Zen is this opening yourself to the what-ness or doubt on each moment.

[05:47]

And that works as a practice when it begins to be the shape of a moment. Does somebody have something they'd like to bring up?

[06:58]

Yes. Yes. I have a doubt about what you said about the Christian and Buddhist directions. And... That it's two different views.

[08:03]

I learned through my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh that the Christian aspect, the Buddhist aspects are like brothers and sisters. And the aspect further, that they can go together on a path and that we, in Western culture, cannot immerse ourselves in a Buddhism of Asian nature. And also learn that the two can go part of the way together, but we cannot really dive in, immerse ourselves in the Buddhist teaching, but we can lead back to our roots via and through Buddhism, back to our roots here.

[09:16]

And that's also true. It's a bridge. Sometimes Buddhist practice is a bridge back into our own culture and our own religion, yes. But I don't think Buddhism is for a Westerner is only a practice back into his own culture or her own culture. I think Westerners also can enter Buddhism fully. And I even feel that the differences between Buddhist culture and Western culture give us a special power in entering Buddhism.

[10:21]

Because Asian culture is too close to Buddhism sometimes and the Asians can't see the difference. Because the practice of Buddhism requires you to step out of your own culture. You can go back in, but you also have to be able to step out. It's harder to see that if your culture is very similar to Buddhism. Second doubt. I fall into nothingness when I step out of my culture.

[11:36]

Wonderful. Congratulations. Then you have the next step. That's one reason we need to develop a sea anchor. A sea anchor, you know, is an anchor you can't touch the land. It holds the boat out in the middle of the ocean. So if you're really going to go far in meditation practice or in Buddhist practice, you need to really develop your meditation as a sea anchor. If you really want to go far, if you want to get far in the Buddhist meditation practice, then you really have to develop meditation as a deep sea anchor. Come on, you two friends, don't you?

[12:49]

Yeah, of course. This is just obvious. Yeah. Sometimes my life seems as a series of successions of moments, a succession of moments, excuse me, a succession of moments and sometimes it's like a flow where each moment has a special meaning and my difficulty is to see it simultaneously.

[13:56]

There's a certain blurred edge, so to say, not sharp, not focused of each moment. If you know this much, you're in good shape. If you continue to practice with this understanding, it will improve. Is it so that there are two different kinds of doubts? The first, in my understanding, is more to have a doubt, like what you said, should I go this way or that way?

[15:11]

And the other kind of doubt is having a doubt about... It's so hard to explain. like when you work on a koan, like, what is this, or what is it? Could you say a little bit more about this kind of doubt? I understand that there are two kinds of doubts. One is the normal doubt, should I do this or that and does it even make sense? And the other kind is, for example, in a choir, what is it or what is this that works? This kind of doubt, to deal with this choir. And I asked him if he could say something about that. Well, there's psychological doubt. Which is often a kind of corrosive doubt, it undermines us.

[16:16]

And then there's more existential doubt. You know, why does anything exist at all? And then there's a doubt which really turns into an openness and readiness. Doubt which doesn't need an answer. Doubt which doesn't need an answer to what? Yeah. We decided in the Berliner Sitzgruppe that we also want to talk briefly about topics after the meditation on Sunday morning and made it our first task that we want to read from Sennheis, Adjina Gadsd and Sukhi Vashim.

[17:18]

In our sitting group in Berlin here, we decided that after our weekly meditation, we wanted to talk about certain things and begin with reading a chapter each of Zen Va-Urgen. I picked up the book from the bookshelf again during the last few days, and I was stuck on a certain sentence. And I took the book from the chef and I wandered around in it a little bit and I got stuck at a certain sentence. That's interesting that out of a context of interesting things you get stuck at a certain localization, certain sentence. The sentence was, even when the sun rises in the West, there's only one way for the Bodhisattva.

[18:26]

The sentence was, even when the sun rises in the West, And I tried to find out why this sentence sort of spoke to me, and I think it's got to do with these terrorist attacks at New York. And especially why I felt that this sentence gave me a sense of stability, of fastness, so to say. Even if I don't know exactly precisely what the way of the Bodhisattva is, it is more that I give my doubt not an aim but an intention. Yeah, good.

[19:44]

I mean, Sukershi means, quite simply, just you're rooted in your resolution more firmly than what's happening in the outside world. Even if the sun rises in the west, Now I want to ask a question. How late can we go this afternoon? Not later than I should say five, maximum six. Well, that's like every day. Should we end a little earlier, though, because people have to go home or do something? So practically speaking, what time do you want to end? Four, five, 4.30, three, then we don't have lunch then. Okay, so let's say if we're going to, maybe we should go to lunch earlier then.

[21:12]

I don't know. Can you have a lunch shorter than two hours? Ten minutes. Do you like a big lunch? If we make a normal break, had a little tea, a little snack and then prolong the session and end a little earlier then. Yeah, we could skip having lunch and... We do that before she says. That's what we do in Yohannesov. But we do it because people have to go to Berlin.

[22:15]

But you're already in Berlin. Hoped. Normale Pause. Oder zwei Stunden Mittagspause. Darum geht es. Eine richtige Mittagspause von zwei Stunden. In a moment as a seed of awareness. And a seed of our usual awareness. Field of mind. Which is often beset by Dharma, karmic stuff and so forth. Or we can have some other sense of a more fluid, unique moment. And again, okay, so we have some, we begin to have a kind of physical, emotional, psychological feel for a moment.

[23:47]

We get in the habit of that Primarily through presence in our breath. And that can open us up to the power and uniqueness and presence of a moment. And then what is the dynamic of that? What is the content of that moment? In what way is it a seed of a Buddhafield? That's maybe what we can speak about when we come back. And maybe even I could start teaching a little bit of the ten Bhumis. That's when you go through a sound barrier.

[24:51]

It's spelled B-H-U-M-I though. And it's part of the Bodhisattva practice. But maybe it's too much for us today. But let's see what we can do. If we get to the first Bumi, if I come back to Berlin again, we could do the next three or four next year. Okay, so let's sit for a moment. Is there anything anyone would like to bring up?

[25:59]

Yes. Yesterday you said it was important that we spoke among us, among ourselves in those little groups, small groups. Because they somewhat learn through the others or by the others, and I would like to hear something about that, because this seems very important for me.

[27:13]

I haven't quite understood how this functions. By or through the others, when beyond the small groups. Well, one of the reasons I decided to practice primarily in German-speaking countries, because actually I find there's more sense of taking care of each other and more friendliness among each other in German-speaking countries. Less competition about who's the smartest and stuff like that. Yeah. And I find if I do a seminar that it's almost always better after the small groups.

[28:33]

There's more of an overall group after doing the small group. And actually to do what I'm trying to do here, I need a lot of participation from you. And it's been somewhat disappointing to me that actually quite a few people haven't said anything in the seminar. And I have a kind of rule that I don't go to cities where there isn't a sitting group that's at the root of the seminar. And so I tend to go again, go to a city where there's a regular sitting group as there is in Berlin.

[29:34]

I find if there's only five or six people out of 30 or 50, the group's very different if there's that many people who practice together. So you know I haven't been in Berlin for two years now or three years, two years? Two years not. Two years. So I haven't seen a number of you for a while. But in any case, I'm not so interested in teaching Buddhism.

[30:44]

I've been doing that for a lot of years, 40 years. 30 years, practicing for 40 years. 40 years, practicing for 40 years and teaching for about almost 30 years. And I really want to work with a few people or a small group on how we can understand something together. So the small groups are just part of that. And I really want to also start having more people in the Dharma Sangha teach themselves instead of me, teach instead of me. Yeah.

[31:49]

Because that's the only way it's going to continue and that's the healthiest thing. And it makes me feel if somebody can teach this and it makes me feel maybe I'm doing something a little bit right. So the small groups are just a small but big part of that. it would be more important to learn something from the other person. So I would get that more by getting it from the other person, as if I had understood it wrong. But I always understood that in the small group, for example, I may have understood it wrong, but I understood it that through the group, through the Sangha, I may possibly learn more than if I did it all myself.

[33:06]

Yes, that's true. That's absolutely true. It's not exactly clear why it's true. But if you just look at how we learn from infanthood on, we're actually learning through others all the time. Yeah, and Well, let me come back a little bit to that. Yes. The whole time I'm asking myself, what's going on here?

[34:13]

You talked about the Buddha field. Mm-hmm. And from the before ongoing seminars we probably have a feeling of a common group. And this may be, this fear, at least for me or for us, may be a sort of trap. A trap? Yeah. Because it's a fixed concept. It's become a fixed concept. Before it was that there was a field involved between the teacher and the student and between us all. Probably something like a symbiosis.

[35:14]

And this is not so good here. And this at the moment doesn't sort of establish itself so well. You mean symbiosis in a negative sense? No, no. A dependent sense? No. Okay. Not in a dependent sense, but in a warm sense. I have the feeling... I think the ongoing things in the world, being outside, so to say outside, have a bigger influence on us than we probably notice. On you or on each of us? On me. In any case, and me?

[36:25]

I'm a rather fearful person, so I notice it quite strongly. I suspect that it's sort of, it's in everything. Perhaps I want to say it as an excuse, but I find that it's somewhat heavy, somewhat difficult. But now the Buddhafeet is sort of heavy. You find which difficult, the Sangha or the outside world? You. Every one of us.

[37:27]

All of us is in us. It makes us heavy and . I'm drawn in. Clint is an Austrian artist. Contracted. It's a little laughing. That's what she's saying. That's what I wanted to say. Do you have a remedy? Well, I think it's important to just notice this and notify that this is different than it was or has been. Perhaps only I find it like this.

[38:36]

Maybe you're getting older. Does anyone else feel like Herman does? You don't in the back. You feel younger or lighter. Poor guy. What? I don't feel the same way as you. Yes. Ciao. I wasn't that group that went outside. I felt like someone had interrupted me. I thought I should disperse and put together with others and exchange myself to get the definition of a Buddha field.

[39:53]

I was very upset about this situation and also I was outside and thought for a long time whether I should find a definition for myself or whether I actually see for myself that it is something that is not tangible, that is so fragile that I cannot share it with someone else. I was somewhat angry at first and I thought long about it if I could find a definition for myself or if this was something so elusive and fragile that it wasn't possible to share it with someone else. And since this moment, this division, I sometimes find a situation within the whole group for me, which is difficult to deal with, although I would not connect with Hermann, how difficult it seems to me.

[41:07]

Head-heavy. And since this splitting up into groups, I feel there's a sort of atmosphere situation where I'm more than I now agree with Herman, which is sort of... Too much in the head. Too much in the head, sort of... Clumsy. Clumsy, yeah. Theoretical, yeah. True. Whereas three years ago when I was at the seminar, I found it much more fluent than this time. Since yesterday, I have always had a song in my head or a text line.

[42:10]

There are two different ones. The first one was, instead of let it snow, let it snow, I always had let it flow, let it flow. A feeling that I actually wish for myself. this is this text passage instead let it know let it flow is that what I wish would happen or would have happened should have happened And the second text that came to my mind was from the song Time After Time. And the topic came with Gertrude Logan, because they also had a conversation here. And there is one text that says... And that's what I have for myself as an interpretation of what I wanted to talk about yesterday with the division of the group and the struggle to improve it.

[43:14]

This, what I just quoted, was a line of a song which actually came to my mind yesterday, then this morning was spoken about and this resumes my feeling about this group and being split into groups and the group which didn't want to talk. This is it. Yeah. First evening I was fed up completely. Before the lecture or after? After. And then I thought, okay, let him have another chance. Then I went home and found out who I was going to give another chance and the next morning I decided to give me a chance and see what happened.

[44:25]

And I said, okay, I don't care about this guy. Let him be as he is and I'll be as I am and let's see what happens. And in short, it was a hell of a time in a way. And I don't like these groups. I don't like small groups that show me you as I show you mine, all this stuff. It makes me uneasy. So I turned around, and at first I realized some people I only hadn't seen because they sit behind me. And I could look into her face and only see her from the side and saw the other ones from the front. And I decided maybe it's a possibility to meet somebody And I didn't care about what we should have talked or stuff. But I came to meet people. It was kind of coming together. And I liked it very much.

[45:28]

After about three minutes, that was OK. And I didn't care too much if we found something out about Buddhafield and all that stuff. But it was okay. Somehow it was okay. And for me, everything fitted together as it is. So I actually can't really reconstruct what the problem was in the beginning. I'm somewhat lost. It's gone. My hair is... I always forget everything. It's more or less the contrary of what people say. I can't help it. I can't even say that something profound has happened. Maybe something profound happened. I don't know. Find out later. Maybe. I think it was okay. Thank you. Auf Deutsch, bitte. Oh.

[46:29]

Ich bin ins Englische gerutscht, weil es so eine direkte Sache war eigentlich. Donnerstagabend hatte ich die Schnauze voll und dann habe ich gedacht, gut, geben wir ihm noch eine Chance. Ich bin nach Hause gefahren und Then I thought about who I would give the chance to, and then I thought, okay, I'll go there again. And on Friday I said, as it is, I don't care what happens now, let him do what he does, I do what I do, I sit down here and he talks and it doesn't matter. And unintentionally there are a few things that I had to do now, I hadn't seen them before. You from the side and the others sitting behind me. And then all of a sudden it was a kind of encounter. Now I know a few people better. I thought that was pleasant. Although I don't do these kinds of groups, but that's how it is. And I didn't care what our topic was. It was what happened.

[47:36]

That's the resume. And if I've learned something now, I don't know. Or if something important has happened. But it seems to me that everything is somehow in order. Well, we don't have to... Deutsch, bitte. No, you did? Okay. You did it both. Okay. But we don't have to, you know, last afternoon sum up how we liked or didn't like the seminar.

[48:41]

You know, I'm trying to find a way to practice with you outside of a monastic situation. And yet keep the teaching the same as if we were all practicing together over a long period of time. Not do some different teaching for lay people. Yeah, and I found, in fact, in the beginning of the first few years I didn't do small groups and I feel rather like you do.

[49:44]

I've never liked the idea of small groups much. And the first year or so I did them, the first year or two, all the groups were pretty much like the group out there. I think a lot of people dreaded when I said, okay, we'll break up into small groups. Und ich glaube, wirklich viele Leute fürchteten, wenn ich sagte, also lass uns mal in kleinen Gruppen aufteilen. Und als wir im Laufe der Jahre besser darin wurden und mehr Leute damit Erfahrung hatten, hat es ganz mit Sicherheit, soweit ich das sagen kann, die Seminare verbessert. Yeah, because somehow I'm trying to start a dialogue with you that continues after the seminar.

[50:50]

So that can continue in you individually or it can continue in you in relationship to practicing with other people. And the general instruction about the general recommendation in Zen practice is actually you don't discuss your practice with others. But of course in monasteries people do. In fact, there's a book out called, I think, Zen Training. which I actually arranged to get published.

[52:07]

Because even though I don't agree with all of it, it's pretty much what monks tell each other in the monastery. So it's kind of useful to see this level of talk. So we do learn how to talk about it without leaking. And we do have to develop a kind of shared practice culture if our practice is going to develop. And it makes a difference, really, whether we practice with others or not. On the other hand, each of us has to practice completely independently. And in that way actually practicing with each other develops the most too.

[53:16]

And practicing with each other develops the most through that each person practicing on their own too. So, you know, I try not to talk about the same thing all the time. But it's very difficult when there's new people not to... I mean, there's about five subjects I'm avoiding talking about that are real pertinent to what we're talking about. So I leave all that out because I just don't want to. If it was mostly a new group of people, I would give a different seminar. But my main commitment is to the people who have been practicing a long time, not the new people. So more and more our seminars are really not for new people. But I try to speak in a way that new people can have some feeling for what I'm talking about.

[54:42]

So anyway, this time I decided to have the sense of how you, from when you first wake up in the morning, you establish your state of mind. And you learn, feel how to sustain and maintain a state of mind. And an inclusive but very steady state of mind. Which is at the same time quite open and unpredictable. You know, not tied to any expectations of what's going to happen today or... In the next hour. Yeah, and how... What's the value of doing that? What's the secret of doing it? Yeah, but... Yeah, so I did... I tried to give you some feeling of that.

[55:53]

And it would be interesting to go, as I said, I thought about going into the, speaking about the Bhumis. There's two main Bodhisattva practices. One is the six paramitas. And the second is the ten bumis. But the ten bumis are how a bodhisattva practices as a Buddha. And the first six are rather based on the six paramitas. But they're much... They depend on a lot of developed practice. And most lay people simply can't do it. And even most monks simply can't do it.

[57:16]

So, you know, what do I do? I don't know. I mean, even if I speak at Creston, where people have been five or six years, I don't mean to discourage you. On the one hand, people are really... It really makes a difference, I think, practice in most people's lives. Yeah. But if then I say, okay, if the 10 people, let's say 10 people at Crestone, can they practice the first Bumi? Probably not. They have to be pretty firmly established in a simple thing like the first foundation of mindfulness. So they really know a body mind separate from a mind of mentation.

[58:18]

And while the first parameter means that you can establish in the fluidity of the moment a mind of... generosity, of openness. So in each situation with a person, the main quality of your mind is generosity. With a parallel and simultaneous feeling of learning from the person. But when you're talking about a first Bhumi, you've already established yourself in an immovable mind which is always in a state of joy.

[59:44]

So, you know, these practices like the Buddha, the Bumi practices, you really have to really know the Sambhogakaya body first, the body of bliss or joy. So we can establish the, we could, if we spend a seminar on the Ten Bhumis, for instance, which are not the space, not a Buddha field, but a Buddha land. It emphasizes not the space field, a Buddha field, like I've been talking about, but actually feeling you're in a land, a real location. Oh!

[61:16]

So we could have a kind of initial approach to practicing the ten Bhumis, for example. And then see how that, then each one, like we could take just the first one and see how that can be developed over a period of a year or so. Because now we're talking about the ten Bhumis bring a great many of the major practices of Buddhism together in an integrated way. And when I first studied and practiced the ten Bhumis, in the limited way I could, I decided that Sukhiroshi, for instance, had only reached the eighth or ninth Bhumi. Yeah, and I was sort of looking at the first.

[62:43]

But the sense of if we could really get a sense of establishing a Buddha field, of establishing a real experience of each moment, of really establishing finding ourselves present to each inhale and exhale, that deeply realized is the seed or root of the ten boomies. So we should go back now to just, can we be present simply to each breath?

[63:56]

And really not expect much of the teachings until we can do that. So, why don't we sit for a little bit? You know, something close to what I've been speaking about. It's simple, one of the simple ones. What is every atom samadhi? Rice in the bowl, water in the bucket. What is every atom samadhi?

[65:03]

Rice in the bowl and water in the bucket, in the pail. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You're welcome. We're trying to make this practice, to understand this practice. Thank you. Thanks for translating. Thank you, Roshi. Thank you for translating.

[66:02]

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