So I think I spoke enough, so I'd like to hear something from some of you about what we're talking about. You know, I'm speaking about these traditional ideas, yogic ideas from couple of millennia. And since they guided the creation of practice spaces, We should know about them.

[01:06]

Whether we can continue or even should be guided by them, that's another question. and why we might make the effort to transform one of these rooms of the Schreinerei into a space that is articulated through wood joinery It's clear to me, but I don't think I can make it clear necessarily. You're me, and I'm you. But anyway, Lenny and Mathieu are here. And so he brought nicely some examples of wood that can be used in building.

[02:42]

And he has, through his nice calligraphy, written the names of the wood. And Port Orford cedar, which is the most commonly used wood for wood joinery, which is actually a cypress and not a cedar, but it and it's an incense wood. Excuse me for a moment. I live in buildings which are made of this and I just go in there and smell and I don't do any work. One of the aspects of wood joinery is that you really allow the wood to talk to you.

[03:58]

And so you don't even paint it. And you don't even sand it. And sanding does to wood what sanding would do to your face if you decided to shave with a sandpaper. So the initial skill for most apprentices, all, is learning to plan. All day. Yeah, but we're talking about something more basic. When I was there for the first two years, I worked 12 hours a day. I had a day off every two months or so. And all I did was play.

[05:01]

So it was the plain truth I was telling, but he's trying to... Anyway, so these things, you can feel the difference between the plain surface, which is on the back, and the named a surface. But I just, here's two, planed one, two, and here's some other woods. This is all planed. It's all planed, but I gave, I just gave those two first. Also, es ging noch mal um diese Holzoberflächenglättung eigentlich, And not all of it's incense. This wood is not trickling in. We're talking about incense, in this context.

[06:02]

Incense wood, maybe duft in the sense? OK? Duften. Duften. And he says most of the wood he has, Lenny, he collects wood if he can from various sources. Most of the wood would be clear and not have knots in it. Would or would not?

[07:06]

Would not have nuts in it. My impression is that Japanese, because this kind of Port Orford cedar, Cypress again, is mostly grown in Manchuria and Korea and Japan. And also very rainy Oregon and Washington, the states. And Americans thought that it was a kind of white cedar And so the Japanese were able to buy up, I believe, most of the stands of the wood very inexpensively.

[08:11]

Well, they started buying it about 100 years ago. But on federal land, government land, national forests, which is a lot of the area where it grew, there's still plenty. And you can still, you can harvest it or somebody can harvest it for you. Sure. But don't you get some wood? You can harvest it, you can harvest it. Yeah, yeah. Whenever you... Yeah, I'm... It's about the fact that the Japanese used to buy a lot of it cheaply. But they say that it's still growing a lot in the communal, so in the state or communal countries, where you can also... And some of the wood you have, doesn't it wash up from the log rafts that are brought to Japan? No, most of it is, well, some of it is what's called bug kill.

[09:18]

Uh-huh. It does rot. It's very rot-resistant. If the tree falls down in the forest naturally and dies, the sapwood, the outside grain, and the bark rots. And it looks like, it looks like a plant covered with moss. Inside, it looks like this sample. It will last for 70, 80 years. Lying on the forest floor of a rainforest.

[10:28]

It's very resistant. Now, when you get such a log and you bring it to your place in the Sierra, do you age it by cutting a groove down to the middle, or do you age it in boards? I haven't known... In Oregon or Washington, none of them. If I have natural logs that I'm going to use for beams, I'll cut that to the center. So when it dries, it doesn't crack all along the sides. The crack on the top opens up. And it looks pretty. So anyway, it's a rather... We're lucky that Lenny has developed this place where he has the wood and where he can cut it and send it to us if we decide to do this.

[11:51]

So anyway, but do any of you have any comments about the idea of space as activity or what... Any feelings you have about what kind of practice space we should create here? Yes. I would like to describe what, if we go into a room and actualize it, what happens? And for me it sounded a little one-sided and I experience it as a dialogue between the building and myself.

[13:06]

And at the moment I'm living in a parody in a house which is completely built of wood. And it's a feeling nearly like a living organism in which I enter. It's a constant dialogue and I can feel it and hear it. Very strongly I experience that in the Zen door in Creston because this is all wood. And also in the other Zen door, Johanneshof, and this is very... They're very hard, a bit difficult to sense this in buildings made of stone.

[14:30]

And I find this dialogue so fascinating. And what did you mean by one-sided? You started off saying one-sided. You said that in fact. You said we go into the room and actualize it, but I meant it's actualizing us, but actually you said that. You said that. Yeah, I hope so. Okay, yes. I have a question to something you said about that the Zendo in Crestone is a rectangle, but through 12 people on each side it feels more like a square. Could you say more about the importance of this feeling of squareness?

[15:40]

I mean, you know what I mean? Because obviously our center here is not at all square. I've noticed. And we've, I think, all noticed obvious disadvantages. And one thing, of course, is true, what you also mentioned, that, say, the persons on the further ends, they can hardly feel each other from the back when they follow. But maybe there's more to it than that. So that's my question. Could you extend on that? Deutsch, did you? Yeah. Roshi said earlier that the broadcast in Queston is actually rectangular, but because there are 12 people sitting on each side, it feels like a square room. Our broadcast in Johanneshof is not square at all, as we all know. That also has clear disadvantages, which we also know, such a narrow, long room.

[16:44]

And one thing that Roche said is, when people sit at these narrow ends, then they sit really far apart. apart from each other and can really feel bad when there is something hiding behind it. But my assumption is that there are even more things to it, so that's why something like this is squarely important and I would like to add to that. Well, I suppose when you look at the very earliest Indian Buddhist temples and Hindu Buddhist temples, which were ancestors, something like Hinduism, They're usually organized around a central square. And the central square is often circled. And there is the whole question of how do you locate something?

[18:04]

How do you create a location? And what the Chinese used to do is they would put a pole in the ground Like a gnomon. I guess a gnomon is the word for the thing that sticks up in a sundial. So in a sense they put a stick in the ground. And then they see where the shadow falls. And then they draw a circle based on that. And then they decide what are the cardinal directions based on where the sun comes. So this is a sense that they want to make a location. Now the Japanese have a word, sakariba, or sakariba, something like that.

[19:12]

I don't know how the inflection goes. Which means something like animated space. We don't have any word for something like that. Or it means high density space. And one of the best examples of it are Kisatens in Japan. Kisaten. Kisaten is the Japanese word for a coffee shop. And kisaten, there was a coffee culture in Japan from very early. And the coffee culture in Japan in, uh, uh, Wien and Paris.

[20:24]

Paris. Café culture in Wien and Paris. Um, developed, I believe, from taverns, from drinking establishments. But the Kisaten, the coffee shop of Japan, as far as I understand, developed primarily from tea houses. But there's almost no tea houses left in Japan. You think Japan, tea, etc. Yeah, living in Kyoto off and on for 35 years, I only found one tea house in all of Kyoto. Im Zeitraum von 35 Jahren, wo ich immer und immer wieder in Kyoto war und gelebt habe, habe ich letztlich ein Teehaus da gefunden.

[21:27]

And the concept of the tea house is something like a third space. Und das Konzept eines Teehauses... Or a kisaten. Oder eines kisatens auch. Das Konzept ist, dass eines dritten Raumes... A space that's not home and not work. But you can actually refine it more than that. But in any case, let's just say it's a third or fourth space. And for me, it parallels the fourth space of Zazen. That's a bit of a mosaic leap, but I'll try to make it clear. And if you study, if you look at political movements and so forth and so on in Europe, the cafe played a huge role. And they were closed down by emperors and things like that because people were talking about things they shouldn't.

[22:39]

Anyway, in Japan, the Kisaten is also a very significant other space than home and work. And some of you know I started a restaurant called Green's Restaurant in San Francisco. And I think almost nobody is aware that for me it was the first quesadilla in America. I completely thought of it as a quesadilla that served vegetarian food. And one of the things that happened in quesadillas Is they bring you a hot towel when you first are there?

[23:59]

A Japanese restaurant. Is it really about the fact that your face is dirty? Your hands are dirty? It's a kind of Shinto thing to do it. But it's really about space as an activity. Because you now ought to become a new person So you do it with your hands, and they do it on airplanes. At least Delta does it. Keys to 10. But I bought these napkin machines that heat them, et cetera, from Japan, brought them all the way to Green's restaurant. No one used. So everyone, when they sat down, brought a hot towel.

[25:03]

Everybody said, what the hell is this for? So the concept of becoming a new person, which is what it's about, When you sit down at the table, I couldn't get anybody to feel. I also had squat toilets for men and women. We had squat toilets. They're better for your posture and better for other things. We had two regular toilets and two squat toilets for each gender. That's pure quesiton, but when I left, they took out the squat toilets. So it became a restaurant and not a quesadilla.

[26:13]

Not that the toilet makes a difference. But it is a way of using space. It is a way of using space. So... A temple is, I mean, a kisaten is meant to create an anonymous space. But an anonymous space is different from just being anonymous in a city. And now let's just look at, for a moment, at Starbucks. Most people come in and just get coffee.

[27:14]

But some people sit down and work at their computer or read or something. But Schultz, who's runs Starbucks. His name is Schulz. He understood that space ripens or evolves. So even if you don't use the chairs, it makes a difference to go in there and the chairs are there. So space evolves not only through how you use it, but its potential uses. Am I getting too complicated here? One of the big things, important things about a full-time Zendo, a full-time Zendo means there's an eating board of about nine or ten inches.

[28:28]

And you as much as possible don't touch it when you get on your seat. Because it's an eating board even when you're not eating on it. Okay. And the full-time has a six-foot-three inch or something like that to time. 190 millimeters. So it means you can sleep there. And then there's a cupboard behind, a cupboard for your clothes and a cupboard for your bedding.

[29:47]

That means all the fundamentals of living exist in that spot. And it makes the way you sit different. Because, and in a practice period, often you do it in sesshins if you want to, You can live in that space. And even if you don't, you could. So the potential of the space is also an aspect of the space, invisible, well, anyway, an aspect of the space. So the fact that in a sashin, or a 90-day practice period, some people will spend the 90 days basically in that location.

[31:08]

They'll get up to do kin-hin or something, but they eat there, they sleep there, they dress there, etc. And there's a work period, etc., but you return to that place. Now, if you can live that way, not everyone can. It's a certain kind of skill. You develop an inner stillness that I don't know any other shortcut to such inner stillness. Sometimes I give the phrase to people, just now is enough. As a mental posture.

[32:11]

And just now is enough. It has to be. Do you have an alternative? But the mind of just now is enough is different than the mind of where's that great chocolate and... Okay. So, when you do have a zendo place like that, there's a feeling that at each moment it's enough. you need nothing else. If you can do it, you're never bored again in your whole life. Because you always have enough.

[33:12]

Look how beautiful. So, there was a wonderful Chinese monk who came and visited us recently in And he was... Anyway, he's a traditional Chinese monk, and he's also, because of Tiananmen Square and things like that, who was teacher, was one of the leaders of that, he's also a very complicated person, has to be careful what he says. He came into our Zendo in Creston. Basically he said, wow, a real Zendo. He said, Zendos in Japan and China are divided into two kinds.

[34:31]

Half tons, where you just sit, or full tons. And he made clear that the practice in half tons Zendos is really not taken as seriously. So, but whether we can fit a full-time sender in there or afford it, I don't know. I'm hoping Lenny and Matthew will chalk out some space in the two rooms so we can walk around and see where a full-time will reach to and a half-time reach. We're very grateful you're leaving. Otherwise we wouldn't get lunch. Take your time. Yeah, all right. What time is lunch supposed to be? One o'clock. Okay. Okay. Sorry to say that we're grateful. Now, one of the qualities of a temple, I don't know China well enough to know, but my feeling when I was there for a while, it was similar to Japan.

[36:08]

I don't know China well enough. is that this sense of a location, you create a location, where is it, what are the cardinal directions? No one knows, because the North Star and the sun is changing and the Earth is tilted. So what are the cardinal directions? Why did Bodhidharma come from the West? Well, he didn't come from the West, he came from the South. India is south of China. At least east of China. Should be called Tibet. Anyway, but Chinese people had to go west because they had to either go by sea routes, which went south and then very west, or they had to go basically west to get to China, to India.

[37:24]

So in Native American cultures and in Europe, etc., creating a location is a big deal. I'm still responding to what you brought up, believe it or not. Okay, so Sakaribba, meaning high-density space or animated space. So in a city, you look for a space that's got some corners or some way that kind of gathers geometrically or feng shui and all that stuff, gathers energy.

[38:29]

So you want to find space that not only evolves, but evolves you. And the basic idea behind the Kisaten is you try to find a place in the city which has this feeling. And then in a variety of ways you densify the space in the interior. Now there's a parallel sort of process of locating a Buddhist temple. You look for a place where a great tree has grown something. But once you find the location,

[39:32]

You start to densify the space. I don't know what word to use. Okay. And then at the center you have this square, right? Or a more complex sense of a square, a physical rectangle, a square of people. And you usually put that at the center. And you put the other buildings around the center. To make it cozy. Or something like that. And you make... It's a compound again. because it's an activity.

[40:57]

And so each building, it's like everything changes, means everything is interdependent. So a compound, a practice compound, should exemplify inter-independence. And in Japan and China and Korea, they basically have the same architecture all the way, the different buildings, the different sizes, etc. And in Japan and China, But each one is a different function. And each one feels complete in itself. Now, in the early Buddhist temples, you could get the whole mandala from just one look.

[42:05]

And what happened in China and Japan is they began to, particularly the Zen school, began to create buildings you couldn't read from one corner. You could see one part, but you couldn't know what the rest looked like. I used to stay in Yamada Mumon Roshi's temple in Kyoto. And it's a group of buildings within a wall with a wonderful Densho bell from 700 or something like that. It makes you feel ancient. Anyway, I can remember the building I slept in.

[43:20]

You look out and there's a garden and there's paths and things and the paths don't necessarily, there's no shortcuts. The paths between the building are wide or located or spaced on the basis of how often you meet people. So part of the practice in such a place is this bow of equanimity and compassion. Every time you meet somebody, no matter what you feel or what you think about the person, you stop and talk. I forget to do it at the Delta counter.

[44:23]

I forgot to do it at the Delta counter. And the bow, as you know, is you're bringing, again, you're actualizing space. You're bringing your hands up into this line of chakras. And you're pulling this up with the heels of your hand. to the heart chakra and then you lift it into kind of social space or shared space you bow to the other person disappearing and if you just do that hundreds of times and it incubates it changes you Yoga culture takes for granted the plasticity of mind and body.

[45:35]

Brain, mind and body. So you are really changing your wiring. So you place the buildings and the pathways, so they may not lead to the building, but they lead towards something and then back, and then they might go up a few steps just to change your pace, etc., And in Zeus, the Buddha was taken out of the center. And the practitioner was put in the center.

[46:39]

So in a zendo, traditionally, there's no Buddha, there's only a Manjushri. And the platform you sit on, the tan, is conceptually an extension of the altar. So you are the Buddha, or potentially the Buddha, sitting in your place. And there's no competing Buddha, there's just Manjushri to give you a little wisdom. Now, within Kyoto or other cities I've been in and lots of other cities I've been in.

[47:39]

A temple has a temple practice complex. Has a public dimension. Often a little area where a mother can watch her kids playing on a swing. Or there's a couple benches. And people know sort of what the buildings are. But the meditation hall is an unseen space. And generally, unless you are part of that sangha, you don't go in the sender. Because it's meant to be unseen. And for the practitioner it's also unseen because it's his or her own unseen space.

[48:43]

Okay, so ideally, and I think it worked here, when Kohlbrenner, our neighbor, there's Electro Kohlbrenner, his brother, and then the house nearer is Subaru Kohlbrenner. And a coal burner, is it somebody who makes charcoal? Yeah. He burns coal. Yeah, so there's coal burner and charcoal. Layers of states here. All right. I don't think he's ever been in Arzendo, has he? But he sees, you know, sometimes he says, I hear the neighbors say, well, there's more expensive cars in the parking lot at Johanneshof than most of us farmers have.

[50:01]

But basically, this Catholic neighborhood has sort of accepted us. And they realize that there's this unseen space somewhere in Johanneshof. And they don't really know what the heck we're doing in there. They hear mumbling and murmuring coming out of the rooms. But they accept, the community accepts us. So as soon as we bought this place, Kohlbrenner said, I own the land that connects it. I'll just sell it to you or practically give it to you. We didn't even have to ask him.

[51:04]

It was a kind of, well, whatever they're doing, it's an unseen space, but I'm willing to give them some of my space. So a temple, if we build a place here, it should have a public dimension. But the custom is that the space which animates this space is unseen. And it's the space which we enter in our own unseen space. So this is, I'm trying to give you a feel for the tradition of Zen practice centers.

[52:10]

And then you want the room you meditate in to have a kind of, it's not just visual, a craft complexity. which is an attention to detail, obviously can only be created through an attention to detail. It's similar to the attention to detail you bring to your own practice. And one way to do that is this tradition of Chinese and now Japanese Buddhism. The position of Chinese and now Japanese wood joinery.

[53:29]

Which is almost, I think, mostly Japan now limited to temples, contemporary. Which has this... living feel to it. So, thanks for your square. Thanks for your answer. I think we should stop pretty soon, but somebody else wants to say something. I promise not to respond. You can see I'm all wound up about this.

[54:34]

And this afternoon we'll have another session. And maybe we can also go into the shinerei and walk around and look. And get some feeling. Can we fit in this space which was not designed for this purpose? a meditation hall, which we will feel good about. It will be a challenge for Lenny and Mathieu. It's also a challenge for our whole Sangha. What the heck are we doing this for? Or should we do it? They're trying to move Bodhidharma into a Shrinerai. Yes. It resonated very much with me what you said about, you know, when you started Greens, this ritual, Red Towel, that supports to bring out another person.

[56:02]

And it didn't work with people in San Francisco. Well, it works in the Japanese rest, but they couldn't quite get it in a... Well, in Japanese rest, this is what you would expect, that you are confronted with something different, so you are easily leaving that. But have you noticed something that works for Westerners in their own space in a similar way? Because I think this is what happens with all of us when we enter a different space. Yes, you should. If you can't. Yes, when Hiroshi described in Dreams that it didn't work like in a Japanese restaurant or in Japan, that you basically do the ritual of washing hands with a hot towel, that you then become someone else. And I believe that this also takes place with us, that we now go into such a special space and that we also have the need to be someone else. Well, I mean, let me think about it.

[57:04]

And we can all think about it. One of the differences I noticed being in Germany in contrast to And one of the differences that I have noticed in Germany, so to speak, compared to the United States, is that you hardly go to any restaurant, and even very ordinary restaurants, And even if it's empty, you let somebody take you to your seat. And in Germany it's very common that you just go and you sit where it's empty.

[58:05]

But in German restaurants you have a standtisch. Which is another kind of space in the restaurant. And even when the restaurant's busy, they leave the Stammtisch empty. These people are crazy. So the Stammtisch is a kind of another layer of space in the restaurant. And in America, you get the check when you're ready to leave, and in Germany, they give you the check when they give a round to it. They do when they want. In American restaurants, you get a check, you're going to leave, you leave, they bring you the check, and in Germany, you wait and wait and wait. Well, maybe we'll let them pay. I think it will help us to understand these things in our own culture when we're going to build that Zendo. What do you do in Belgium?

[59:06]

Do you just sit down anywhere or do you have to wait to be taken to your seat? It depends on the restaurants. But in the better restaurants you wait. I suspect what it could be with us here in our culture. You would like to have a moment where you can gather yourself. Perhaps it's also the decisive part about the towels. In our culture you don't wash openly or publicly. So to create a room, a space where you can be just for a moment, you can be for yourself, alone.

[60:25]

And that's why I like this American practice to wait until you're being led to your table. Because of this moment of break, of a pause. Yeah, it's an entrance. Entrance, Eingang, Entrance, Gehen für einen Augenblick. Ah. So shall we hear the bell? Thermal. Thank you for transitioning.

[63:07]

Thank you very much for all of you. It's the same type of conceptual territory. When you leave your cushion for any length of time, you always fluff it. Returning the space to the way it was. This all sounds like things we do too as Westerners.

[64:16]

But it's rooted in the feeling of space as an activity and it's not about the cushion. So you do feel you want to keep disappearing. So returning the cushion to the way it was. So your activity in relation to the cushion is removed is a kind of disappearance.

[65:08]

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